Atlas Shrugged

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CONTENTS

Introduction to the 35th Anniversary Edition 1

by Leonard Pci k off

PART ONE

NON-CONTRADICTION

1 THE THEME It

U THE CHAIN 33

III THE IOP AND THE BOTTOM 48

IV THE IMMOVABLE MOVERS 66

V THE (UMAX OF HIE D’ANCOMAS 88

VI T HE NON COMMERCIAL 122

VII THE EXPLOIT HRS AND TT IE EXPLOITED 154

VIII THE JOHN GALT LINE 203

IX THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 237

X WYATT’S TORC H 273

PART TWO

EITHER-OR

I THE MAN WHO BELONGED ON EARTH 315

II THE ARISTOCRACY OF PULL 352

III WHITE BLACKMAIL 392

IV THE SAN<TiON OF THE VICTIM 427

V ACCOUNT OVERDRAWN 458

VI MIRACLE METAL. 491

VII THE MORATORIUM ON BRAINS 523

VIII BY OUR LOVE 560

IX 1 1 IE FACE WITHOUT PAIN OR FEAR 582

OR OU1L T

X THE SIGN OF THE DOLLAR 601

PART THREE

A IS A

I ATLANTIS 6*0

II THE UTOPIA OF CREED 689

HI ANTI-GREED 747

IV AN TELIFE 791

V THEIR BROTHERS’ KEEPERS 831

VI THE CONCERTO OF DELIVERANCE 881

VII “THIS IS JOHN GALT SPEAKING” 915

VIII THE EGOIST 979

IX THE GENERATOR 1030

X IN THE NAME OF THE BEST WITHIN US 1049

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 1070

READER’S GUIDE 1071

INTRODUCTION TO
THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Ayn Rand held that art is a “re-creation of reality according to an
artist’s metaphysical value judgments.” By its nature, therefore, a
novel (like a statue or a symphony) docs not require or tolerate
an explanatory preface; it is a self-contained universe, aloof from
commentary, beckoning the reader to enter, perceive, respond.

Ayn Rand would never have approved of a didactic (or laudatory)
introduction to her book, and I have no intention of tlouting her
wishes. Instead, I am going to give her the floor. I am going to let
you in on some of the thinking she did as she was preparing to write
Adas Shrugged.

Before starting a novel, Ayn Rand wrote voluminously in her jour-
nals about its theme, plot, and characters. She wrote not for any
audience, but strictly for herself — that is, tor the clarity of her own
understanding. The journals dealing with Atlas Shrugged are power-
ful examples of her mind in action, confident even when groping,
purposeful even when stymied, luminously eloquent even though
wholly unedited. These journals are also a fascinating record of the
step-by-step birth of an immortal work of art.

In due course, ail of Ayn Rand’s writings will be published For
this 35th anniversary edition of Adas Shrugged , however, I have se-
lected, as a kind of advance bonus for her fans, four typical journal
entries. Let me warn new readers that the passages reveal the plot
and will spoil the tnxik for anyone who reads them before knowing
the story.

As I recall “Atlas Shrugged’' did not become the novel’s title
until Miss Rand’s husband made the suggestion in 1956. The working
title throughout the writing was “The Strike:”

The earliest of Miss Rand’s notes for “The Strike” are dated Janu-
ary 1, 1945, about a year after the publication ot The Fountainhead l
Naturally enough, the subject on her mind was how to differentiate
the present novel from its predecessor.

Theme. What happens to the world when the Prime Movers
go on strike.

This means — a picture of the world with its motor cut off.
Show: what, how, why. The specific steps and incidents— in
terms of persons, their spirits, motives, psychology and ac-

l

Hons — and, secondarily, proceeding from persons, in terms of
history, society and the world.

The theme requires: to show who are the prime movers and
why, how they function. Who are their enemies and why,
what are the motives behind the hatred for and the enslave-
ment of the prime movers; the nature of the obstacles placed
in their way, and the reasons for it.

This last paragraph is contained entirely in The Fountain -
head . Roark ana Toohey are the complete statement of it.
Therefore, this is not the direct theme or The Strike — but it is
part of the theme and must be kept in mind, stated again
(though briefly) to have the theme clear and complete.

First question to decide is on whom the emphasis must be
placed — on the prime movers, the parasites or the world. The
answer is: The world . The story must be primarily a picture of
the whole.

In this sense, The Strike is to be much more a "social"
novel than The Fountainhead . The Fountainhead was about
"individualism and collectivism within man's soul"; it showed
the nature and function of the creator and the second-hander.
The primary concern there was with Roark and Toohey — show-
ing w hot they are. The rest of the characters were variations
or the theme of the relation of the ego to others — mixtures of
the two extremes, the two poles: Roark and Toohey. The pri-
mary concern of the story was the characters, the people as
such — their natures. Their relations to each other — which is
society, men in relation to men— were secondary, an unavoid-
able, direct consequence of Roark set against Toohey. But it
was not. the theme.

Now, it is this relation that must be the theme. Therefore,
the personal becomes secondary. That is, the personal is nec-
essary only to the extent needed to make the relationships
clear. 'In The Fountainhead 1 showed that Roark moves the
world — that the Keatings feed upon him and hate him for it,
while the Tooheys are out consciously to destroy him. But the
theme was Roark — not Roark's relation to the world. Now it
wifi be the relation.

In other words, I must show in what concrete, specific way
the world is moved by the creators. Exactly how do the second-
handers live on the creators. Both in spiritual matters— and
(most particularly) in concrete, physical events. (Concentrate
on the concrete, physical events — but don't fonget to keep in
mind at all Hmes how the physical proceeds from the
spiritual) ...

However, for the purpose of this story. I do not start by
showing how the second-handers live on the prime movers in
actual, everyday reality — nor do I start by showing a normal
world. (That comes in only in necessary retrospect, or flash-
back, or by implication in the events themselves.) I start with
the fantastic premise of the prime movers Going on strike . This
is the actual heart and center of the novel A qisHnction care-

2

fully to be observed here: I do not set out to glorify the prime
mover (that was The Fountainhead }. I set out to show how
desperately the world needs prime movers, and how viciously
it treats them. And I show it on a hypothetical case — what
happens to the world without them .

In The Fountainhead I did not show how desperately the
world needed Roark — except by implication. I dia show how
viciously the world treated him, and why. I showed mainly
what he is . It was Roark's story. This must be the world $
story — in relation to its prime movers. (Almost— the story of a
body in relation to its heart — a body dying of anemia.)

I don't show directly what the prime movers do — that's
shown only by implication. I show what happens when they
don't do it. (Through that, you see the picture of what they
do, their place ana their role.) (This is an important guide for
the construction of the story.)

In order to work out the story, Ayn Rand had to understand fully
why the prime movers allowed the second-handers to live on them —
why the creators had not gone on strike throughout history — what
errors even the best of them made that kept them in thrall to the
worst. Part of the answer is dramatized in the character of Dagny
Taggart, the railroad heiress who declares war on the strikers. Here
is a note on her psychology, dated April 18, 1946:

Her error — and the cause of her refusal to join the strike —
is over-optimism and over-confidence (particularly this last).

Over-optimism — in that she thinks men are better than they
are, she doesn't really understand them and is generous
about it.

Over-confidence — in that she thinks she can do more than
an individual actually can. She thinks she can run a railroad
(or the world) single-handed, she can make people do what
she wants or needs what is right, by the sheer force of her
own talent; not by forcina them, of course, not by enslaving
them and giving orders— but by the sheer over-abundance or
her own energy- she will show them how, she can teach them
and persuade them, she is so able that they'll catch it from
her, (This is still faith in their rationality, in the omnipotence
of reason. The mistake? Reason is not automatic. Those who

deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them.
Leave them alone.)

On these two points, Dagny is committing an important (but
excusable and understandable) error in thinking, the kind of
error individualists and creators often make. It is an error pro-
ceeding from the best in their nature and from a proper prind-
\ but this principle is misapplied. ...

The error t$ this: it is proper for a creator to be optimistic,

in the deepest, most basic sense, since the creator believes in
a benevolent universe and functions on that premise. But it is
an error to extend that optimism to other specific men. First,

3

it's not necessary, the creator's life and the nature of the uni-
verse do not require it, his life does not depend on others.
Second, man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is
potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only to him
[through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.
The division will affect only him; it is not (and cannot and
should not be) the primary concern of any other human being.

Therefore, while a creator does ana must worship Man
(which means his own highest potentiality; which is his natural
self-reverence), he must not make the mistake of thinking that
this means the necessity to worship Mankind (as a collective).
These are two entirely different conceptions, with entirely — (im-
mensely and diametrically opposed)— different consequences.

Man, at his highest potentiality, is realized and fulfilled
within each creator himself. . . .whether the creator is alone,
or finds only a handful of others like him, or is among the
majority of mankind, is of no importance or consequence what-
ever; numbers have nothing to do with it. He alone or he and
a few others like him are mankind, in the proper sense of
being the proof of what man actually is, man at his best, the
essential man, man at his highest possibility. (The rational
being, who acts according to nis nature.)

It should not matter to a creator whether anyone or a million
or all the men around him fall short of the ideal of Man; let
him live up to that ideal himself; this is all the "optimism"
about Man that he needs. But this is a hard and subtle thing
to realize — and it would be natural for Dagny always to make
the mistake of believing others are better man they really are
(or will become better, or she will teach them to become better
or, actually, she so desperately wants them to be better) — and
to be tied to the world by that hope

It is proper for a creator to have an unlimited confidence in
himself qnd his ability, to feel certain that he can get anything
he wishes out of life, that he can accomplish anything he
decides to accomplish, and that it's up to him to ao it. (He
feels it because he is a man of reason . , .) [But] here is what
he must keep clearly in mind: it is true that a creator can
accomplish anything he wishes — if he functions according to
the nature of man, the universe and his own proper morality,
that is, if he does not place his wish primarily within others
and does not attempt or desire anything that is of a collective
nature, anything that concerns others primarily or requires pri-
marily the exercise of the will of others. (This ^ould be an
immoral desire or attempt, contrary to his nature a creator.)
If he attempts that, he is out of a creator's province and in
that of the collectivist and the second-hander.

Therefore, he must never feel confident that h4 can do any-
thing whatever to, by or through others, (He cjbn't — and he
shouldn't even wish to try it — and the mere qttempt is im-
proper.) He must not think that he can , . . somihow transfer
ms energy and his intelligence to th$m and mal^e them fit for

4

his purposes in that way. He must face other men as they
are, recognizing them as essentially independent entities, by
nature, and beyond his primary influence; [he must] deal with
them only on his own, independent terms, deal with such as
he judges can fit his purpose or live up to his standards jby
themselves and of their own will, independently of him) ana
expect nothing from the others. ...

Now, in Dagny's case, her desperate desire is to run Tag-
gart Transcontinental. She sees that there are no men suited
to her purpose around her no men of ability, independence
and competence. She thinks she can run it with others, with
the incompetent and the parasites, either bv training them or
merely by treating them as robots who will take her orders
and function without personal initiative or responsibility; with
herself ; in effect , being the spark of initiative , the bearer of
responsibility for a whole collective. This can't be done. This
is ner crucial error.

This is where she fails.

Ayn Rand's basic purpose as a novelist was to present not villains
or even heioes with errors, but the ideal man- -the consistent, the
lully integrated, the perfect. In Atlas Shrugged, this is John Galt, the
towering figure who moves the world and the novel, yet does not
appear onstage until Part III By his nature land that of the story')
Galt is necessarily central to the lives ot all the chaiacters In one
note, “Galt's relation to the others,” dated June 27, 1946, Miss Rand
defines succinctly what Galt represents to each oi them:

For Dogny — the ideal. The answer to her two quests: the
man of genius and the man she loves. The first quest is ex-
pressed in her search for the inventor of the engine. The sec-
ond — her growing conviction that she will never be in love . . .

For Rearden — the friend. The kind of understanding and ap-
preciation he has always wanted and did not know he wanted
lor he thought he had it — he tried to find it in those around
nim, to get it from his wife, his mother, brother and sister).

For Francisco d'Anconia — the aristocrat. The only man who
represents a challenge and a stimulant — almost the "proper
kind" of audience, worthy of stunning for the sheer joy and
color of life.

For Danneskjdld — the anchor. The only man who represents
land and roots to a restless, reckless wanderer, like tne goal
of a struggle, the port at the end of a fierce sea-voyage — the
only man ne can respect.

For the Composer— Ahe inspiration and the perfect audience.

For the Philosopher— the embodiment of his abstractions.

For Father Amadeus — the source of his conflict. The uneasy
realization that Galt is the end of his endeavors, the man of
virtue, the perfect man — and that his means do not fit this end
(and that he is destroying this, his ideal, for the sake of those
who are evil).

5

To James Taggort-~*he eternal threat. The secret dread. The
reproach. The guilt (his own guilt). He has no specific tie-,
in with GalF— but he has that constant, causeless, unnamed,
hysterical fear. And he recognizes it when he hears Galt's
broadcast and when he sees Galt in person for the first time.

To the Professor — his conscience. The reproach and re-
minder. The ghost that haunts him through everything he does,
without a moment's peace. The thing that says: "No" to his
whole life.

Some notes on the above: Rearden s sister, Stacy, was a minor
character later cut from the novel.

“Francisco” was spelled ‘‘Francesco” in these early years, while
Danneskjtild's first name at this point was Ivar, presumably after
Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish “match king,” who was the real-life model
of Bjorn Faulkner in Night of January 1 6th

Father Amadeus was Taggart’s priest, to whom he confessed his
sms. The priest was supposed to be a positive character, honestly
devoted to the good but practicing consistently the morality of
mercy. Miss Rand dropped him, she told me, when she lound that
it was impossible to make such a character convincing.

The Professor is Robert Stadler

This brings me to a final excerpt. Because of her passion tor ideas,
Miss Rand w'as often asked whether she was primarily a philosopher
or a novelist. In later years, she was impatient with this question,
but she gave her own answer, to and lor herselt, m a note dated
May 4, 1046. The broader context was a discussion of the nature
of crcativit).

I seem to be both a theoretical philosopher and a fiction
writer. But it is the last that interests me most; the first is only
the means to the last; the absolutely necessary means, but only
the means; the fiction story is the end. Without an understanding
and statement of the right philosophical principle, I cannot create
the right story; but the discovery of the principle interests rne
only as the discovery of the proper knowledge to be used for
my life purpose; and my life purpose is the creation of the
kind of world (people and events) that I like — that is, that
represents human perfection.

Philosophical knowledge is necessary in order to define
human perfection. But I ao not care to stop at the definition,

I want to use it, to apply it — in my work (in my personal life,
too — but the core, center and purpose of my personal life, of
my whole life, is mv work).

I bis is why, I think, the idea of writing a philpsophical non-
fiction book bored me. In such a book, the purpose would
actually be to teach others, to present my idea to them. In a
book of fiction the purpose is to create, for ntyself, the kind
of world I want and to live in it while I am creating it; then,
as a secondary consequence, to let others er|oy mis world,
If, and to the extent that they can.

6

It may be said that the first purpose of a philosophical book
is the clarification or statement of your new knowledge to and
for yourself; and then, as a secondary step, the offering of
your knowledge to others. But here is the difference, as far as
( am concerned: I have to acquire and state to myself the new
philosophical knowledge or principle I used in order to wrile
a fiction story as its embodiment and illustration; I do not core
to write a story on a theme or thesis of old knowledge, knowl*
edge stated or discovered by someone else, that is, someone
else's philosophy (because those philosophies are wrong). To
this extent, I am an abstract philosopher (I want to present the
perfect man and his perfect life — and I must also discover my
own philosophical statement and definition of this perfection).

But when and if I have discovered such new knowledge, I
am not interested in stating it in its abstract, general form, that
is, as knowledge. I am interested in using it, in applying it —
that is, in stating it in the concrete form of men and events,
in the form of a tiction story. This last is my final purpose, my
end; the philosophical knowledge or discovery is only the
means to it.- For my purpose, the non-fiction form of abstract
knowledge doesn't interest me; the final, applied form of fic-
tion, of story, does. (I state the knowledge to myself, anyway;
but I choose the final form of it, the expression, in the com-
pleted cycle that leads back to man.)

I wonder to what extent I represent a peculiar phenomenon
in this respect. I think I represent the proper integration of a
complete human being Anyway, this should be my lead for
the character of John Galt. He, too , is a combination of an
abstract philosopher and a practical inventor; the thinker and
the man of action together . .

In learning, we draw an abstraction from concrete objects
and events. In creating, we make our own concrete objects
and events out of the abstraction; we bring the abstraction
down and back to its specific meaning, to me concrete; but
the abstraction has helped us to make the kind of concrete
we want the concrete to be. It has helped us to create — to re-
shape the world as we wish it to be for our purposes.

1 cannot resist quoting one further paragraph. It comes a few pages
later in the same discussion.

Incidentally, as a sideline observation, if creative fiction writ-
ing is a process of translating an abstraction into the concrete,
there are three possible grades of such writing: translating an
old (known) abstraction (theme or thesis) through the medium
of old fiction means (that is, characters, events or situations
used before for that same purpose, that same translation) —
this is most of the popular trash; translating an old abstraction
through new, original fiction means — this is most of the good
literature; creating a new, original abstraction and translating it
through new, original means. This, as far as I know, is only me —

7

my kind of fiction writing May God forgive me (Metaphor*) if
this is mistaken conceit* As near as I can now see it. it isn't, (A
fourth possibility — translating!, a new abstraction through old
means — is impossible, by definition if the abstraction is new,
there can be no means used by anybody else before to trans-
late it )

is her conclusion “mistaken conceit'* It is now torty-livo years
since she wrote this note* and you are hoidtm* A\n Rand s master-
work m vour hands

You decide

8

PARI ONE

Chapter I THE THEME

“Who is John Galt?”

The light was ebbing, and hddie Willers could not distinguish the
bum’s face. The bum had said it simply, without expression. But
from the sunset far at the end ol the street, \ellow glints caught his
eyes, and the eyes looked straight at Eddie Willers. mocking and
still — as if the question had been addressed to the causeless uneasi-
ness within him.

“Why did you say that?” asked Eddie Willers, ins voice tense.

The bum leaned against the side of the doorway: a wedge of bro-
ken glass behind him, reflected the metal yellow of the >ky.

“Why does it bother you?’' he asked

“It doesn't,” snapped Eddie Willers.

He reached hastily into his pocket. The bum had stopped him and
asked for a dime, then had gone on talking, as it to kill that moment
and postpone the problem of the next. Pleas for dimes were so fre-
quent in the streets these days that it was not necessary to listen to
explanations and he had' no desire to hear the details of this bum’s
particular despair

“Go get vout cup ol coffee.” he said, handing the dime to the
shadow- that had no face.

“Thank you, sir,” said the \oice. without interest, and the face
leaned forward for a moment. The face was wind-browned, cut by
lines of weariness and cynical resignation; the eyes were intelligent.

Eddie Willers walked on, wondering why he always felt it at this
time of day. this sense of dread without reason. No, he thought, not
dread, there's nothing to fear: just an immense, diffused apprehension,
with no source or object. He had become accustomed to the feeling,
but he could find no explanation for it; yet the bum had spoken as
if he knew that Eddie felt it, as if he thought that one should feel
it, and more: as if he knew the reason.

Eddie Willers pulled his shoulders straight, in conscientious self-
discipline. He had to stop this, he thought; he was beginning to
imagine things. Had he always felt it? He was thirty-two years old.
He tried to think buck. No, he hadn’t; but he amid not remember
when it had started. The feeling came to him suddenly, at random

11

intervals, and now it was coming more often than ever. It’s the twi-
light, he thought; I hate the twilight.

The clouds and the shafts of skyscrapers against them were turning
brown, like an old painting in oil, the color of a fading masterpiece.
Long streaks of grime ran from under the pinnacles down the slen-
der, soot-eaten walls. High on the side of a tower there was a crack
in the shape of a motionless lightning, the length of ten stories. A
jagged object cut the sky above the roofs; it was half a spire, still
holding the glow of the sunset; the gold leaf had long since peeled
off the other half. The glow was red and still, like the reflection of
a fire: not an active fire, but a dying one which it is too late to stop.

No, thought Eddie Willers, there was nothing disturbing in the
sight of the city. It looked as it had always looked.

He walked on, reminding himself that he was late in reluming to
the office. He did not like the task which he had to perlorm on his
return, but it had to be done. So he did not attempt to delay it, but
made himself svalk faster.

He turned a corner. In the narrow space between the dark silhou-
ettes of two buildings, as in the crack of a door, he saw the page of
a gigantic calendar suspended in the sky

It was the calendar that the mayor of New York had erected last
year on the top of a building, so that citizens might tell the day ot
the month as they told the hours of the day, by glancing up at a
public tower. A white rectangle hung over the city, imparting the
date to the men in the streets below. In the rusty light ol this eve-
ning's sunset, the rectangle said Seplembei 2.

Eddie Willers looked away. He had never liked ihe sight ol that
calendar. It disturbed him. in a manner he a>uld not explain or
define. The feeling seemed to blend with his sense of uneasiness; it
had the same quality.

He thought suddenly that there was some phrase, a kind of quota-
tion, that expressed what the calendar seemed to suggest. But he
could not recall it. He walked, groping for a sentence that hung in
his mind as an empty shape. He could neither fill it nor dismiss it.
He glanced back. The white rectangle stood above the roofs, saying
in immovable finality. September 2.

Eddie Willers shifted his glance down to the street, to a vegetable
pushcart at the stoop of a brownstone house. He saw a pile of bright
gold carrots and the fresh green onions. He saw a clean white curtain
blowing at an open window. He saw a bus turning a corner, expeitly
steered. He wondered why he felt reassured - and then, why he felt
the sudden, inexplicable wish that these things were not left in the
open, unprotected against the empty space above.

When he came to Fifth Avenue, he kept his eyes on the windows
of the stores he passed. There was nothing he needed or wished to
buy; but he liked to see the display of goods, anjf goods, objects
made by men, to be used by men. He enjoyed the siiht of a prospei-
ous street; not more than every fourth one of the sfores was out of
business, its windows dark and empty.

He did not know why he suddenly thought ot thc| oak tree. Noth-
ing had recalled it. But he thought of it — and of his childhood sum-

12

mers on the Taggart estate. He had spent most of his childhood with
the Taggart children, and now he worked for them, as his father and
grandfather had worked for their father and grandfather.

The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a
lonely spot on the Taggart estate, Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked
to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of
years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched
the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that
if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot
it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like
a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree's presence;
it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his great-
est symbol of strength.

One night, lightning struck the oak tree, Eddie saw it next morn-
ing. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the
mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its
heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside— just a
thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest
wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been
able to stand without it.

Years later, he heard it said that children should be protected
from shock, from their first knowledge of death, pain or fear. But
these had never scarred him; his shock came when he stood very
quietly, looking into the black hole of the trunk. It was an immense
betrayal — the more terrible because he could not grasp what it was
that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he knew, nor his trust;
it was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound,
then he walked back to the house. He never spoke about it to any-
one, then or since.

Eddie Willers shook his head, as the screech of a rusty mechanism
changing a traffic light stopped him on the edge of a curb. He felt
anger at himself. There was no reason that he had to remember the
oak tree tonight. It meant nothing to him any longer, only a faint
tinge of sadness — and somewhere within him, a drop of pain moving
briefly and vanishing, like a raindrop on the glass of a window, its
course in the shape of a question mark.

He wanted no sadness attached to his childhood; he loved its mem-
ories: any day of it he remembered now seemed flooded by a still,
brilliant sunlight. It seemed to him as if a few rays from it reached
into his present: not rays, more like pinpoint spotlights that gave an
occasional moment’s glitter to his job, to his lonely apartment, to
the quiet, scrupulous progression of his existence.

He thought of a summer day when he was ten years old. That
day, in a clearing of the woods, the one precious companion of his
childhood told him what they would do when they grew up. The
words were harsh and glowing, like the sunlight. He listened in admi-
ration and in wonder. When he was asked what he would want to
do, he answered at once, '‘Whatever is right” and added, “You
ought to do something great ... 1 mean, the two of us together.”
“What?” she asked. He said, ”1 don’t know. That’s what we ought
’ to find out. Not just what you said. Not just business and earning a

13

living. Things like winning battles, or saving people out of fires, or
climbing mountains.” "What for?” she asked. He said, "The minister
said last Sunday that we must always reach for the best within us.
What do you suppose is the best within us?” "I don’t know.” "We’ll
have to find out.” She did not answer; she was looking away, up the
railroad track.

Eddie Wiliers smiled. He had said, "Whatever is right,” twenty-
two years ago. He had kept that statement unchallenged ever since;
the other questions had faded in his mind; he had been too busy to
ask them. But he still thought it self-evident that' one had to do what
was right; he had never learned how people could want to do other-
wise; he had learned only that they did. It still seemed simple and
incomprehensible to him: simple that things should be right, and
incomprehensible that they weren't. He knew that they weren’t. He
thought of that, as he turned a corner and came to the great building
of Taggart Transcontinental.

The building stood over the street as its tallest and proudest stiuc-
ture. Eddie Wiliers always smiled at his first sight of it. Its long bands
of windows were unbroken, in contrast to those of its neighbors. Its
rising lines cut the sky, with no crumbling corners or worn edges. It
seemed to stand above the years, untouched. It would always stand
there, thought Eddie Wiliers.

Whenever he entered the Taggart Building, he felt relief and a
sense of security. This was a place of competence and power. The
floors of its hallways were mirrors made of marble. The frosted rect-
angles of its electric fixtures were chips of solid light. Behind sheets
of glass, rows of girls sat at typewriters, the clicking oi their keys
like the sound of speeding train wheels. And like an answering echo,
a faint shudder went through the walls at times, rising from under
the building, from the tunnels of the great terminal where trains
started out to cross a continent and slopped after crossing it again, as
they had started and stopped for generation after generation. Taggart
Transcontinental, thought Eddie Wiliers, From Ocean to Ocean —
the proud slogan ol his childhood, so much more shining and holy
than any commandment of the Bible. From Ocean to Ocean, for-
ever — thought Eddie Wiliers, in the manner of a rededication, as he
walked through the spotless halls into the heart of the building, into
the office of James Taggart. President ol Taggart Transcontinental.

James Taggart sat at his desk. He looked like a man approaching
fifty, who had crossed into age from adolescence, without the inter-
mediate stage of youth. He had a small, petulant mouth, and thin
hair clinging to a bald forehead. His posture had a limp, decentral-
ized sloppiness, as il in defiance of his tall, slender body, a body with
an elegance of line intended for the confident poiie of an aristocrat,
but transformed into the gawkiness of a lout. Thp flesh of his face
was pale and soft. His eyes were pale and veiled, jjwith a glance that
moved slowly, never quite stopping, gliding off fcnd past things in
eternal resentment of their existence. He looked obstinate and
drained. He was thirty-nine years old.

He lifted his head with irritation, at the sound of the opening door.

14

“Don’t bother me* don’t bother roe, don’t bother me,” said James
Taggart.

Eddie Wiliers walked toward the desk.

“It’s important, Jim,” he said, not raising his voice.

“All right, all right, what is it?’’

Eddie Wiliers looked at a map on the wall ot the office. The map’s
colors had faded under the glass — he wondered dimly how many
Taggart presidents had sat betore it and for how many years. The
Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, the network of red lines slashing
the faded body of the country from New York to San Francisco,
looked like a system of blood vessels, It looked as if once, long ago,
the blood had shot down the main artery and, under the pressure of
its own overabundance, had branched out at random points, running
all over the country. One red streak twisted its way from Cheyenne,
Wyoming, down to Ei Paso, Texas— the Rio Norte Line ot Taggart
Transcontinental. New tracing had been added recently and the red
streak had been extended south beyond El Paso — but Eddie Wiliers
turned away hastily when his eyes reached that point.

He looked at James Taggait and said, “It’s the Rio Norte Line.”
He noticed Taggart’s glance moving down to a comer of the desk.
“We’ve had another wreck.”

“Railroad accidents happen every day. Did you have to bother
me about that?”

“You know what Tm saying, Jim. The Rio Norte is done for. That
liack is shot. Down the whole line.”

“We are getting a new track ’*

Eddie Wiliers continued as if there had been no answer: “That
track is shot It’s no use trying to run trains down there. People are
giving up trying to use them.”

“There is not a railroad in the country, it seems to me, that doesn’t
have a few branches running at a deficit. We’re not the only ones.
It’s a national condition — a temporary national condition.”

Eddie stood looking at him silently. What Taggart disliked about
Eddie Wiliers was this habit of looking straight into people’s eyes.
Eddie’s eyes were blue, wide and questioning; he had blond hair
and a square face, unremarkable except for that look of scrupulous
attentiveness and open, puTvled wonder.

“What do you want?” snapped Taggart.

“I just came to tell you something you had to know, because
somebody had to tell you.”

“That we’ve had another accident?”

“That we can’t give up the Rio Norte Line.”

James Taggart seldom raised his head; when he looked at people,
he did so by lifting his heavy eyelids and staring upward from under
the expanse ot his bald forehead.

“Who’s thinking of giving up the Rio Norte Line?” he asked.
“There’s never been any question of giving it up. I resent your saying
it. I resent it very much.”

“But we haven’t met a schedule for the last six months. We
haven’t completed a run without some sort of breakdown* major or

15

minor. We're losing all our shippers, one after another. How long
can we last?”

“You’re a pessimist. Eddie. You lack faith. That’s what under-
mines the morale of an organization.”

“You mean that nothing's going to he done about the Rio
Norte Line?”

“I haven’t said that at all. Just as soon as we get the new track—”

“Jim, there isn’t gomg to he any new track.” He watched Taggart’s
eyelids move up slowly. “I’ve just come back from the office of
Associated Steel. I’ve spoken to Orren Boyle.”

“What did he say?”

“He spoke for an hour and a half and did not give me a single
straight answer.”

“What did you bother him tor? 1 believe the first order of rail
wasn’t due for delivery until next month.”

“And before that, it was due tor delivery three months ago.”

“Unforeseen circumstances. Absolutely beyond Orren's control.”

“And before that, it was due six months earlier. Jim. we have
waited for Associated Steel to deliver that rail for thirteen months.”

“What do you want me to do? I can’t run Orren Boyle’s business.”

“I want you to understand that we can’t wait.”

Taggart asked slowly, his voice half-mocking, hall-cautious, “What
did my sister say?”

“She won't be back until tomorrow.”

“Well, what do you want me to do 7 ”

“ITiat’s for you to decide.”

“Well, whatever else you say, there's one thing you're not going
to mention next — and that’s Reardon Steel.”

Eddie did not answer at once, then said quietly, “All right. Jim. I
won't mention it.”

“Orren ts my friend.” He heard no answer. “I resent your attitude.
Orren Boyle will deliver that rail just as soon as it's humanly possi-
ble. So long as he can’t deliver it, nobody can blame us.”

“Jim! What are you talking about? Don’t you understand that the
Rio Norte Line is breaking up - whether anybody blames us or not?”

“People would put up with it — they’d have to — if it weten’t for
the Phoenix- Durango,” He saw Eddie’s face tighten. “Nobody ever
complained about the Rio Norte I ine, until the Phoenix- Durango
came on the scene.”

“The Phoenix-Durango is doing a brilliant job.”

“Imagine a thing called the Phoenix -Durango competing with Tag-
gart Transcontinental! It was nothing but a U>cal milk line ten
years ago.”

“It’s got most of the freight traffic of Arizona, New Mexico and
Colorado now.” Taggart did not answer. “Jim, wfe can’t lose Colo-
rado. It’s our last hope. It's everybody’s last hopfc. If we don’t pull
ourselves together, we'll lose every big shipper ;n the slate to the
Phoenix-Durango. We’ve lost the Wyatt oil field*.”

“I don’t see why everybody keeps talking about the Wvatt oil
fields.”

“Because Ellis Wyatt is a prodigy who — ”

16

“Damn Ellis Wyatt!”

Those oil wells, Eddie thought suddenly, didn’t they have some*
thing in common with the blood vessels on the map? Wasn’t that the
way the red stream of Taggart Transcontinental had shot across the
country, years ago, a feat that seemed incredible now? He thought of
the oil wells spouting a black stream that ian over a continent almost
faster than the trains of the Phoenix Durango could carry it. That
oil field had been only a rocky patch in the mountains of Colorado,
given up as exhausted long ago. Ellis Wyatt’s father had managed
to squeeze an obscure living to the end of his days, out of the dying
oil wells. Now it was as if somebody had given a shot of adrenaline
to the heart ot the mountain, the heart had started pumping, the
black blood had burst through the rocks -of course it’s blood,
thought Eddie Willers, because blood is supposed to feed, to give
life, and that is what Wyatt Oil had done. It had shocked empty
slopes of ground into sudden existence, it had brought new towns,
new power plants, new factories to a region nobody had ever noticed
on any map. New factories, thought Eddie Willers. at a time when
the freight revenues from all the great old industries were dropping
slowly year by year; a rich new oil field, at a time when the pumps
were stopping in one famous field after another; a new industrial
state where nobody had expected anything but cattle and beets. One
man had done it, and he had done it in eight years; this, thought
Eddie Willers, was like the stones he had read in school books and
never quite believed, the stories of men who had lived in the days
of the country’s youth. He wished he could meet Ellis Wyatt. There
was a great deal of talk about him. but few had ever met him: he
seldom came to New York They said he was thirty- three years old
ami had a violent temper. He had discovered some way to revive
exhausted oil wells and he had proceeded to revive them.

‘'Ellis Wyatt ts a greedy bastard who’s alter nothing but money,”
said James Taggart. “It seems to me that there are more important
things in life than making money.”

“What are you talking about. Jim? What has that got to do
with— ”

“Besides, he’s double-crossed us. We setved the Wyatt oil fields
for years, most adequately. In the days of old man Wyatt, we ran a
tank train a week.”

“These are not the days of old man Wyatt, Jim. The Phoenix-
Durango runs two tank trains a day down there — and it runs them
on schedule.”

“If he had given us time to grow along with him — ”

“He has no time to waste.”

“What does he expect? That wc drop all our other shippers, sacri-
fice the interests of the whole country and give him all our trains?”

“Why, no. He doesn’t expect anything. He just deals with the
Phoenix-Durango.”

“I think he’s a destructive, unscrupulous ruffian. I think he’s an
irresponsible upstart who’s been grossly overrated,” It was aston-
ishing to hear a sudden emotion in James Taggart’s lifeless voice.

17

♦Tm not so sure that his oil fields are such a beneficial achievement
It seems to me that he’s dtslocated the economy of the whole coun-
try Nobody expected Colorado to become an industrial state How
can we have any secunty or plan anything d everything changes all
the time 7 "

“Good God, Jim’ He’s—"

4 Yes, I know I know, he’s making money But that is not the
standard it seems to me, by which one gauges a man’s value to
society /\nd as tor his oil. he'd come trawling to us, and he’d wait
his turn along with all the other shippers, and he wouldn t demand
more than his fair shaic ol transpoitation -if it weren’t tor the Phoe-
mx-Durango We can't help it if we’re up against destructive compe-
tition of that kind Nobody can blame us ’*

The pressure in his chest and temples, thought Eddie Willers, was
the strain of the effort he was making he had decided to make the
issue clear for once and the issue was so clear, he thought, that
nothing could bar it from Taggait’s understanding, unless it was the
failure of his own presentation So he had tried hard, but he was
failing, just as he had always failed m all of their discussions, no
matter what he said, they never seemed to be talking about the
same subject

"Jim, what are you saying 7 Does it matter that nobody blames
us- when the road is falling apart 7 ’

James Taggart smiled, it was a thin smile amused and cold k lt\
touching, Fddic, he said Its touching your devotion to laggart
Transcontinental If you don t look out you’ll turn into one of those
real leudal serfs ’

"That's what 1 am Jim

But may 1 ask whether it is yout job to discuss these matteis
with me } '

"No, it isn’t ’

"-Then whv don’t you learn that we have departments to take care
of things 7 Why don t you report all this to whoeser's concerned 7
Whv don’t you cry on my dear sister’s shoulder
"Look. Jim, 1 know it s not my place to talk to von But I can’t
understand what’s going on 1 don t know what it is that your proper
advisers tell you or why they can't make you understand So I
thought I d try to tell you myself ’

"I appreciate our childhood friendship Lddie but do you think
that that should entitle you to walk in heie unannounced whenever
you wish 7 Considering your own rank, shouldn’t you remember that
I am president of Taggart Iranscontinental 7 "

This was wasted t ddic Willers Uxiked at hint as usual not hurt,
merely pu^/led, and asked, 4 Then you don't initnd to do anything
about the Rio Norte Line 7 "

“I haven’t said that I haven’t said that at all "flaggait was looking
at the map, at the red streak south of FI Paso *‘Just as soon as the
San Sebastian Mines get going and our Mexican branch begins to
pay off—”

“Don’t let’s talk about that, Jim "

18

Taggart turned, startled by the unprecedented phenomenon of an
implacable anger m Eddie's voice “What's the matter?"

“You know what's the matter Your sister said — •”

“Damn my sister 1 ” said James Taggart.

Eddie Willers did not move He did not answer. He stood looking
straight ahead But he did not see James Taggart or anything in
the office.

After a moment, he bowed and walked out
In the anteroom, the clerks of James Taggart's personal staff were
switching otf the lights, getting ready to leave foi the day But Pop
Harper, chief clerk, still sat at his desk, twisting the levers of a half-
dismembered typewriter Everybody in the company had the impres-
sion that Pop Harper was born m that particular corner at that panic-
ulai desk and never intended to leave it He had been chief clerk
lor James Iaggarfs lather

Pop Harpet glanced up at Eddie Willers as he came out of the
piesidenfs office It was a wise, slow glance it seemed to say that
he knew that Eddie's visit to their pail ot the building meant trouble
on the line, knew that nothing had come of the visit, and was com
plctely inditfeienl to the knowledge it was the cynical mditteience
which Eddie Wilier^ had seen in the eyis of the bum on the street
corner

Say. I ddie. know wlieic 1 could get some woolen undershuts 7 *
he asked Tried all over town, but nobody’s got ’em ”

“1 don’t know ” said t ddie slopping “Why do you ask mc^”
i just ask everybody Muybt somdK>d}’IJ tell me”

Eddie looked uneasilv at the blank emaciated face and white hair
“It's void in this joint said Pop Haiptr it’s going to be colder
this winter ’

“What are you doing’*” l ddie asked pointing at the pieces of
typewriter

‘I he damn thing’s busted again No use sending it out. took them
three months to h\ it the last time I bought 1 d patch it up myself
Not for long, I guess ” He let his list drop down on the keys ‘ You’re
ready foi the pink pile, old pal \our da>s are numbered”

Eddie started I hat was the sentence he had tried to remember
Your days are numbered But he had torgotten in what connection
he had tried to temember it

it s no use, Eddie, ’ said Pop Huipcr
"What's no use 7 ”

‘Nothing Anything ’

“What’s the matter. Pop 7 ”

“I'm not going to requisition a new typewriter The new ones mt
made ol tin When the old ones go, that will be the end of typewrit-
ing l here was an accident m the subway this morning, their brakes
wouldn’t work You ought to go home, Eddie, turn on the radio and
listen to a good dance band Forget it, boy T rouble with you is you
never had a hobby. Somebody stole the elect nc light bulbs again,
from off the staircase, down where I live. I’ve got a pain in my chest.
Couldn’t get any cough diops this morning, the drugstore on our
comer went bankrupt last week The Texas-Western Railroad went

IQ

bankrupt last month They closed the Queensborough Bridge yester-
day for temporary repairs Oh well what’s the use 9 Who is John
Galt r *

* *

She sat at the window of the tram, her head thrown back, one leg
stretched across to the empty seat before her The window frame
trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung ovei empty
darkness, and dots o! light slashed across the glass as luminous
streaks once m a while

Her leg. sculptured by the tight sheen of the stocking, its long line
running straight, over an arched instep, to the tip of a foot in a high-
heeled pump, had a feminine elegance that seemed out ot place m
the dusty tram car and oddly incongruous with the rest of her She
wore a battered camel’s hait coat that had been expensive, wrapped
shapelessly about her slender nervous body I he coat collar was
raised to the slanting brim of her hat A sweep of brown hair fell
back, almost touching the line ot hei shoulders Her face was made
of angular planes, the shape ot her mouth clear-cut, a sensual mouth
held closed with inflexible precision She kept hei hands m the coat
packets, her posture taut as it she resented immobiht), and unfemi
nine, as if she were unconscious of her own body and that it was a
'woman’s bod\

She sat listening to the. music It was a symphony ot triumph Hie
, notes flowed up they spoke ot rising and thev weic the rising itsell,
dvey were the essence and the tonn oi upward motion they seemed
Krembody every human act and thought that had ascent as its mo-
Ervp It was a sunburst o! sound breaking out of hiding and spreading
open It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose It
swept space dean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed
etlort Only a taint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which
flw' music had escaped but spoke in laughing astonishment at the
TlKtovery that there was no ugliness or pam and there never had
half to be It was the song of an immense deliverance
She thought For just a few moments- while this lasts — it is all
right to surrender completely -to forget everything and just peimit
yourself to feel She thought Let go —drop the controls- this is n
Somewhere on the edge ot her mind, under the music, she heaid
the sound of tram wheels Hiey knocked in an even rhythm, every
fourth kniKk accented, as it stressing a conscious puipose She could
refax because she hoard the wheels She listened to the symphony,
thmkimjjgJg^ the wheels have to be kept going, and this is

dffbwr^ihat symphony before but she knew that it
wasj^JifKm t^lley She recognized the violence and the
^fe^mheent mtensityOShe fecogm/ed the style the theme, it was
J^elc#i?,fiRomplex mdodfema time when no on? wrote melody any
' longer JS he* ipokw % at fhe ceiling ot ihe ear, but she did
jnol lec* ft a^d Jie hpd Mgciten where she wa«i She did not know
to? neariigja lull symphony orchestra or only the
yteme: way heaf*g the orchestration in hei own mmd

' She thdugntjdjml^thot thfJb had been premonitory echoes of this

A Oi \\<bbf*Zf 20

iwhdjb&rrtfte*

r s z,ms

; she way he a f

thought jdusly,tl)ot thA

theme in all of Richard Hailey’s work, through all the years of his
long struggle, to the day, in his middle-age, when fame struck him
suddenly and knocked him out. This — she thought, listening to the
symphony — had been the goal of his struggle. She remembered half-
hinted attempts in his music, phrases that promised it, broken bits
of melody that started but never quite reached it; when Richard
Halley wrote this, he . . . She sat up straight. When did Richard
Halley write this?

In the same instant, she realized where she was and wondered for
the first time where that music came from.

A few steps away, at the end of the car, a brakeman was adjusting
the controls of the air-conditioner. He was blond and young. He was
whistling the theme of the symphony. She realized that he had been
whistling it lor some time and that this was all she had heard.

She watched him incredulously for a while, before she raised her
voice to ask, “Tell me please what are you whistling?”

The boy turned to her. She met a direct glance and saw an open,
eager smile, as if he were sharing a confidence with a friend. She
liked his face — its lines were light and firm, it did not have that look
of loose muscles evading the responsibility of a shape, which she had
learned to expect in people’s faces.

“It’s the Halley Concerto,” he aaswered, smiling.

“Which one?”

“The Fifth.”

She let a moment pass, before she said slowly and very carefully,
“Richard Halley wrote only four concertos ”

The boy’s smile vanished. It was as if he were jolted back to
reality, just as she had been a few moments ago. It was as if a
shutter were slammed down, and what remained was a face without
expression, impersonal, indifferent and empty.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “I’m wrong. I made a mistake.”

“Then what was it?”

“Something I heard somewhere.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you hear it?”

“1 don’t remember.”

She paused helplessly; he was turning away from her without fur-
ther inteiest.

“It sounded like a Halley theme.” she said. “But l know every
note he’s ever written and he never wrote that.”

There was still no expression, only a faint look of attentiveness
on the boy’s face, as he turned back to her and asked, “You like
the music of Richard Halley?”

“Yes,” she said, “l like it very much,”

He considered her for a moment, as if hesitating, then he turned
away. She watched the expert efficiency of his movements as he went
on working. He worked in silence.

She had not slept for two nights, but she could not permit herself
to sleep; she had too many problems to consider and not much time:
the train was due in New York early in the morning. She needed

21

the time, yet she wished the train would go faster; but it was the
Taggart Comet, the fastest train in the country.

She tried to think; but the music remained on the edge of her
mind and she kept hearing it, in full chords, like the implacable steps
of something that could not be stopped. . . . She shook her head
angrily, jerked her hat off and lighted a cigarette.

She would not sleep, she thought; she could last until tomorrow
night. , . . The train wheels clicked in accented rhythm. She was so
used to them that she did not hear them consciously, but the sound
became a sense of peace within her. . . . When she extinguished her
cigarette, she knew that she needed another one, but thought that
she would give herself a minute, just a few minutes, before she would
light it. . . .

She had fallen asleep and she awakened with a jolt, knowing that
something was wrong, before she knew what it was: the wheels had
stopped, fhe car stood soundless and dim in the blue glow of the
night lamps. She glanced at her watch: there was no reason for stop-
ping. She looked out the window: the train stood still in the middle
of empty fields.

She heard someone moving in a seat across the aisle, and asked,
“How long have we been standing?”

A man’s voice answered indifferently, “About an hour.”

The man looked after her, sleepily astonished, because she leaped
to her feet and rushed to the door

There was a cold wind outside, and an empty stretch of land under
an empty sky. She heard weeds rustling in the daikness Far ahead,
she saw the figures of men standing by the engine — and above them,
banging detached in the sky, the red light of a signal.

She walked rapidly toward them, past the motionless line of
wheels. No one paid attention to her when she approached. The
train crew and a few passengers stood clustered under the red light.
They had stopped talking, they seemed to be waiting in placid
indifference,

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

The engineer turned, astonished. Her question had sounded like
an order, not like the amateur curiosity of a passenger. She stood,
hands in pockets, coat collar raised, the wind beating, her hair in
strands across her face.

“Red light, lady.” he said, pointing up with his thumb.

“How long has it been on?”

“An hour.”

We’re off the main track, aren't we?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

The conductor spoke up. i don’t think we had atjjy business being
sent off on a siding, that switch wasn’t working right! and this thing’s
not working at all.” He jerked his head up at the rid light. “1 don’t
think the signal’s going to change. I think it’s busted.”

**Then what are you doing?”

“Waiting for it to change.”

22

In her pause of startled anger, the fireman chuckled. "Last week,
the crack special of the Atlantic Southern got left on a siding for
two hours— just somebody’s mistake.”

"This is the Taggart Cornet,” she said. "The Comet has never
been late.”

"She’s the only one in the country that hasn’t,” said the engineer.

"There’s always a first time,” said the fireman.

"You don’t know about railroads, lady,” said a passenger.
"There’s not a signal system or a dispatcher in the country that’s
worth a damn.”

She did not turn or notice him, but spoke to the engineer. "If you
know that the signal is broken, what do you intend to do?”

He did not like her tone of authority, and he could not understand
why she assumed it so naturally. She looked like a young girl; only
her mouth and eyes showed that she was a woman in her thirties.
The dark gray eyes were direct and disturbing, as if (hey cut through
things, throwing the inconsequential out of the way. The face seemed
faintly familiar to him, but he could not recall where he had seen it.

"Lady. I don't intend to stick my neck out,” he said.

"He means,” said the fireman, "that our job’s to wait for orders.”

"Your job is to run this (rain.”

"Not against a red light. II the light says stop, we stop.”

"A red light means danger, lady,” said the passengcr.

"We’re not taking any chances,” said the engineer. "Whoever’®
responsible for it, he’ll switch the blame to us if we move. So we’re
not moving till somebody tells us to.”

"And if nobody does?”

"Somebody wilt turn up sooner or later.”

"How long do you propose to wait?”

The engineer shrugged. "Who is John Galt?”

"He means,” said the fireman, "don’t ask questions nobody can
answer.”

She looked at the red light and at the lail that went off info the
black, untouched distance.

She said, "Proceed with caution to the next signal. If it’s in order,
proceed to the main track. Then stop at the first open office.”

"Yeah? Who says so?”

"1 do.”

"Who are you?”

It was only the briefest pau.se, a moment of astonishment at a
question she had not expected, but the engineer looked more closely
at her face, and in time with her answer he gasped, "Good God!”

She answered, not offensively, merely like a person who does not
hear the question often:

"Dagny Taggart.”

"Well, HI be — ” said the fireman, and then they all remained
silent.

She went on, in the same tone of unstressed authority. "Proceed
to the main track and hold the train for me at the first open office.”

"Yes, Miss Taggart,”

23

•‘You’ll have to make up time. You’ve got the rest of the night to
do it. Get the Comet in on schedule.”

‘‘Yes, Miss Taggart.”

She was turning to go* when the engineer asked, ”lf there’s any
trouble, are you taking the responsibility for it. Miss Taggart?”

”1 am.”

The conductor followed her as she walked back to her car. He
was saying, bewildered, ‘‘But . . . just a seat in a day coach* Miss
Taggart? But how come? But why didn’t you let us know?”

She smiled easily, “Had no lime to be formal. Had my own car
attached to Number 22 out of Chicago, but got oft at Cleveland—
and Number 22 was running late, so I let the car go. The Comet
came next and I took it. There was no sleeping-car space left.”

The conductor shook his head. “Your brother — he wouldn’t have
taken a coach."

She laughed. “No, he wouldn’t have.”

The men by the engine watched her walking away. The young
brakeman was among them. He asked, pointing alter her, “Who
is that?"

“ That’s who runs Taggart Transcontinental,” said the engineer;
the respect in his voice was genuine. “That’s the Vice-President in
Charge of Opera I ion ”

When the train jolted forward, the blast of its whistle dying over
the Helds, she sat by the window, lighting another cigarette. She
thought: lt\ cracking to pieces, like this, all over the country, you
can expect it anywhere, at any moment. But she fell no anger or
anxiety: she had no time to feel.

This would be just one more issue, to be settled along with the
others. She knew that the superintendent of the Ohio Division was
no good and that he was a friend of James Taggart. She had not
insisted on throwing him out long ago only because she had no better
man to put in his place. Good men were so strangely hard to find.
But she would have to get i id of him, she thought, and she would
give'his post to Owen Kellogg, the young engineer who was doing
a brilliant job as one of the assistants to the manager of the T aggart
Terminal in New York; it was Owen Kellogg who ran the Terminal.
She had watched his work for some time; she had always looked for
sparks of competence, like a diamond prospector in an unpromising
wasteland. Kellogg was still too young to be made superintendent of
a division; she had wanted to give him another year, but there was no
time to wait. She would have to speak to him as soon as she returned.

'The strip of earth, faintly visible ouisidc the window, w r as running
faster now, blending into a gray stream. Htrough the dry phrases of
calculations in her mind, she noticed that she did have time to feet
something: it was the hard, exhilarating pleasure 'of action.

* *

With the first whistling rush of air, as the Comfcl plunged into the
tunnels of the Taggart Terminal under the city oifNew York, Dagny
Taggart sat up straight. She always felt it when thjfe train went under-
ground— this sense of eagerness, of hope and of secret excitement.
It was as if normal existence were a photograph f of shapeless things

24

in badly printed colors, but this was a sketch done in a few sharp
strokes that made things seem clean, important— and worth doing.

She watched the tunnels as they flowed past: bare walls of con-
crete, a net of pipes and wires, a web of rails that went off into
black holes where green and red lights hung as distant drops of color.
There was nothing else, nothing to dilute it, so that one could admire
naked purpose and the ingenuity that had achieved it. She thought
of the Taggart Building standing above her head at this moment,
growing straight to the sky, and she thought: These arc the roots of
the building, hollow roots twisting under the ground, feeding the city.

When the train stopped, when she got off and heard the concrete
of the platform under her heels, she felt light, lifted, impelled to
action. She started off. walking fast, as if the speed ot her steps could
give form to the things she felt. It was a few moments before she
realized that she was whistling a piece of music — and that it was the
theme of Halley's Fifth Concerto.

She felt someone looking at her and turned. The young brakeman
stood watching her tensely.

* *

She sat on the arm of the big chair facing James Taggart's desk,
her coat thrown open over a wrinkled traveling suit. Eddie Willers
sat across the room, making notes once in a while. His title was that
of Special Assistant to the Vice-President in Charge of Operation,
and his main duty was to be her bodyguard against any waste of
time. She asked him to be present at interviews of this nature, be-
cause then she never had to explain anything to him afierwards.
Jaines Taggart sat at his desk, his head drawn into his shoulders,

"The Bio Norte Line is a pile of junk from one end to the other,"
she said. "It's much worse than 1 thought. But we're going to save
it.”

4 ‘Of course,” said James Taggart.

“Some of the rail can be salvaged. Not much and not for long.
We'll start laying now' rail in the mountain sections. Colorado tirst.
We’ll get the new rail in two months.”

“Oh, did Orren Boyle say he'll — ”

“I've ordered the rail from Rearden Steel.”

The slight, choked sound from Eddie Willers was his suppressed
desire to cheer.

James Taggait did not answer at once. “Dagny, why don’t you sit
m the chair as one i* supposed to?” he said at last; his voice was
petulant. “Nobody holds business conferences this way.”

“1 do.”

She waited. He asked, his eyes avoiding hers, “Did you say that
you have ordered the rail from Rearden?”

“Yesterday evening. 1 phoned him from Cleveland.’'

“But the Board hasn’t authorized it. 1 haven’t authorized it. You
haven’t consulted me.”

She reached over, picked up the receiver of a telephone on his
desk and handed St to him.

“Call Rearden and cancel it,” she said,

25

James Taggart moved back in his chair “I haven’t said that,” he
answered angrily * 1 haven’t said that at all ”

“Then it stands**”

“I haven’t said that, either ”

She turned “Eddie, have them draw up the contract with Rearden
Steel Inn will sign it ” She took a ciumpled piece i>l notepaper lrom
her pocket and tossed it to Eddie 4 I here’s the figures and terms *
Taggart said, “But the Board hasn t —

“The Board hasn't anything to do with it They uuthon/ed you to
buy the rail thirteen months ago Where you buy it is up to you ’
“I don't think it’s proper to make such a decision without giving
the Board a chance to express an opinion And I don t see why I
should be made to take the responsibility
"I am taking it ”

“What about the expenditure which—

“Rearden is charging less than Orren Boyle s Associated Steel ”

4 Yes, and what about Orren Boyle*

4 Tve cancelled the contract We had the light to cancel it six
months ago ”

“When did you do that *

“Yesterday '

“But he hasn’t called to have me confirm it
“He won’t ”

Taggart sat looking down at his desk She wondered why he re
sented the necessity of dealing with Rear den, and why his resentment
had such an odd, evasive quahtv Rearden Steel had been the chief
supplier of Taggart Transcontinental lor ten years, ever since the
first Rearden furnace was fired, m the days when their father was
president of the railroad Tor ten years, most of then rail had come
ftom Rearden Steel There were not many firms m the country who
delivered what was ordered, when and as ordered Real den Steel
was one of them If she were insane, thought Dagny she would
conclude that her brother hated to deal with Rearden because Rear
den did his job with superlative efficiency but she would not con
elude it, because she thought that such a feeling was not within the
humanly possible

‘It isn't faiT,” said James laggart
“What isn’t *”

‘That we always give all our business to Rearden It seems to me
we should give somebody else a chance, too Rearden doesn’t need
as, he’s plenty big enough We ought to help the smaller fellows to
develop Otherwise, we’re just encouraging a monopoly *

“Don’t talk tripe, Jim ’’

“Why do we always have to get things from Rearden
“Because we always get them ’*

“I don't like Henry Rearden ”

“I do But what does that matter, one way or th$ other* We need
rails and he’s the only one who can give them to tis ”

“The human element is very important You haye no sense of the
human element at all ’’

“We’re talking about saving a railroad, Jim.”

26

“Yes* of course* of course, but still, you haven’t any sense of the
human clement.”

“No. I haven’t.”

“If we give Reardcn such a large order for steel rails — ”

“They’re not going to be steel. They’re Rcarden Metal.”

She had always avoided personal reactions, but she was forced to
break her rule when she saw the expression on Taggart’s face. She
burst out laughing.

Rearden Metal was a new alloy, produced by Rearden after ten
years of experiments He had placed it on the market recently. He
had received no orders and had found no customers.

Taggart could not understand the transition from the laughter to
the sudden tone of Dagny’s voice; the voice was cold and harsh:
“Drop it, Jim. I know everything you’re going to say. Nobody’s ever
used it before. Nobody approves of Rearden Metal. Nobody’s inter-
ested in it. Nobody wants it. Still, our rails are going to be made of
Rearden Metal ”

“But . . .” said Taggart, “but . . but nubody’s ever used it before!”

He observed, with satisfaction, that she was silenced by anger. He
liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along
the dark unknown of another’s personality, marking vulnerable
points. But how one could feel a personal emotion about a metal
alloy, and what such an emotion indicated, was incomprehensible to
him; so he could make no use of his discovery.

“The consensus ol the best metallurgical authorities,” he said,
“seems to be highly skeptical about Rearden Metal, contending—”

“Drop it, Jim.”

“Well, whose opinion did you take?”

“I don’t ask tor opinions.”

“What do you go by?”

“Judgment.”

“Well, whose judgment did you take 0 ”

“Mine,”

“But whom did you consult about it?”

“Nobody.”

“Then what on eaith do you know about Rearden Metal?”

“That it’s the greatest thing ever put on the market.”

“Why°”

“Because it's tougher than steel, cheaper than steel and will outlast
any hunk of metal in existence.”

“But who says so ,; ”

“Jim, l studied engineering in college. When 1 see things. I see
them,”

“What did you see?”

“Reardcn’s formula and the tests he showed me.”

“Well* if it were any good, somebody would have used it* and
nobody has.” He saw the Hash of anger, and went on nervously:
“How can you know it’s good? How can you be sure? How can
you decide?”

“Somebody decides such things, Jim. Who?”

27

4V WeU, 1 don’t see why we have to be the first ones I don’t see it
at ail "

“Do you want to save the Rio Norte Line or not*>” He did not
answer ‘If the road could afford it, I would scrap every piece of
rad over the whole system and replace it with Rearden Metal All
of it needs replacing None of it will last much longer But we can’t
afford it We have to get out ol a bad hole, first Do >ou want us
to pull through or not

“We’re still the best railroad in the country I he others are doing
much worse ’

“Then do >ou want us to remain in the hole*

‘I haven t said that* Why do you always oversimplify things that
way 7 And if you re worried about money, 1 don t see why you want
to waste it on the Rio Norte l me when the Phoenix Durango has
robbed us of all our business down there Why spend money when
we have no protection against a competitor who 11 destroy our
investment 7

Because the Phoenix Durango is an excellent railroad but l in
tend to make the Rio Norte t inc bettu than that Because I m
going to beat the Phoenix Durango d necessary -only it won t be
necessary, because there will be room tor two oi three railroads to
make fortunes in Colorado Because I <J mortgage the system to build
a branch to any district around f llis Wyatt
“I’m sick of hearing about Lllis Wyatt

He did not like the way her eyes moved to look at him and n
mamed still, looking for a moment
“1 don’t see* any need for immediate action he said he sounded
offended Just what do you consider so alarming in the present
situation of Taggart rranseont mental * '

The consequences of your policies Jim ’

“Which policies } '

“I hat thirteen months experiment with Associated Steel foi one
Your Mexican catastrophe, for another

'The Board approved the Associated Steel contract he said hast
dy * The Board voted to build the San Sebastian Line Besides I
don’t see why you call it a catastrophe

* Because the Mexican government is going to nationalize youi
line any day now ’

“That’s a lie 1 ’ His voice was almost a scream rhat s nothing but
vicious rumors* 1 have it on very good inside authority that - ’’
“Don’t show that you’re scared, Jim she said contemptuously
He did not answer

“It’s no use getting panicky about it now, she said All wc can
do is try to cushion the blow It's going to be 4 bad blow forty
million dollars is a loss from which we won t recover easily But
Taggart 1 ranscontmental has withstood many bad Shocks in the past
I’ll see to it that it withstands this one ”

“I refuse to consider, l absolutely iefusc to consider the possibility
of the San Sebastian Line being nationalized ’’

“All nght Don’t consider it ’

She remained sdent He said defensively, “I dofTt see why you’re

28

so eager to give a chance to Ellis Wyatt, yet you think it 4 s wrong to
take part in developing an underprivileged country that never had
a chance.”

“Ellis Wyatt is not asking anybody to give him a chance. And I’m
not in business to give chances. I’m running a railroad.”

“That’s an extremely narrow view, it seems to me. 1 don’t sec why
we should want to help one man instead of a whole nation.”

“Fm not interested in helping anybody. 1 want to make money.”

“That’s an impractical attitude. Selfish greed for profit is a thing
of the past. It has been generally conceded that the interests of
society as a whole must always be placed first in any business under-
taking which — ”

“How long do you intend to talk in order to evade the issue. Jim?”

“What issue?”

“'Hie order for Rearden Metal.”

He did not answer. He sat studying her silently. Her slender body,
about to slump from exhaustion, was held erect by the straight fine
of the shoulders, and the shoulders were held by a conscious effort
of will. Few people liked her face: the face was too cold, the eyes
too intense; nothing could evei lend her the charm of a soft focus.
The beautiful legs, slanting down from the chair’s arm in the center
of his vision, annoyed him; they spoiled the rest of bis estimate.

She remained silent, he was forced to ask. “Did you decide to
order it just like that, on the spur of the moment, over a telephone?”

“1 decided it six months ago. 1 was waiting for Hank Rearden to
gel ready to go into production.”

“Don’t call him Hank Rearden. It's vulgar.”

“That’s what everybody calls him. Don’t change the subject.”

“Why did you have to telephone him last night?”

“Couldn’t reach him sooner.”

“Why didn’t you wait until you got back to New York and — ”

“Because I had seen the Rio Norte Line.”

“Well, I need time to consider it, to place the matter before the
Board, to consult the best — ”

“There is no tune.”

“You haven't given me a chance to form an opinion.”

“I don’t give a damn about your opinion. 1 am not going to argue
with you, with your Board or with your professors. You have a
choice to make and you’re going to make it now. Just say yes or no.”

“That’s a preposterous, high-handed, arbitrary way of — ”

“Yes or no’”’

“’Unit's the trouble with you. You always make if 'Yes’ or ‘No.’
Things are never absolute like that. Nothing is absolute.”

“Metal rails are. Whether we get them or not, is.”

She waited. He did not answer.

“Well 9 ” she asked.

“Are you taking the responsibility for it?”

“1 am.”

“Go ahead,” he said, and added, “but at your own risk. I won't
cancel it, but 1 won’t commit myself as to what FU .say to the Board.”

“Say anything you wish.”

29

She rose to go He leaned forward across the desk, reluctant to
end the interview and to end it so decisively
“You realize, of course, that a lengthy procedure will he necessary
to put this through," he said, the words sounded almost hopeful “It
isn't as simple as that "

“Oh sure " she said * I’ll send you a detailed report, which bddit
will prepare and which you won’t read bddie will help you put it
through the works I'm going to Philadelphia tonight to see Reardtn
He and I have a lot ot work to do ’ She added It’s as simple as
that, Jim

She had turned to go when he spoke again and what he said
seemed bewildcnngly irrelevant 1 hat’s all light for vou because
you’re lucky Others can t do it
Do what>

‘Other people arc human They re sensitive Ihev cant devote
their whole lift to metals and engines You rt lucky vou vc never
had anv feelings You ve ntvu fell mylhing it all
As she looked at him hei dark gray eyes went slowly liom as
tonishment to stillness then to a strange expression that tesenibltd
a look ot weariness except that it seemed to reflect much more thin
the endurance of this one moment

No fim she said quietly 1 guess 1st nevtt tv.lt anything it

all ’

Lddie Wiliers follow* d her to hei office Whcntvcr she icturncd
he lelt as if the world became cleir simple e is\ to Dec ind he
forgot his moments of shapeless apprehension He w is the only per
son who lound it completely n ilunl that she should Ik the Oper utng
Vice presitlent ot a gr< it railroad even though she w is * worn in
She had told him when he wis ten years old th it she would run
the railroad some day It did ne>t astonish him now just is it hid
not astonished htni that day in a clearing ot the woods

When this entered her office when hi siw her sit down at the
desk and glance at the memos he had lelt for ht r h< felt as he did
in his ear when the motor caught on met the wheels could move
forward

He was about to leave her office when he renumbered t matter
he had not reported Owen Kellogg ot the It rmmtl Division asktd
me for an appomtmtnl to see sou he smd
She looked up astonished lhat s funny I was going to send toi
him Have him come up L want to see him 1 ddie she added
suddenly, before 1 start tell thc fc m to get me Ayers of the Aye is
Music Publishing company on the phone

‘The Music Publishing Company^ he repiated incredulously
‘Yes ITicrc s something 1 want to ask him
When the voice of Mr Ayers courteously eager inquired of what
service he could be to her she asked Can ypu ttll me whether
Richard Halley has written a new piano concerto the Fifth >

“A fifth concerto. Miss I aggarl 7 Why no of [course he h isn t
‘Are you sure>’

“Quite sure. Miss Taggart He has not written anything for eight

years "

30

“Is he still alive?’"

“Why, yes — that is, I can’t say for certain, he has dropped out of
public life entirely — but Pm sure we would have heard of it if he
had died/’

“If he wrote anything, would you know about it?”

“Of course. We would be the first to know, We publish all of his
work. But he has stopped writing.”

“I see. Thank you."

When Owen Kellogg entered her office, she looked at him with
satisfaction. She was glad to see that she had been right in her vague
recollection of his appearance— his face had the same quality as that
of the young brakeman on the train, the face of the kind of man
with whom she could deal.

“Sit down, Mr. Kellogg.” she said, but he remained standing in
tront ol her desk.

“You had asked me once to let you know if I ever decided to
change my employment. Miss Taggart,” he said. “So I came to tell
you that I am quitting.”

She had expected anything but that; it took her a moment before
she asked quietly, “Why?”

“For a personal reason.”

“Were you dissatisfied here?”

“No ”

“Have vou received a better offer?”

“No.” '

“What railroad are you going to?’

“Fm not going to any railroad. Miss Taggart ”

“Then what job are you taking?”

“I have not decided that yet "

She studied him, feeling slightly uneasy, fhere was no hostility in
his face; he looked straight at her, he answered simply, directly; he
spoke like one who has nothing to hide, or to show; the face was
polite and empty

“Then why should you wish to quit?”

“It s a personal matter.”

“Are you ill? Is it a question of your health?”

“No.”

“Arc vou leaving the city?”

“No.”'

“Have you inherited money that permits you to retire?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to continue working lor a living?”

“Yes.”

“But you do not wish to work for Taggart Transcontinental?”

“No ”

“In that case, something must have happened here to cause your
decision. What?”

“Nothing, Miss Taggart.”

“I wish you’d tell me. 1 have a reason for wanting to know.”

“Would you take my word for it, Miss Taggart?”

“Yes.”

31

"‘No person, matter or event connected with my job here had any
bearing upon my decision."

‘"You have no specific complaint against Taggart Tianscontinentaf?"

“None."

""Then 1 think you might reconsider when you hear what I have
to offer you."

"Tin sorry. Miss Taggart. I can’t."

""May I tell you what 1 have in mind?"

‘"Yes, if you wish."

“Would you lake my word tor it that I decided to otter you the
post I’m going to offer, before you asked to see me 7 l want you to
know that."

“I will always lake your word. Miss Taggart."

“It’s the post of Superintendent of the Ohio Division. It’s yours,
if you want it."

His face showed no reaction, as if the words had no more signifi-
cance for him than for a savage who had never heard ot railroads

“I don't want it. Miss Taggart." he answered.

After a moment, she said, her voice tight, "Write your own ticket,
Kellogg. Name your price. 1 want you to slay l can match anything
any other railroad offers you."

""1 am not going to work for any other railroad."

"*l thought you loved your work."

This was the first sign of emotion in him, just a slight widening of
his eyes and an oddly quiet emphasis in his voice when he answered,
“1 do."

“Then tell me what it is that 1 should say m order to hold you!"

It had been involuntary and so obviously frank that he looked at
her as if it had reached him.

“Perhaps I am being unfair by coming here to tell you that Tm
quitting. Miss Taggart. 1 know that you asked me to tell you because
you wanted to have a chance to make me a counter-offer. So if l
cam£, it looks as il I'm open to a deal. But I’m not. I came only
because I ... I wanted to keep my word to you."

That one break in his voice was like a sudden flash that told het
how much her interest and her request had meant to him; and that
his decision had not been an easy one to make.

“Kellogg, is there nothing 1 can offer you?" she asked.

“Nothing, Miss Taggart. Nothing on earth."

He turned to go. For the first time in her hie, she felt helpless
and beaten.

“Why?" she asked, not addressing him.

He stopped. He shrugged and smiled— he was alive for a moment
and it was the strangest smile she had ever seen: i{ held secret amuse-
ment, and heartbreak, and an infinite bitterness. ’He answered:

“Who is John Galt?"

32

Chapter II THE CHAIN

Jt began with a few lights. As a train of the Taggart line rolled
toward Philadelphia, a few brilliant, scattered lights appeared in the
darkness; they seemed purposeless in the empty plain, yet too power-
ful to have no purpose. The passengers watched them idly, without
interest.

The black shape of a structure came next, barely visible against
the sky, then a big building, close to the tracks; the building was
dark, and the reflections of the train lights streaked across the solid
glass of its walls.

An oncoming freight train hid the view, filling the windows with
a rushing smear of noise. In a sudden break above the flat cars, the
passengers saw distant structures under a faint, reddish glow in the
sky: the glow moved in irregular spasms, as if the structures were
breathing.

When the freight train vanished, they saw angular buildings
wrapped in coils of steam. The rays of a few strong lights cut straight
sheafs through the coils. The steam was red as the sky.

The thing that came next did not look like a building, but like a
shell of checkered glass enclosing girders, cranes and trusses in a
solid, blinding, orange spread of flame.

The passengers could not grasp the complexity of what seemed to
be a city stretched for miles, active without sign of human presence.
They saw towers that looked like contorted skyscrapers, bridges
hanging in mid-air, and sudden wounds spurting fire from out of
solid walls. They saw a line of glowing cylinders moving through the
night; the cylinders were red-hot metal.

An olfice building appeared, close to the tracks. The big neon sign
on its roof lighted the interiors of the coaches as they went by. It
said: Rr ardi n suit.

A passenger, who was a protessor of economics, remarked to his
companion: '‘Of what importance is an individual in the titanic col-
lective achievements of our industrial age?” Another, who was a
journalist, made a note for future use in his column; “Hank Rearden
is the kind of man who sticks his name on everything he touches.
You may, from this, form your own opinion about the character of
Hank Rearden.”

The train was speeding on into the darkness when a red gasp shot
to the sky from behind a long structure. 'The passengers paid no
attention: one more heat ol steel being poured was not an event
they had been taught to notice.

ft was the first heat for the first order of Rearden Metal.

To the men at the tap-hole of the furnace inside the mills, the first
break of the liquid metal into the open came as a shocking sensation
of morning. The narrow streak pouring through space had the pure
white color of sunlight. Black coils of steam were boiling upward,
streaked with violent red. Fountains of sparks shot in beating spasms,

33

as from broken arteries. The air seemed torn to rags, reflecting a
raging flame that was not there, red blotches whirling and running
through space, as if not to be contained within a man-made structure,
as if about to consume the columns, the girders, the bridges of cranes
overhead. But the liquid metal had no aspect of violence. It was a
long white curve with the texture of satin and the friendly radiance
of a smile, it flowed obediently through a spout of clay, with two
brittle borders to restrain it, it fell through twenty feet of space,
down into a ladle that held two hundred tons* A flow of stars hung
above the stream, leaping out of its placid smoothness, looking deli-
cate as lace and innocent as children's sparkleis. Only at a closer
glance could one notice that the white satin was boiling. Splashes
flew out at times and fell to the ground below: they were metal and,
cooling while hitting the soil, they burst into flame.

Two hundred tons of metal which was to be harder than steel,
running liquid at a temperature ol tour thousand degrees, had the
power to annihilate every wall of the structure and every one ol the
men who worked by the stream. But every inch of its course, every
pound of its pressure and the content of every molecule within it.
were controlled and made by a conscious intention that had worked
upon it tor ten years.

Swinging through the darkness of the shed, the red glare kept
slashing the face of a man who stood in a distant corner; he stood
leaning against a column, watching. The glare cut a moment’s wedge
across his eyes, which had the color and quality of pale blue ice-
then across the black web of the metal column and the ash-blond
strands of his hair — then across the belt of his trenchcoat and the
pockets where he held his hands. His body was tall and gaunt; he
had always been too tall tor those around him. His face was cut
by prominent cheekbones and by a tew sharp lines; they were not
the lines of age, he had always had them: this had made him look
old at twenty, and young now, at forty-five. Ever since he could
remember, he had been told that his face was ugly, because it was
unyielding, and cruel, because it was expressionless. It remained
expressionless now, as he looked at the metal. He was Hank
Rearden.

The metal came rising to the lop of the ladle and went running
over with arrogant prodigality. Then the blinding white trickles
turned to glowing brown, and in one more instant they were black
icicles of metal, starting to crumble off. The slag was crusting in
thick, brown ridges that looked like the crust of the earth. As the
crust grew thicker, a few craters broke open, with the white liquid
still boiling within.

A man came riding through the air, in the cab of a c^anc overhead.
He pulled a lever by the casual movement ol one hand: steel hooks
came down on a chain, seized the handles of thelladle, lifted it
smoothly like a bucket of milk — and two hundred Umi of metal went
sailing through space toward a row of molds waitingfto be filled.

Hank Rearden leaned back, closing his eyes. He Belt the column
trembling with the rumble of the crane. The job; was done, he
thought.

34

A worker saw him and grinned in understanding, like a fellow
accomplice in a great celebration, who knew why that taU, blond
figure had had to be present here tonight. Rearden smiled in answer:
it was the only salute he had received. Then he started back for his
office, once again a figure with an expressionless face.

It was late when Hank Rearden left his office that night to walk
from his mills to his house. It was a walk of some miles through
empty country, but he had felt like doing it, without conscious
reason.

He walked, keeping one hand in his pocket, his fingers closed
about a bracelet. It was made of Rearden Metal, in the shape of a
chain. His fingers moved, feeling its texture once in a while. It had
taken ten years to make that bracelet. Ten years, he thought, is a
long time.

Hhe road was dark, edged with trees. Looking up, he could see a
lew leaves against the stars: the leaves were twisted and dry, ready
to fall. There were distant lights in the windows of houses scattered
through the countryside: but the lights made the road seem lonelier.

He never felt loneliness except when he was happy. He turned,
once in a while, to look back at the red glow of the sky over the mills.

He did not think of the ten years: What remained of them tonight
was only a feeling which he could not name, except that it was quiet
and solemn. The feeling was a sum, and he did not have to count
again the parts that had gone to make it. But the parts, unrecalled,
were there, within the feeling. They were the nights spent at scorch-
ing ovens in the research laboratory of the mills—

— the nights spent in the workshop of his home, over sheets of
paper which he filled with formulas, then tore up in angry failure —
— the days when the young scientists of the smaH staff he had
chosen to assist him wailed for instructions like soldiers ready for a
hopeless battle, having exhausted their ingenuity, still willing, but
silent, with the unspoken sentence hanging in the air: “Mr. Rearden,
it can’t be done--”

— the meals, interrupted and abandoned at the sudden flash of a
new thought, a thought to be pursued at once, to be tried, to be
tested, to be worked on for months, and to be discarded as an-
other failure —

— the moments snatched from conferences, from contracts, from
the duties of running the best steel mills in the country, snatched
almost guiltily, as for a secret love —

— the one thought held immovably across a span of ten years,
under everything he did and everything he saw, the thought held in
his mind when he looked at the buildings of a city, at the track of
a railroad, at the light in the windows of a distant farmhouse, at the
knife in the hands of a beautiful woman cutting a piece of fruit at
a banquet, the thought of a metal alloy that would do more than
steel had ever done, a metal that would be to steel what steel had
been to iron —

— the acts of self-racking when he discarded a hope or a sample,
not permitting himself to know that he was tired, not giving himself
lime to feel, driving himself through the wringing torture of: “not

35

good enough still not good enough ” and going on with no
motor save the conviction that it could be done —

— then the day when it was done and its result was called Rear
den Metal —

— these were the things that had come to white heat, had melted
and fused within him, and their alloy was a strange, quiet feeling
that made him smile at the countryside in l he darkness and wonder
why happiness could hurt

After a while, he realized that he was thinking of his past, as if
certain days of it were spread before him, demanding to be seen
again He did not want to look at them, he despised memories as a
pointless indulgence But then he understood that he thought of
them tonight in honor of that piece of metal in his pocket Then he
permitted himself to look

He saw the day when he stood on a rocky ledge and felt a thread
of sweat running from his temple down Ins neck He was fouiteen
years old and it was his fust day of work in the iron mines of Mmnc
sota He was trying to learn to breathe against the scalding pam m
his chest He stood, cursing himself, because he had made up his
mind that he would not be tired Alter a while he went back to his
task, he decided that pain was not a valid reason for stopping

He saw the day when he stood at the window of his office and
looked at the mines he owned them as of that morning He was
thirty years old What had gone on in the years between did not
matter, just as pain had not mattered He had worked in mines in
foundries in the steel mills of the north moving toward the purpose
he had chosen All he remembered of those jobs was that the men
around him had never seemed to know what to do while he had
always known He remembered wondering why so many iron mines
were closing, just as these had been about to close until he took
them over He looked at the shelves of rock m the distance Workers
were putting up a new sign above a gate at the end of a road
Rearden Ore

He saw an evening when he sat slumped across his desk in that
office It was late and his staff had left so he aiuld he there alone
unwitnessed He was tired It was as if he had run a race against his
own body, and all the exhaustion of years which he had refused to
acknowledge, had caught him at once and Battened him against the
desk top He felt nothing, except the desire not to move He did not
have the strength to feel -not even to suffer He had burned every
thing there was to burn withm him, he had scattered so many sparks
to start so many things- and he wondered whether someone could
give him now the spark he needed now when he felt unable ever
to rise again He asked himself who had started him and kept him
going Then he raised his head Slowly, with the greatest effort of
his life, he made his body rise until he was able to lit upright with
only one hand pressed to the desk and a trembling $irm to support
him He never asked that question again .

He saw the day when he stood on a hill and looked at a grimy
wasteland of structures that had been a steel plan$, It was closed
and given up. He had bought it the night before Thejre was a strong

36

wind and a gray light squeezed from among the ctouds. In that light,
he saw the brown-red of rust, like dead blood, on the steel of the
giant cranes — and bright, green, living weeds, like gorged cannibals,
growing over piles of broken glass at the foot of walls made of empty
frames. At a gate in the distance, he saw the black silhouettes of
men. They were the unemployed from the rotting hovels of what
had once been a prosperous town. They stood silently, looking at
the glittering car he had left at the gate of the mills; they wondered
whether the man on the hill was the Hank Rearden that people were
talking about, and whether it was true that the mills were to be
reopened. “The historical cycle of steel-making in Pennsylvania is
obviously running down,'’ a newspaper had said, ‘'and experts agree
that Henry Rearden's venture into steel is hopeless. You may soon
witness the sensational end of the sensational Henry Rearden.”

That was ten years ago. Tonight, the cold wind on his face felt
like the wind of that day. He turned to look back. The red glow of
the mills breathed in the sky, a sight as life-giving as a sunrise.

These had been his stops, the stations which an express had
reached and passed. He remembered nothing distinct of the years
between them; the years were blurred, like a streak of speed.

Whatever it was, he thought, whatever the strain and the agony,
they were worth it, because they had made him reach this day— this
day when the first heat ot the first order of Rearden Metal had been
poured, to become rails tor Taggart Transcontinental.

He touched the biaeclct in his pocket. He had had it made from
that first poured metal. It was for his wife
As he touched it, he realized suddenly that be had thought of an
a bsti action called “his wife"— not of the woman to whom he was
married He felt a stab of i egret, wishing he had not made the brace-
let. then a wave of self-reproach for the regret.

He shook his head. This was not the time for his old doubts. He
felt (hat he could forgive anything to anyone, because happiness was
the greatest agent of purification. He felt certain that every living
being wished him well tonight. lie wanted to meet someone, to face
the first slrangci, to stand disarmed and open, and to say, “Look at
me.” People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had
always been — for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering
which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been
able to understand why men should be unhappy*

The daik road had risen imperceptibly to the top of the hill. He
stopped and turned. The red glow was a narrow strip, far to the
west. Above it, small at a distance of miles, the words of a neon
sign stood written on the blackness of the sky: rfaroln siwjl
He stood straight, as if before a bench of judgment He thought
that in the darkness of this night other signs were lighted over the
eountty: Rearden Ore— Rearden Coal— Rearden Limestone. He
thought of the days behind him. He wished it were possible to light
a neon sign above them, saying: Rearden Life.

He turned sharply and walked on. As the road came closer to his
house, he noticed that his steps were slowing down and that some-
thing was ebbing away from his mood. He felt a dim reluctance to

37

enter his home, which he did not want to feel No, he thought, not
tonight, they’ll understand it tonight But he did not know, he had
never defined, what it was that he wanted them to understand
He saw lights in the windows ol the living room, when he ap-
proached his house The house stood on a hill, rising before him like
a big white hulk it looked naked with a few semi colonial pillars
for reluctant ornament, it had the cheerless look ol a nudity not
worth revealing

He was not certain whethei his wife noticed him when he t ntered
the living room She sat by the fireplace, talking the curve of her
arm floating m graceful emphasis of her words He heard a small
break in her voice and thought that she had seen him but she
did not look up and her sentence went on smoothly he could not
be certain

-but it s just that a man ol culture is bored with the alleged
wonders ol purel\ matenal ingenuity she wis saving He simplv
refuses to get txcited about plumbing

I hen she turned her head looked at Rc lidtn in the shadows
across the long room and hci aims spread gracefully like two swan
necks bv her sides

Why darhm> she said m a bnght tone of amusement isn l it
too earlv to come home 7 Wasn t thtre some slae to sweep or inverts
to polish }

They all turned to him his mother his biother Philip and Paul
Larkin their old friend

lm sony he mswued 1 know 1 m late
Don t say \ou re sorrv said his molht r You eould h tvo U L
phoned He looked U her trying v iguelv to leniembei something
You promised to be here lor dinner tonight
Oh ihat s right 1 did Im sons Bui todiy u the mills wt
poured— Hi slopped he did not know what made him unable to
utter the one thine he had come home to say he iddcd only It s
just that I forgot

7 hat s what Mothei means said Philip
4 Oh let him get his bearings he s not quilt hue yet he s still at
the mills his wife said gaily Do t ike your coat off He»nrv ?

Paul I^arkin was looking at hnn with the dt voted eyes of an inhib
ited dog Hello Paul said Reardon Wh n did you get in*’

Oh I just hopped down on the five thirty five from New York
Larkin was smiling m gratitude for tfie attention
“ I rouble ,

Who hasn t got trouble thtse days* I at km s smile became re
signed to indicate that the remark was merely philosophical But
no, no special trouble this time I just thought 1 d drop in to sec you
Hts wife laughed You ve disappointed hun, Paul She turned to
Rearden ‘Is it an inferiority complex or a superiority one Henry 7
Do you believe that nobody can want to see you just for vour own
sake or do you believe that nobody can get altfig without your
help 7 ”

He wanted to utter an angry denial, but she w^s smiling at him
as if this were merely a conversational joke, and hd had no capacity

38

for the sort of conversations which were not supposed to be meant,
so he did not answer. He stood looking at her, wondering about the
things he had never been able to understand.

Lillian Rearden was generally regarded as a beautiful woman. She
had a tall, graceful body, the kind that looked well in high-waisted
gowns of the Empire style, which she made it a practice to wear.
Her exquisite profile belonged to a cameo of the same period: its
pure, proud lines and the lustrous, light brown waves of her hair,
worn with classical simplicity, suggested an austere, imperial beauty.
But when she turned full face, people experienced a small shock of
disappointment. Her face was not beautiful. The eyes were the flaw:
they were vaguely pale, neither quite gray nor brown, lifelessly empty
of expression. Rearden had always wondered, since she seemed
amused so often, why there was no gaiety in her face.

“We have met before, dear/’ she said, in answer to his silent
scrutiny, “though you don’t seem to be sure of it.”

“Have you had any dinner, Henry?” his mother asked: there was
a reproachful impatience in her voice, as if his hunger were a per-
sonal insult to her.

“Yes . . . No ... 1 wasn’t hungry.”

4 Td better ring to have them — ”

“No, Mother, not now, it doesn’t matter.”

“That’s the trouble I’ve always had with you.” She was not looking
at him, but reciting words into space. “It’s no use trying to do things
for you, you don’t appreciate it. I could never make you eat
properly.”

“Henry, you work too hard,” said Philip. “It’s not good for you.”

Rearden laughed. “1 like it,”

“That's what you tell yourself. It's a form of neurosis, you know.
When a man drowns himscll in work, it's because he’s trying to
escape from something. You ought to have a hobby.”

“Oh, Phil, for Christ’s sake!” he said, and regretted the irritation
in his voice.

Philip had always been in precarious health, though doctors had
found no specific defect in his loose, gangling body. He was thirty-
eight, but his chronic weariness made people think at times that he
was older than his brother.

“You ought to learn to have some fun,” said Philip. “Otherwise,
you’ll become dull and narrow. Single-tracked, you know. You ought
to get out of your little private shell and take a look at the world.
You don’t want to miss life, the way you’re doing.”

Righting anger, Rearden told himself that this was Philip’s form
of solicitude. lie told himself that it would be unjust to feel resent-
ment: they were all trying to show their concern for him — and he
wished these were not the things they had chosen for concern.

“1 had a pretty good time today, Phil,” he answered, smiling — and
wondered why Philip did not ask him what it was.

He wished one of them would ask him. He was finding it hard to
concentrate. The sight of the running metal w'as still burned into his
mind, filling his consciousness, leaving no room for anything else.

“You might have apologized, only 1 ought to know better than to

39

expect it.* 5 It was his mother's voice; he turned, she was looking at
him with that injured look which proclaims the long-bearing patience
of the defenseless

“Mrs Beacham was heie for dinner* ’ she said reproachfully
“What’’’

“Mis Beacham My triend Mis Beacham
‘Yes 7

“I told you about her I told you many times but you never re
member anything l say Mis Beacham was so anxious to meet you,
but she had to leave after dinnu. she couldn't wait Mrs Beacham
is a veiy busy peison She wanted so much to tell you about the
wonderful work we’re doing in our parish school, and about the
classes m metal craftsmanship, and about the beautiful wi ought-uon
doorknobs that the little slum children are making all by them-
selves ’

It took the whole of his sense ot consideration to tora himself to
answer evenly, *Tm sorry if l disappointed you. Mot he i ”

‘You’re not sorry You could ve been here if you d made the
ellori But when did you ev< r make an ettoit tor anybody but voui
self 0 You ic not interested in any of us 01 m <ui) thing w< do You
think if you pay the bills, that’s enough, don t you 7 Money 1 I hat s
all you know And all you give us is money Have you tver given
us any time 7 '

If this meant that she missed him, he thought, then it meant af-
fection and if it meant attection, then he was unjust to experience
a heavy, murky feeling which kept him silent lest his voice betray
that the feeling was disgust

‘ You don t care hei voice wc nt half spitting half begging on
Lillian needed you today tor a very important problem but I told
her it was no use waiting to discuss u with you

Oh, Mother, it’s not lmpoitant 1 said Lillian Not to Henry ’
He turned to her He stood m the middle of the room, with his
irencheoat still on, as it he were trapped in an unreality that would
not become real to him

‘its not important at all,’ said Lillian gaily, he could not tell
whether her voice was apologetic or boasttul ‘it’s not business It s
purelv non-commercial ”

“What is it‘ 7 ’

“Just a party I’m planning to give ’

“A party' 7 ’

“Oh, don t look frightened, it’s not for tomorrow night I know
that you’re so very busy, but it\ for three months from now and I
want it to be a very big, very special affair, so would you promise
me to be here that night and not m Minnesota or Colorado or
California 7 ” t

5>he was looking at him m an odd manner, speaking too lightly
and too purposefully at once, her smile overstrcssfcng an air of inno-
cence and suggesting something like a hidden trufnp card
“Three months from now 7 ” he said “But you?know that 1 can’t
tell what urgent business might come up to call n|e out of town.”
“Oh, I know 1 But couldn’t I make a formal appointment with

40

you, way in advance, just like any railroad executive, automobile
manufacturer or junk — I mean, scrap— dealer? They say you never
miss an appointment Of course, I’d Jet you pick the date to suit
your convenience.” She was looking up at him, her glance acquiring
some special quality of feminine appeal by being sent from under
her lowered forehead up toward his full height; she asked, a little
too casually and too cautiously, “The date I had in mind was Decem-
ber lenth, but would you prefer the ninth or the eleventh?”

“It makes no difference to me.”

vShe said gently, “December tenth is our wedding anniversary,
Henry.”

They were all watching his face; if they expected a look of guilt,
what they saw, instead, was a faint smile of amusement. She could
not have intended this as a trap, he thought, because he could escape
it sr> easily, by refusing to accept any blame for his forgetfulness and
by leaving her spumed; she knew that his feeling for her was her
only weapon. Her motive, he thought, was a proudly indirect attempt
to test his teeling and to confess her own. A party was not his form
o! celebration, but it was hers. It meant nothing in his terms; in hers,
it meant the best tribute she could offer to him and to their marriage.
He had to respect her intention, he thought, even it he did not share
her standards, even if he did not know whether he still cared for
any tribute from her. He had to let her win, he thought, because she
had thrown herself upon his mercy.

He smiled, an open, un resentful smile in acknowledgment of her
victory. “All right, Lillian,” he said quietly, “f promise to be here
on the night of December tenth.”

“Thank you, dear.” Her smile had a closed, mysterious quality; he
wondered why he had a moment's impression that his attitude had
disappointed them all.

If she trusted him, he thought, it her feeling for him was still alive,
then he would match her trust. He had to say it; words were a Jens
to focus one's mind, and — he could not use words for anything else
tonight. 'Tm sorry I'm late, Lillian, but today at the mills we poured
the first heat of Rearden Metal.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Philip said, “Well, that’s
nice.”

The others said nothing.

He put his hand in his pocket. When he touched it. the reality of
the bracelet swept out everything else; he felt as he had felt when
the liquid metal had poured through space before him,

“I brought you a present, Lillian,”

He did not know that he stood straight and that the gesture of his
arm was that of a returning crusader offering his trophy to his love,
when he dropped a small chain of metal into her lap.

Lillian Rearden picked it up, hooked on the tips of two straight
fingers, and raised it to the light. Hie links were heavy, crudely made,
the shining metal had an odd tinge, it was greenish-blue.

“What’s that?” she asked,

“The first thing made from the first heat of the first order of
Rearden Metal.”

41

u You mean/' she $md, “it’s fully as valuable as a piece of rail-
road rails'*”

He looked at her blankly

She jingled the bracelet, making it sparkle under the light ‘Henry,
it's perfectly wonderful 1 What originality’ I shall be the sensation of
New York, wearing jewelry made of the same stuff as bridge gilders
truck motors, kitchen stoves typewriters, and- what was it you were
saving about it the other dav darling 9 — soup kettles
“God Hcnr\ but you’re conceited 1 ” said Philip
Lillian laughed 4 He’s a sentimentalist All men are But, darling,
1 do appreciate it It isn't the gift, it’s the intention, I know ”

“Fhe intention's plain selfishness, if you ask me,” said Rearden’s
mother “Another man would bnng a diamond bracelet, if he wanted
to give his wife a present because it’s her pleasure he d think of,
not his own But Henry thinks that just because he s made a new
kind of tin why its got to be moie precious than diamonds to
everybody, just because it’s he that’s made it That's the wav he s
been since he was live years old- the most conceited brat you ever
saw — and I knew he’d grow up to be the most sclhsh creature on
God's earth ”

“No, it s sweet ” said Lillian 4 It's charming ’ She dropped the
bracelet down on the table She got up, put her hands on Reardon s
shoulders, and raising herself on tiptoe kissed him on the cheek
saying “I hank \ou dear'

He did not move did not bend his head down to her
After a while he turned took oft his coat and sat down by the hie
apart trom the others He felt nothing but an immense exhaustion
He did not listen to thur talk He heard dimlv that Lillian was
arguing delendtng him against hts mother

‘I know him better than \ou do his mother was saying Hank
Rearden’s not interested in man beast or weed unless it s tied in
some way to himself and his work That’s all he cares about I’ve
tried m\ best to teach him some humility I ve tried all my life but
I’ve tailed ”

He had offered his mother unlimited means to live as and wheie
she pleased he wondered why she had insisted that she wanted to
live with him His suceess, he had thought, meant something to her,
and if it did then it was a bond between them the only kind of
bond he reeogni7ed if she wanted a place in the home of her success
ful son, he would not deny it to her
“fl's no use hoping to make a saint out of Henry Mother ’ said
Philip 4 He wasn't meant to be one ”

4 C)h but, Philip you’re wrong’” said I ilhan You’re so wrong’
Henry has all the makings of a saint 1 hat’s the trouble ”

What did they seek from him * — thought Rearden—what were they
after 9 He had never asked anything of them it was they who wished
to hold him they who pressed a claim on him — and $ie claim seemed
to have the form of affection, but it was a form *which he found
harder to endure than any sort of hatred He despised causeless
affection, just as he despised unearned wealth T$ey professed to
love him for some unknown reason and they ignored all the things

42

for which he could wish to be loved. He wondered what response
they could hope to obtain from him in such maimer— if his response
was what they wanted. And it was, he thought; else why those con-
stant complaints, those unceasing accusations about his indifference?
Why that chronic air of suspicion, as if they were waiting to be hurt?
He had never had a desire to hurt them, but he had always felt
their defensive, reproachful expectation; they seemed wounded by
anything he said, it was not a matter of his words or actions, it was
almost . . . almost as if they were wounded by the mere fact of his
being. Don’t start imagining the insane — he told himself severely,
struggling to face the riddle with the strictest of his ruthless sense
of justice. He could not condemn them without understanding; and
he could not understand.

Did he like them? No, he thought; he had wanted to like them,
which was not the same. He had wanted it in the name of some
unstated potentiality which he had once expected to sec in any
human being He felt nothing for them now, nothing but the merci-
less zero of indifference, not even the regret of a loss. Did he need
any person as part of his life <? Did he miss the feeling he had wanted
to tee!? No, he thought. Had he ever missed it? Yes, he thought, in
his youth; not any longer.

His sense of exhaustion was growing; he realized that it was bore-
dom. He owed them the courtesy of hiding it, he thought— and sat
motionless, lighting a desire tor sleep that was turning into physi-
cal pain.

His eyes were closing, when he felt two soft, moist fingers touching
his hand: Paul Larkin had pulled a chaii to his side and was leaning
over tor a private conversation.

"I don't care what the industry says about it. Hank, you’ve got a
great product in Rcarden Metal, a great product, it will make a
fortune, like everything you touch."

"Yes," said Reardon, “it will."

"1 just. ... I just hope you don't run into trouble."

"What trouble?"

“Oh, I don't know . . the way things are nowadays . . there’s
people, who . . but how can we tell? , . . anything can happen . .

"What trouble?"

Larkin sat hunched, looking up with his gentle, pleading eyes. His
short, plumpish figure always seemed unprotected and incomplete,
as if he needed a shell to shrink into at the slightest touch. His
wistful eyes, his lost, helpless, appealing smile served as substitute
for the shell. The smile was disarming, like that of a boy who throws
himself at the mercy of an incomprehensible universe. He was fifty-
three years old.

"Your public relations aren’t any too good. Hank," he said.
"You’ve always had a bad press."

"So what?”

“You’re not popular. Hank.”

“I haven't heard any complaints from my customers."

“Thai’s not what I mean. You ought to hire yourself a good press
agent to sell you to the public."

43

“What for ? It’s steel that I’m selling ”

“But you don’t want to have the public against you Public opin-
ion, you know— it can mean a lot “

“I don’t think the public’s against me And I don’t think that it
means a damn, one way or anothei ”

“The newspapers are against you ”

“They have time to waste I haven t ”

“1 don’t like it, Hank It’s not good ’

“What > ’

‘What they wiite about you “

“What do they write about me

“Well you know the stuff I hat you re intractable lhat you’re
ruthless lhat you won’t allow anyone any voice in the running of
your mills That your onlv goal is to make steel and to make money
“But that is my only goal ”

But vou shouldn’t say it ’

“Whv not } What is it l m supposed to say }>

Oh I don t know But your mills —

“Thev’re my mills aren t they* ’

4 Yes but -but you shouldn t remind people ot that too loudl\

You know how it is nowadays lhey think that youi attitude is
anti-sou il

‘I don t give a damn what they think ’’

Paul Larkin sighed

What s the matter P-tuI* What are vou duvmg <il }

“Nothing nothing in particular Only one nevtr knows what
can happen m times like these One has to be so caieful
Reardon chuckled You rc not trying to worry about me arc
yon }

‘It’s just that 1 in voui friend Hank I m your friend You know
how much I admire vou

Paul l arkm had always been unlucky Nothing he touched ever
came off quite well nothing ever quite failed or succeeded He was
a businessman but he could not manage to remain for long m any
one line of business At the moment he was struggling with a modest
plant that manufactured mining equipment

He had clung to Reardtn for veais in awed admiration He came
for advice he asked for loans at limes but not often, the loans were
modest and were always repaid though not always on time His
motive m the relationship seemed to resemble the need of an anemic
person who receives a kind ol living transfusion from the mere sight
of a savagely overabundant vitality
Watching Larkin’s efforts. Real den felt what he did when he
watched an ant struggling undei the load of a malchstick It s so
hard for him, thought Rearden and so easy tor me So he gave
advice attention and a tactful patient interest whenever he <ould
“I’m your fntnd, Hank ’

Rearden looked at him inquiringly

Larkin glanced away, as if debating something i$ his mind After
a while, he asked cautiously “How is your man m Washington?”
“Okay. I guess ’

44

“You ought to be sure of it. It's important.” He looked up at
Rearden, and repeated with a kind of stressed insistence, as if dis*
charging a painful moral duty, “Hank, it’s very important/’

“l suppose so.”

“In fact, that’s what I came here to tell you.”

“For any special reason?”

Larkin considered it and decided that the duty was discharged.
“No,” he said.

Rearden disliked the subject. He knew that it was necessary to
have a man to protect him from the legislature; all industrialists had
to employ such men. But he had never given much attention to this
aspect of his business; he could not quite convince himself that it
was necessary. An inexplicable kind of distaste, part fastidiousness,
part boredom, stopped him whenever he tried to consider it.

“Trouble is, Paul.” he said, thinking aloud, “that the men one has
to pick for that job are such a crummy lot.”

Larkin looked away. “That’s life,” he said.

“Damned if 1 see why. Can you tell me that? What’s wrong with
the world?”

Larkin shrugged sadly. “Why ask useless questions? How deep is
the ocean? How high is the sky? Who is John Galt?”

Rearden sat up straight. “No,” he said sharply, “No. There’s no
reason to feel that way.”

He got up. His exhaustion had .gone while he talked about his
business. He felt a sudden spurt of rebellion, a need to recapture
and defiantly to reassert his own view' of existence, that sense of it
which he had held while walking home tonight and which now
seemed threatened m some nameless manner.

He paced the room, his energy returning. He looked at his family.
ITicy were bewildered, unhappy children — he thought— all of them,
even his mother, and he was foolish to resent their ineptitude; it
came from their helplessness, not from malice. It was he who had
to make himself learn to understand them, since he had so much to
give, since they could never share his sense of joyous, boundless
power.

He glanced at them from across the room. His mother and Philip
were engaged in some eager discussion; but he noted that they were
not really eager, they were nervous. Philip sat in a low chair, his
stomach forward, his weight on his shoulder blades, as if the misera-
ble discomfort of his position were intended to punish the onlookers.

“What’s the matter. Phil?” Rearden asked, approaching him.
“You look done in.”

“I’ve had a hard day,” said Philip sullenly.

“You’re not the only one who works hard,” said his mother. “Oth-
ers have problems, too — even if they’re not billion-dollar, transsuper-
continental problems like yours.”

“Why, that’s good. 1 always thought that Phil should find some
interest of his own.”

“Good? You mean you like to see your brother sweating his health
away? It amuses you* doesn’t it? I always thought it did.

“Why, no. Mother, I’d Uke to help.”

45

“You don’t have to help You don’t have to feel anything for any
of us ”

Rearden had never known what his brother was doing or wished
to do He had sent Philip through college, but Philip had not been
able to decide on any specific ambition rhere was something wrong,
by Rearden ’s standards, with a man who did not seek any gainful
employment, but he would not impose his standards on Philip, he
could afford to support his brother and never notice the expense
Let him take it easy Rearden had thought for years, lei him have
a chance to choose his career without the strain ot struggling tor
a livelihood

“What were you doing today, PhiP” he asked patiently
“ft wouldn’t interest you *

’It does interest me rhat’s why I m asking
“I had to see twenty different people all over the place from here
to Redding to Wilmington ’

‘What did you have to sec them about }

‘I am trying to raise money tor 1 riends of Global Progress ’
Rearden had never been able to keep track of the many oigani/a
tions to which Philip belonged nor to get a clear idea of their activi
ties He had heard Philip talking vaguely about this one tor the last
six months It seemed to be devoted to some sort of free lectures
on psychology, folk music and co operative farming Rearden telt
contempt for groups of that kind and saw no reason for a closer
inquiry into their nature

He remained silent Philip added without being prompted ‘We
need ten thousand dollars for a vital progiam but it s a martyrs
task trying to raise money Hicre’s not a speck of social conscience,
left m people When 1 think ot the kind of bloated money bags 1
saw today — whv they spend more than that on any whim, but I
couldn’t squec/e just a hundred bucks apiece out ot them which
was all I asked 1 hey have no sense of moral duty no What are
you laughing at° he asked sharply Rearden stood before him
grinning

It was so childishly blatant thought Rearden so helpltssly crude
the hint and the insult offered together It would be so casv to
squash Philip by returning the insult he thought by returning an
insult which would be deadly because it would be true- that he could
not bring himself to utter it Surely, he thought, the pooi fool knows
he’s at my mercy, knows he’s opened himself to be hurt so I don’t
have to do it and my not doing it is inv best answer, which he won t
be able to miss What sort of misery docs he really live in to get
himself twisted quite so badly }

And then Rearden thought suddenly that he could break through
Philip’s chrontc wretchedness for once, give him $ shock of pleasure,
the unexpected gratification of a hopeless desire. He thought What
do I care about the nature of his desire?— it’s his just as Rearden
Metal was mine — it must mean to him what that meant to me — let’s
see him happy just once, it might teach him something — didn’t I say
that happiness is the agent of purification 9 —I’m oelebratmg tonight,
so let him share m it— it will be so much for him and so little for me

46

“Philip,” he said* smiling, “call Miss Ives at my office tomorrow.
Shell have a check for you for ten thousand dollars.”

Philip stared at him blankly; it was neither shock nor pleasure; it
was just the empty stare of eyes that looked glassy.

“Oh,” said Philip, then added, “We’ll appreciate it very much.”
There was no emotion in his voice, not even the simple one of greed.

Rearden could not understand his own feeling: it was as if some-
thing leaden and empty were collapsing within him, he felt both the
weight and the emptiness, together. He knew it was disappointment,
but he wondered why it was so gray and ugly.

“It’s very nice of you, Henry,” Philip said dryly. “Fm surprised. I
didn’t expect it of you.”

“Don't you understand it, Phil?” said Lillian, her voice peculiarly
clear and lilting. “Henry’s poured his metal today." She turned to
Rearden. “Shall we declare it a national holiday, darling?”

“You’re a good man, Henry,” said his mother, and added, “but
not often enough.”

Rearden stood looking at Philip, as il waiting.

Philip looked away, then raised his eyes and held Rearden’s
glance, as if engaged in a scrutiny of his own.

“You don’t really care about helping the underprivileged, do
you?” Philip asked — and Rearden heard, unable to believe it, that
the tone of his voice was reproachful.

“No, Phil, I don’t care about it at all. I only wanted you to be
happy.”

“But that money is not for me. 1 am not collecting it for any
personal motive. I have no selfish interest in the matter whatever.”
His voice was cold, with a note of self-conscious virtue.

Rearden turned away. He felt a sudden loathing: not because the
words were hypocrisy, but because they were true; Philip meant
them.

“By the way, Henry,” Philip added, “do you mind if I ask you to
have Miss Ives give me the money tn cash?” Rearden turned back
to him, puzzled. “You see. Friends of Global Progress are a very
progiessive group and they have always maintained that you repre-
sent the blackest clement of social retrogression in the country, so
it would embarrass us, you know, to have your name on our list of
contributors, because somebody might accuse us of being in the pay
of Hank Rearden.”

He wanted to slap Philip’s face. But an almost unendurable con-
tempt made him close his eyes instead.

“All right,” he said quietly, “you can have it in cash.”

He walked away, to the farthest window of the room, and stood
looking at the glow of the mills in the distance.

He heard Larkin’s voice crying after him, “Damn it. Hank, you
shouldn’t have given it to him!”

Then Lillian's voice came, cold and gay: “But you’re wrong, Paul,
you're so wrong! What would happen to Henry’s vanity if he didn’t
have us to throw alms to? What would become of his strength if he
didn’t have weaker people to dominate? What would he do with

47

himself if he didn’t keep us around as dependents? Tt’s quite all
right, really Tin not cntici/mg him, it s just a law ot human nature ”
She took the metal bracelet and held it up, letting it glitter in
the lamplight

“A cham,” she said ‘‘Appropriate isn’t xO It’s the chain by which
he holds us all in bondage ”

Chapter HI THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM

The ceiling was that of a cellar so heavy and low that people stooped
when crossing the room, as if the weight of the vaulting rested on
their shoulders The circular booths of dark red leather were built
into walls of stone that looked eaten by age and dampness There
were no windows only patches of blue light shooting from dents in
the masonry the dead blue light proper for use in blackouts l he
place was entered by way ol narrow steps that led down as if de
scending deep under the ground This was the most expensive bar
room in New York and it was built on the roof ot a skyscraper

Four men sat at a table Raised sixty floors above the city they
did not speak loudly as one speaks from a height in the freedom ot
air and space they kept their voices low as befitted a cellar

‘ Conditions and circumstances Jim said Orren Boyle C ondi
tions and circumstances absolutely beyond human control We had
everything mapped to roll those rails but unfoicseen developments
set in which nobody could have prevented 11 you d only given us a
chance, Jim

Disunity drawled James Taggart ‘ seems to be the basic cause
of all social problems My sister has a certain influence with a certain
element among our stockholders Their disruptive tactics cannot al
ways be defeated ’

‘ You said it Jim Disunity that’s the trouble Its my absolute
opinion that in our complex industrial society no business enterprise
can succeed without sharing the but den ot the problems ot other
enterprises ’

Iaggart took a sip of hts dnnk and put it down again ‘1 wish
they’d hre that bartender, he said

“For instance, consider Associated Steel We vc got the most mod
em plant in the country and the best organization that seems to
me to be an indisputable fact, because we got the Industrial Effi
ciency Awaid of Globe magazine last year So we can maintain that
we ve done our best and nobody can blame us But wc cannot help
it if the iron ore situation is a national problem We could not get
the ore, Jim ’

Taggart said nothing He sat with his elbows spread wide on the
table top The table was uncomfortably small, and this made it more
uncomfortable for his three companions, but thqy did not seem to
question his privilege

“Nobody can get ore any longer,” said Boyle ’^Natural exhaustion
of the mines, you know and the wearing out of equipment, and

48

shortages of materials, and difficulties of transportation, and other
unavoidable conditions,*'

‘The ore industry is crumbling. That’s what’s killing the mining
equipment business,” said Paul Larkin.

“It’s been proved that every business depends upon every other
business,” said Orren Boyle. “So everybody ought to share the bur-
dens of everybody else.”

“That is, 1 think, true," said Wesley Mouch. But nobody ever paid
any attention to Wesley Mouch.

”My purpose,” said Orren Boyle, “is the preservation of a free
economy. It’s generally conceded that free economy is now on trial
Unless it proves its social value and assumes its social responsibilities,
the people won't stand for it. If it doesn’t develop a public spirit,
it’s done for. make no mistake about that.”

Orren Boyle had appealed from nowhere, five years ago, and had
since made the cover of every national news magazine. He had
started out with a hundred thousand dollars of his own and a two-
hundred-million-dollar loan from the government. Now he headed
an enormous concern which had swallowed many smaller companies.
This proved, he liked to say, that individual ability still had a chance
to succeed in the world.

“The only justification of private property," said Orren Boyle, “is
public service,”

“That is, 1 think, indubitable/' said Wesley Mouch.

Orren Boyle made a noise, swallowing his liquor. He was a large
man with big, virile gestures; everything about his person was loudly
full of life, except the small black slits of his eyes.

“Jim.” he said, “Rearden Metal seems to be a colossal kind of
swindle.”

“Uh-huh” said Taggart.

T hear there’s not a single expert who’s given a favorable report
on it/’

“No, not one/’

“We've been improving steel rails for generations, and increasing
their weight. Now, is it true that these Rearden Metai rails are to
be lighter than the cheapest grade ot steel?”

“That’s right," said Taggart. “Lighter.”

“But it’s ridiculous, Jim. It's physically impossible. For your heavy-
duty, high-speed, main-hne track?”

“That’s right.”

“But you’re just inviting disaster.”

“My sister is.”

Taggart made the stem of his glass whirl slowly between two fin-
gers. There was a moment of silence.

“The National Council of Metal Industries,” said Orren Boyle,
“passed a resolution to appoint a committee to study the question of
Rearden Metal inasmuch as its use may be an actual public hazard.”

“That is, in my opinion, wise/’ said Wesley Mouch.

“When everybody agrees/' Taggart’s voice suddenly went shrill,
“when people are unanimous, how does one man dare to dissent?
By what right? That’s what 1 want to know— by what right?”

49

Boyle's eyes darted to Taggart's face, but the dim light of the
room made it impossible to see faces dearly he saw only a pale,
bluish smear

“When we think ot the natural resources, at a time of critical
shortage/' Boyle said softly, “when we think of the critical raw mate-
rials that are being wasted on an irresponsible pm ate experiment*
when we think ot the ore "

He did not finish He glanced at laggart again But Taggart
seemed to know that Boyle was waiting and to find the silence
enjoyable

“The public has a vital stake in natural resources, Jim such as
iron ore The public can't remain indifferent to reckless selfish waste
by an anti-social individual Alter all, private property is a trusteeship
held for the benefit of society as a whole “
laggart glanced at Boyle and smiled the smile was pointed it
seemed to say that something in his words was an answer to some
thing in the words of Bovle ‘ The liquor they serve here is swill I
suppose thats the price we have to pay tor not being crowded b\
ail kinds of rabble But I do wish thev’d recognize that they're deal-
ing with experts Since I hold the purse strings. I expect to get my
money’s worth and at my pleasure ”

Boyle did not answer his face had become sullen 4 L isten
Jim ’ he began heavily

laggart smiled * What> I’m listening”

“Jim, you will agree, I'm sure, that there s nothing more destine
tive than a monopoly

‘Yes," said Taggart, on the one hand On the other there s the
blight of unbridled competition

“Thai’s true That s very true Hie proper course is always m mv
opinion in the middle So it is l think, the duty of society to snip
the extremes now isn’t it >

‘Yes " said Taggart ‘ it is *

“j( onsider the picture m the iron-ore business l he national output
seems to be falling at an ungodly rate It threatens the existence of
the whole steel industry Steel mills are shutting down all over the
country Ihcrcs only one mining company that's lucky enough not
to be affected by the general conditions Its output seems to be
plentiful and always available on schedule But who gets the benefit
of it 9 Nobody except its owner Would you siy that that's fair*"

‘ No,’ said Taggart it isn’t fair '

“Most of us don’t own iron mines How can We compete with a
man who s got a comer on God s natural Resources > Is it any wonder
that he can always delivci steel while wc have to struggle and wait
and lose our customers and go out of business > Is it in the public
interest to let one man destioy an entire industry }

“No "said laggart “it isn’t '

“It seems to me that the national policy ought* to be aimed at the
objective of giving everybody a chance at h*s fai|f share ot iron ore,
with a view toward the preservation of the industry as a whole Don't
you think so 7 "

“I think so "

50

Boyle Mghed. Then he said cautiously, “But l guess there aren’t
many people in Washington capable of understanding a progressive
social policy ’*

Taggart said slowly, “I here are No, not many and not easy to
approach, but there are 1 might speak to them ”

Boyle picked up his dnnk and swallowed it in one gulp, as if he
had heard all he had wanted to hear

“Speaking ot progressive policies, Orren,’ said laggart, ‘you
might ask yourself whether at a time of transportation shortages,
when so many railroads arc going bankrupt and large areas are left
without rail service, whether it is in the public interest to tolerate
wasteful duplication of sen ices and the destructive dog-eat-dog
competition of newcomers in territories where established companies
have histoucal priority

* Well, now said Boyle pleasantly, that seems to be an interest-
ing question to consider 1 might discuss it with a tew Inends in the
National Alliance ol Railroads ’

‘ fnendships snd laggait in the lone of an idle abstiaction “are
more valuable than gold Unexpectedly he turned to Larkm

Don t you think so Paul } ’

Why yes, said I arkin istonishtd *\es of course

I am counting on yours

Huh >

I am counting on vour mans tmndships

they di , tuned to know why ! arkin did not mswer at once, his
shoulders seemed to shnnk down closer to the table It everybody
could pul! toi a common pui pose thin nooodv would have to be
hurt’ ’ he uitd suddenly in i tone ot incongruous despair he* saw
l iggatt watching him md added pleading 1 wish we dtdn t have
to hurt anybody

Hiat is an inti social attitude dr twled Taggart ‘People who
ire all aid to sacrifice somebcHly ha\e no business talking about a
common purpose

But I m a student ot history said I arkin hastily l recognize
historical necessity

‘Good satd laggart

1 can t lx expected to buck the trend ol the whole world can
I ' T I arktn seemed to plead but the plea was not addievsed to any-
one C an 1 }

"\ou can t Mr l a* kin said Wesley Mouch “You and l arc not
to be blamed, it we

Larkm jerked hts head away, it was almost a shudder he could
not bear to look at Mouch

* 1 >id \ou have a good time in Mexico Oiicn* asked Taggart,
his u>icc suddenly loud and casual All ot them seemed to know
that the purpose o! then meeting was accomplished and whatever
they had come here to understand was understood

Wonderful place Mexico, Boyle answered cheerfully “Very
stimulating and thought-provoking Their food tations are something
awful, though f got sick But they're working mighty hard to put
their country on its feet

51

“How are things down there**”

“Pretty splendid it seems to me, pretty splendid Right at the
moment however they’re But then what they’re aiming at is
the future fhe People’s Slate of Mexico has a great future 7 hey ll
beat us all in a few years ’

“Did you go down to the San Sebastian Mines 9 ”

The tour figures at the table sat up slraighter and tighter all of
them had inserted heavily in the stock of the San Sebastian Mines
Boyle did not answei at once so that his voice seemed unexpected
and unnaturally loud when it burst forth Oh sure certainly that’s
what I wanted to see most *

And ;

And what }

‘How are things going ’

‘Great Great ITiey must certainly have the biggest deposits of
copper on earth down inside that mountain 1
‘Did they seem to be busy*

Newer saw such a busy place in inv life
What were they busy doing’

Well you know with the kind of Spic superintendent they ha\e
down there I eouldn l understand hall of wh it he was t liking about
but they re certainly busy

Any trouble ol any kind *

Trouble’ Not at San Sebastian Its pnv lU property the last
pitce ot it left in Mexico and tint does seem to mike a difference
Orren laggail asked i mtiously wh it ibout those rumors that
they re planning to nitionah/c the San Sebastian Mines >

Slander said Boyle mgnlv plain vicious slandei 1 know it for
ceitam 1 had dinner with the Minister of C ulture and lunches with
all the rest of the bovs

I here ought to be a law against irresponsible gossip said lag
gai% sullenly I et s have another dunk

He waved irritably at a waiter Jhcre was a small bar in a dark
corner of the room where an old wi/encd bartender stood for long
stretches of time without moving When called upon he moved with
contemptuous slowness His job was that of sen ant to men s relax
ation and pleasure but his manner was that of an embittered quack
ministering to some guilty disc ise
The four men sat in silence until the waiter returned with their
dnnks Hie glasses he placed on the table were four spots ot famt
blue glitter in the semi darkness like four fteble jets of gas flame
Taggart reached lor his glass and smiled suddenly

I et s drink to the sacrifices to historical necessity he snd look
mg at Larkin

There was a moments pause m i lighted ropm it would ha\t
betn the contest of two men holding each othef s eyes hue they
were merely looking at each other s eye sockets I hen l arkm picked
up his glass

‘ It’s my party boys ’ said 1 tggart as they drhnk

Nobody found anything else to say until Boyle spoke up with

52

indifferent curiosity: “Say, Jim, I meant to ask you, what in hell’s
the matter with your train-service down on the San Sebastian Line?”

“Why, what do you mean? What is the matter with it?”

“Well, 1 don’t know, but running just one passenger train a day

is — ”

“Owe train?”

“ — is pretty measly service, it seems to me, and what a train! You
must have inherited those coaches from your great-grandfather, and
he must have used them pretty hard. And where on earth did you
get that wood-burning locomotive?”

“Wood-burning?”

“That’s what I said, wood-burning. I never saw one before, except
in photographs. What museum did you drag it out of? Now don’t
act as if you didn’t know it, just tell me what’s the gag?'*

“Yes. of course 1 knew it,” said Taggart hastily. “It was just . . .
You just happened to choose the one week when we had a little
trouble with our motive power- our new engines are on order, but
there's been a slight delay —you know' what a problem we’re having
with the manufacturer of locomotives — but it’s only temporary.”

“Of course,” said Boyle. “Delays can’t be helped. It’s the strangest
train I ever rode on. though. Nearly shook my guts out.”

Within a few mmutes, they noticed that Taggart had become silent.
He seemed preoccupied with a problem of his own. When he rose
abruptly, without apology, they rose, too, accepting it as a command.

Larkin muttered, smiling too strenuously, “It was a pleasure. Jim.
A pleasure. 'Hiat’s how great projects are born- -over a drink with
friends.”

“Social reforms arc slow,” said faggait coldly. “It is advisable to
be patient and cautious.” For the first time, he turned to Wesley
Mouch. “What I like about you. Mooch, is that you don't talk too
much.”

Wesley Mouch was Rearden’s Washington man.

lTicre was still a remnant ot sunset light m the sky, when Taggart
and Boyle emerged together into the street below. The transition
was faintly shocking to them — the enclosed barroom led one to ex-
pect midnight darkness. A tall building stood outlined against the
sky, sharp and straight like a raised sword. In the distance beyond
it, there hung the calendar.

Taggart fumbled irritably with his coat collar, buttoning it against
the chill of the streets. He had not intended to go back to the office
tonight, but he had to go back. He had to see his sister,

”... a difficult undertaking ahead of us, Jim,” Boyle was saying,
“a difficult undertaking, with so many dangers and complications and
so much at stake . ,

“It all depends,” James Taggart answered slowly, “on knowing
the people who make it possible. . . . That’s what has to be known —
who makes it possible.”

* *

Dagny Taggart was nine years old when she decided that she
would run the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad some day. She
stated it to herself when she stood alone between the rails, looking

53

at the two straight lines of steel that went off into the distance and
met m a single point What she felt was an arrogant pleasure at the
way the track cut through the woods it did not belong :n the midst
of ancient trees, among green branches that hung down to meet
green brush and the lonely spears of wild flowers — but there it was
The two steel hues were brilliant m the sun, and the black ties weic
like the rungs of a ladder which she had to climb

It was not a sudden decision, but only the final seal ot words upon
something she had known long ago In unspoken understanding, as
if bound by a vow it had never been necessary to take, she and
Eddie Willers had given themselves to the railroad from the first
conscious days of their childhood

She felt a bored indifference toward the immediate world around
her, toward other children and adults alike She took it as a regretta
blc accident to be borne palientl) for a while, that she happened to
be imprisoned among people who were dull She had caught a
glimpse of another world and she knew that it existed somewhere
the world that had created trains bridges telegraph wires and signal
lights winking in the night She had to wait she thought, and grow
up to that world

She never tiled to explain why she liked the railroad Whatever it
was that others felt she knew that this was one emotion for which
the> had no equivalent and no response She felt the same emotion
in school, in classes of mathematics the only lessons she liked She
felt the excitement of solving problems the insolent delight of taking
up a challenge and disposing of it without effort the eagerness to
meet another, harder test She felt at the same lime a growing
respect for the adveisary, tor a science that was so clean, so strict
so lummousl) rational Studying mathematics, she felt, quite simpl)
and at once How great that men have done this” and “How won-
derful that I’m so good at it ’ It was the joy of admiration and of
onels own ability growing together Her feeling for the railroad was
the same worship of the skill that had gone to make it, of the
mgenuit) of someone’s clean reasoning mind worship with a secret
smile that said she would know how (o make it better some day
She hung around the tracks and the round-houses like a humble
student but the humility had a touch of future pride a pride to
be earned

“You’re unbearably conceited ” was one of the two sentences she
heard throughout her childhood, even though she never spoke of
her own ability The other sentence was “You’re selfish ” She asked
what was meant, but never received an answer $he looked at the
adults, wondering how they could imagine that slie would feel guilt
from an undefined accusation

She was twelve yeais old when she told Eddifc Willers that she
would run the railroad when they grew up She \ias fifteen when it
occurred to her tor the first time that women die! not run railroads
and that people might object To hell with that, she thought— and
never worried about it again

She went to work for Taggart Transcontinental at the age of six-
teen Her father permitted it he was amused add a little curious

54

She started as night operator at a smalt country station. She had to
work nights for the first few years, while attending a college of
engineering.

James Taggart began his career on the railroad at the same time; he
was twenty-one. He started in the Department of Public Relations.

Dagny’s rise among the men who operated Taggart Transcontinen-
tal was swift and uncontested. She took positions of responsibility
because there was no one else to take them. There were a few rare
men of talent around her, but they were becoming rarer every year.
Her superiors, who held the authority, seemed afraid to exercise it,
they spent their time avoiding decisions, so she told people what to
do and they did it. At every step of her rise, she did the work long
before she was granted the title. It was like advancing through empty
rooms. Nobody opposed her, yet nobody approved of her progress.

Her father seemed astonished and proud of her. but he said noth-
ing and there was sadness in his eyes when he looked at her in the
office. She was twenty-nine years old when he died. ‘'There has al-
ways been a Taggart to run the railroad,*' was the last thing he said
to her. He looked at her with an odd glance: it had the quality of a
salute and of compassion, together.

The controlling stock of Taggart Transcontinental was left to
James Taggart. He was thirty-four when he became President ot the
railroad. Dagny had expected the Board of Directors to elect him,
but she had never been able to understand why they did it so eagerly.
They talked about tradition, the president had always been the eldest
son of the Taggart family; they elected James Taggart in the same
manner as they refused to walk under a ladder, to propitiate the
same kind of fear. They talked about his gift of "making railroads
popular/’ his "good press,*’ his "Washington ability." He seemed
unusually skillful at obtaining favors from the Legislature.

Dagny knew nothing about the field of "Washington ability" or
what such an ability implied. But it seemed to be necessary, so she.
dismissed it with the thought that there were many kinds of work
which were offensive, yet necessary, such as cleaning sewers; some-
body had to do it, and Jim seemed to like it.

She had never aspired to the presidency; the Operating Depart-
ment was her only concern. When she went out on the line, old
railroad men, who hated Jim, said, "There will always be a Taggart
to run the railroad,” looking at her as her father had looked. She was
armed against Jim by the conviction that he was not smart enough to
harm the railroad too much and that she would always be able to
correct whatever damage he caused.

At sixteen, sitting at her operator's desk, watching the lighted win-
dows of Taggart trains roll past, she had thought that she had entered
her kind of world. In the years since, she learned that she hadn’t. The
adversary she found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or
beating; it was not a superior ability which she would have found
honor in challenging; it was ineptitude — a gray spread of cotton that
seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything
or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way* She stood,

55

disarmed, before the riddle of what made this possible She could
fmd no answer

It was only in the first few years that she felt hcrselt screaming
silently at times, for a glimpse of human ability a single glimpse of
clean hard radiant competence She had fits of tortured longing for
a fnend or an enetnv with a mind better than her own But the
longing passed She had a job to do She did not have time to feel
pain not often

rhe first step of the policy that James laggart brought to the
railroad was the construction of the San Sebastian L me Many men
were responsible for it but to Dagny one name stood written across
the venture a name that wiped out all others whenever she saw it
It stood across five vcais of struggle across milts ot wasted track
across sheets of figures that rtcorded the losses ot Taggart Iranscon
tmental like a red trickle from a wound which would not heal as
it stood on the ticker tape of every stock exchange lett m the world-
as it stood on smokestacks m tht red glare of furnaces melting cop
per — as it stood in scandalous headlines — as it stood on pirchmint
pages recording the nobility of tht centuries— as it stood on cards
attached to flowers m the boudoirs of women scattered through
three continents

The name was Iraneisco d Anconia

At the age of twenty three when he inherited his fortune I ran
cisco d Antonia had been famous as the copper king of the world
Now at thirty six he was famous as the richest man and the most
spectacularly worthless playboy on earth He was the last descendant
of one of the noblest families ol Argentina Ht owned cattle ranches
coffee plantations and most ol the copper mines ot f hile He owned
half of South Ami nca and sundry mines scattered through the
United States as small change

When Francisco d’Anconia suddenly bought miles ot bare nioun
tains an Mexico news leaked out that he had discovered vast deposits
of copper He made no effort to sell stock in his venture the stock
was begged out ol his hands and he merely chose those whom he
wished to favor from among the applicants His financial talent was
called phenomenal no om had ever beaten him m any transac tton—
he added to his incredible fortune with cverv deal he touched and
every step he made when he took the trouble to make it Those
who censured him most were first to sei/c the chance of riding on
his talent, toward a share of his new wealth James Taggart Orren
Boyle and their friends were among the heaviest stockholders of the
project which Francisco d Ancoma had named the San Sebastian
Mines

Dagny was never able to discover what influences prompted James
Taggart to build a railroad branch from Texas the wilderness
of San Sebastian it seemed likely that he did not f know it himself
like a field without a windbreak he seemed opei$ to any current,
and the final sum was made by chance A few amcing the Directors
of Taggart Transcontinental objected to the project The company
needed all its resources to rebuild the Rio Norte lane, it could not

56

do both. But James Taggart was the road’s new president. It was
the first year of his administration. He won.

The People’s Slate of Mexico was eager to co-operate, and signed
a contract guaranteeing for two hundred years the property right of
Taggart Transcontinental to its railroad line in a country where no
property rights existed. Francisco d’Anconia had obtained the same
guaranty for his mines.

Dagny fought against the building of the San Sebastian Line. She
fought by means of whoever would listen to her; but she was only
an assistant in the Operating Department, too yourfg, without author-
ity, and nobody listened.

She was unable, then or since, to understand the motives of those
who decided to build the line. Sitting as a helpless spectator, a minor-
ity member, at one of the Board meetings, she felt a strange eva-
siveness in the air of the room, in every speech, in every argument,
as if the real reason of their decision were never stated, but clear to
everyone except herself.

They spoke about the future importance of the trade with Mexico,
about a rich stream of freight, about the large revenues assured to
the exclusive carrier of an inexhaustible supply of copper. They
proved it by citing Francisco d’Anconia's past achievements. They
did not mention any mineralogical facts about the San Sebastian
Mines. Few facts were available; the information which d’Anconia
had released was not very specific; but they did not seem to need
facts.

They spoke at great length about the poverty of the Mexicans and
their desperate need of railroads. “They’ve never had a chance.” “It
is our duty to help an underprivileged nation to develop. A country,
it seems to me, is its neighbors’ keeper.”

She sat, listening, and she thought of the many branch lines which
Taggart Transcontinental had had to abandon; the revenues of the
great railroad had been falling slowly for many years. She thought
of the ominous need of repairs, ominously neglected over the entire
system. Their policy on the problem of maintenance was not a policy,
but a game they seemed to be playing with a piece of rubber that
could be stretched a little, then a little more.

“The Mexicans, it seems to me, are a very diligent people, crushed
by their primitive economy. How can they become industrialized if
nobody lends them a hand?” “When considering an investment, we
should in my opinion, take a chance on human beings, rather than
on purely material factors.”

She thought of an engine that lay in a ditch beside the Rio Norte
Line, because a splice bar had cracked. She thought of the five days
when all traffic was stopped on the Rio Norte Line, because a re-
taining wall had collapsed, pouring tons of rock across the track.

“Since a man must think of the good of his brothers before he
thinks of his own, it seems to me that a nation must think of its
neighbors before it thinks of itself.”

She thought of a newcomer called Ellis Wyatt whom people were
beginning to watch, because his activity was the first trickle of a
torrent of goods about to burst from the dying stretches of Colorado.

57

The Rio Norte Line was being allowed to run its way to a final
collapse, just when its fullest efficiency was about to be needed
and used.

“Material greed isn’t everything. There are non-material ideals to
consider.” ”1 confess to a feeling of shame when 1 think that we
own a huge network of railways, while the Mexican people have
nothing but one or two inadequate lines.” “The old theory of eco-
nomic self-sufficiency has been exploded long ago. ll is impossible
for one country to prosper in the midst of a starving world.”

She thought that to make Taggart Transcontinental what it had
been once, long betore her time, every’ available rail, spike and dollar
was needed — and how desperately little of it was available.

They spoke also, at the same session, in the same speeches, about
the efficiency of the Mexican government that held complete control
of everything. Mexico had a great future, they said, and would be-
come a dangerous competitor in a tew years. “Mexico's got disci-
pline,” the men of the Board kept saying, with a note of envy in
their voices.

James Taggart let it be understood — in unfinished sentences and
undefined hints — that his friends in Washington, whom he never
named, wished to see a railroad line built in Mexico, that such a line
would be of great help in matters of international diplomacy, that
the good will of public opinion of the world would more than repay
Taggart Transcontinental for its investment.

They voted to build the San Sebastian Line at a cost of thirty
million dollars.

When Dagny left the Board room and walked through the clean,
cold air of the streets, she heaid two words repeated clearly, insis-
tently in the numbed emptiness of her mind: Get out . . . Get out . , .
Get out.

She listened, aghast. The thought of leaving 1'aggart Transconti-
nental did not belong among the things she could hold as conceiv-
able. She felt terror, not at the thought, but at the question of what
had made her think it. She shook her head angrily; she told herself
that Taggart Transcontinental would now need her more than ever.

Two of the Directors resigned; so did the Vice-President m Charge
of Operation. He was replaced by a triend of James Taggart.

Steel rail was laid across the Mexican desert — while orders were
issued to reduce the speed of trains on the Rio Norte Line, be-
cause the track was shot. A depot of reinforced concrete, with
marble columns and mirrors, was built amidst the dust of an un-
paved square in a Mexican village — while a train of tank cars car-
rying oil went hurtling down an embankment and into a blazing junk
pile, because a rail had split on the Rio Norte Line. Ellis Wyatt did
not wait for the court to decide whether the accident was an act of
God, as James Taggart claimed. He transferred the^hipping of his oil to
the Phoenix -Durango, an obscure railroad which ^as small and strug-
gling, but struggling well. This was the rocket th^t sent the Phoenix-
Durango on its way. From then on, it grew, as Wyatt Oil grew, as
factories grew tn nearby valleys — as a band of r^ls and ties grew, at

58

the rate of two miles a month, across the scraggly fields of Mexi*
can corn.

Dagny was thirty-two years old, when she told James Taggart that
she would resign. She had run the Operating Department for the
past three years, without title, credit or authority. She was defeated
by loathing for the hours, the days, the nights she had to waste
circumventing the interference of Jim’s friend who bore the title of
Vice-President m Charge of Operation The man had no policy, and
any decision he made was always hers, but he made it only after he
had made eveiy effort to make it impossible. What she delivered to
her brother was an ultimatum He gasped, ”But, Dagny, youTe a
woman! A woman as Opeiating Vice President? It's unheard of! The
Board won’t considei it!”

“Then 1’rn through,” she answered.

She did not think of what she would do with the rest of hei life.
To face leaving Taggart Transcontinental was like waiting to ha\c
her legs amputated' she thought she would let it happen, then take
up the load of whatever was loll

She nevei understood why the Board ot Directors voted unani-
mously to make hci Vice-President in C’haige of Operation,

It was she who finally gave them their San Sebastian line When
she took o\ei the const luction had been under way lor three years,
one third of its track was laid; the cost to date was beyond the
authon/ed total She tired Jnn’s friends and lound a contractor who
completed the job in one war

I he San Sebastian l me was now' in operation. No surge of Bade
had come across the bordei, noi any trains loaded with copper. A
lew carloads came clattering down the mountains from San Sebas-
tian, at long intervals. The mines, said Francisco d Anconia, were
still in the piocess ot development. The drain on Taggart Transconti-
nental had not stopped

Now she sat at the desk in her office, as she had sat for many
evenings, trying to work out the problem of what branches could
save the system and in how many years.

The Rio Norte l me, when rebuilt, would redeem the rest. As she
looked at the sheets of figures announcing losses and more losses,
she did not think of the long, senseless agony tit the Mexican venture.
She thought of a telephone call. Hank, can you save us? Can you
give us rail on the shortest notice and the longest credit possible?”
A quiet, steady voice had answered. “Sure ”

The thought was a point of support. She leaned over the sheets
of paper on her desk, finding it suddenly easier to concentrate. There
was one thing, at least, that could be counted upon not to crumble
when needed.

James Taggart crossed the anteroom of Dagny ’$ office, still holding
the kind of confidence he had felt among his companions at the
barroom half an hour ago. When he opened her door, the confidence
vanished. He crossed the room to her desk like a child being dragged
to punishment, storing the resentment for all his future years.

He saw a head bent over sheets of paper, the light of the desk

59

lamp glistening on strands ot disheveled hair, a white shirt clinging
to her shoulders, its loose tolds suggesting the thinness of her body
“What is it, Jim*”

“What are you trying to pull on the San Sebastian Line*”

She raised her head “Pull* Why*”

“What sort ot schedule are wc running down there and what kind
of trams*

She laughed, the sound was gay and a little weary “You really
ought to read the reports sent to the president’s office, Jim, once in
a while ”

‘ What do you mean *”

“We've been junning that schedule and those trams on the San
Sebastian for the last three months ’

‘ One passenger tram a day *”

“ — in the morning And one freight tram every other night ”
“Good God* On an important blanch like that*

“The important branch can t pav e\en for those two trams ’

“But the Mexican people expect real service from us* ’

‘ Pm sure they do ’

‘ They need trams*”

‘Tor what*’

‘For To help them develop local mdustnes How do vou
expect them to develop if we don t give them transportation*”

‘ I don t expect them to develop ’

That’s just your personal opinion I don t see what right you had
to take it upon \ourself to cut our schedules Why, the copper tiaffic
alone will pay foi everything ”

“When *’

He looked at her his face assumed the satisfaction of a person
about to utter something that has the power to hurt ‘You don t
dopbt the success of those copper mines, do you * when it’s Fran
cisco d’Ancoma who s lunning them * He stressed the name, watch
ing her

She said. He mav be you? hi end, but
* My friend* ! thought he was youis ’

She said steadily, ‘ Not for the last ten years ’

“That’s too bad, isn’t it 9 Still, he’s one of the smartest operators
on earth He’s never failed in a venture— 1 mean, a business ven*
turc — and he s sunk millions of his own money into those mines, so
we can rtlv on his judgment ’

“When will you reah/e that Francisco d’Ancoma has turned into
a worthless bum 9 ”

He chuckled “1 always thought that that’s what he was— as far as
his personal character is concerned But you didnft share my opinion
Yours was opposite Oh my, how opposite* Sorely you icmcmber
our quarrels on the subject 9 Shall I quote sonue of the things you
said about him 9 I can only surmise as to some of'the things you did ”
“Do you wish to discuss Francisco d’Antonift* Is that what you
came here for 9 ”

His face showed the anger of failure— because hers showed noth-

60

ing. “You know damn well whai I came here for!” he snapped. 4 Tve
heard some incredible things about our trains in Mexico/’

“What things?”

“What sort of rolling stock are you using down there?”

“The worst 1 could find/'

“You admit that?”

“I've stated it on paper in the reports 1 sent you.”

“Is it true that you’re using wood-burning locomotives?”

“Eddie found them for me in somebody’s abandoned roundhouse
down in Louisiana. He couldn’t even learn the name of the railroad.”

“And that's what you're running as Taggart trains?”

“Yes.”

“What in hell’s the big idea? What’s going on? I want to know
what’s going on!”

She spoke evenly, looking straight at him. “If you want to know,

1 have left nothing but junk on the San Sebastian Line, and as little
of that as possible. I have moved everything that could be moved —
switch engines, shop tools, even typewriters and mirrors— out of
Mexico.”

“Why in blazes?”

"So that the looters won’t have too much to loot when they nation-
alize the line.”

He leaped to his leet “You won't get away with that! This is one
time you won’t get away with it f To have the nerve to pull such a
low. unspeakable . . just because of some vicious tumors, when we
have a contract for two hundred yeais and

“Jim.” she said slowly, “there’s not a car. engine or ton of coal
that we can spare anywhere on the system.”

“I won't permit it, I absolutely won't permit such an outrageous
policy toward a friendly people who need our help Material greed
isn't everything. After all. there aie non-material considerations,
even though you wouldn't understand them!”

She pulled a pad forward and picked up a pencil. “All right, Jim,
How many trains do you wish me to run on the San Sebastian Line?”

“Huh?”

“Which runs do you wish me to cut and on which ol our lines —
in order to get the Diesels and the steel coaches'*”

“I don't want you to cut any runs!”

“Then where do 1 get the equipment tor Mexico?”

“That’s for you to figure out. It’s y our job ”

“I am not able to do it. You will have to decide.”

hat's your usual rotten trick — switching the responsibility to

me!”

“I’m waiting tor orders, Jim.”

“I’m not going to let you trap me like that!”

She dropped the pencil “Then the San Sebastian schedule will
remain as it is.”

“Just wait till the Board meeting next month. I'll demand a deci-
sion, once and for all, on how far the Operating Department is to
be permitted to exceed its authority. You're going to have to answer
foi this/'

61

4 Til answer for it.”

She was back at her work before the door had closed on Jajnes
Taggart.

When she finished, pushed the papers aside and glanced up, the
sky was black beyond the window, and the city had become a glow-
ing spread of lighted glass without masonry. She rose reluctantly.
She resented the small defeat of being tired, but she knew that she
was, tonight.

The outer office was dark and empty; her staff had gone. Only
Eddie Willers was still there, at his desk m his glass partitioned en-
closure that looked like a cube of light in a corner of the large room.
She waved to him on her way out

She did not take the elevator to the lobby of the building, but to
the concourse of the Taggart Terminal. She liked to walk through it
on her way home.

She had always felt that the concourse looked like a temple.
Glancing up at the distant ceiling, she saw dim vaults supported by
giant granite columns, and the tops of vast windows gla/ed by dark-
ness. The vaulting held the solemn peace of a cathedral, spread in
protection high above the rushing activity ol men.

Dominating the concourse, but ignored by the travelers as a habit-
ual sight, stood a statue of Nathaniel Taggart, the founder of the
iailroad. Dagny was the only one who remained aware of it and had
never been able to take it for granted. To look at that statue when-
ever she crossed the concourse, was the only form at prayer she
knew.

Nathaniel Taggart had been a penniless adventurer who had come
from somewhere in New r England and built a railroad across a conti-
nent, in the days of the first steel rails. His railroad still stood; his
battle to build it had dissolved into a legend, because people pre-
ferred not to undei stand it or to believe it possible.

He was a man who had never accepted the creed that others had
the right to .stop him. He set his goal and moved toward it, his way
as straight as one of his rails. He never sought any loans, bonds,
subsidies, land grants or legislative favors from the government He
obtained money fiom the men who owned it, going from door to
door — from the mahogany doors ol bankers to the clapboard doors
of lonely farmhouses. He never talked about the public good. He
merely told people that they would make big piofits on his railroad,
he told them why he expected the profits and he gave his reasons.
He had good reasons. Through all the generations that followed,
Taggart Transcontinental was one ol the lew' railroads that never
went bankrupt and the only one whose controlling stock remained
in the hands of the founder's descendants.

in his lifetime, the name "Nat Taggart” was not famous, hut noto-
rious; it was repeated, not in homage, but in resentful curiosity; and
if anyone admired him, it was as one admires unsuccessful bandit.
Yet no penny of his wealth had been obtained by Jorcc or fraud; lie
was guilty of nothing, except that he earned hi.^ own fortune and
never forgot that it was his.

Many stories were whispered about him. It was said that in the

62

wilderness of the Middle West, he murdered a state legislatoi who
attempted to revoke a charter granted to him, to revoke it when his
rail was laid halfway across the state some legislators had planned
to make a fortune on Taggart stock — by selling it short Nat Taggart
was indicted for the murder but the charge could never be proved
He had no trouble with legislators trom then on
It was said that Nat Taggart had slaked his life on his railroad
many times, but once, he staked mote than his life Despeiate for
funds with the construction of his line suspended he threw down
three flights of stairs a distinguished gentleman who offered him a
loan trom the government I hen he pledged his wile as securit) tor
a loin from a millionaire who hated him and admired her beauty
He repaid the lo tn on time and did not have to surrender his pledge
The deal had been made with his wife s consent She was a great
beauty from the noblest fannlv of a southern state and she had been
disinherited by her family because she eloped with Nat Taggart when
he was only a ragged young adventurei
Dagny rcgietted at times that Nat T aggait was her aneestoi What
she kit tor him did not belong in the category ot unchosen tamity
affections She did not want her feeling to be the thing one was
supposed to owe an uncle or a grandfather She was incapable of
love foi any object not of her own choice and she resented anyone’s
Jutland for it Hut had it been possible to vhoosc an ancestor she
would have chosen Nit Taggart in voluntary horn ige and with all
ot her giatuudc

Nat Ta«gart s ctuuc was copied fiom an artist \ sketch o( him, the
only recoid mr made of his appearance He had lived far into old
age but one could ncvei think of him except as ht was on that
sktkh -as a younp man In her childhood his statue had been Dag
ny s first r once pi ot the exalted When she w is sent to church or to
school and he aid people using that word, she thought that she knew
what they infant she thought of the statue

Ihe statue was of x voung man with a tall gaunt body and an
angular face He held his ht ad as if he faced a challenge and found
jo\ in his capautv to meet it All that Dagnv wanted of life was
eontamed in the desne to hold her head as he did

tonight she looked at the* statue when she walked across the
eoncouise It was a moment s rest it was as it a buiden she could
not name were lightened and as il a faint ament of air were touching
her forehead

In a corner of the concourse by the mam enhance there was a
small newsstand lhe ownu a ejuicl, courteous old man with an air
of breeding had stood behind his counter for twenty years He had
owned a cigarette factory once but it had gone bankrupt and he
had resigned himself to the lonely obscurity of his little stand in the
midst of an eternal whirlpool of strangers He had no tamily or
friends left alive He had a hobby which was his only pleasure, he
gathered ugurettes from all over the world tor his private collection,
he knew every brand made or that had ever been made
Dagny hked to slop at his newsstand on her way out He seemed
to lx* part of the Taggart Terminal, like an old watchdog too feeble

6 ^

to protect It, but reassuring by the loyalty of his presence He liked
to see her commg, because it amused him to think that be alone
knew the importance ol the young woman in a sports coat and a
slanting hat who came hurrying anonymously through the crowd
She stopped tonight as usual, to buv a package ot cigarettes
“How is the collection ' she asked him “Any new specimens'”

He smiled sadl\ shaking his head “No, Miss Taggart 1 heie aren t
anv new brands made anvwheie in the uorld Even the old ones are
going one attcr another I here’s only tive or six kinds left selling
now Iheie used to be dozens People aren t making anything new
an\ more ’

‘They will That’s only tempoiary ’

He glanced at her and did not answer Then he sauk I like ciga-
rettes, Miss Taggart I like to think of hre held in a man’s hand
Fire, a dangerous torce tamed at his fingertips l often wonder about
the hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigaiette
thinking I wonder what great things bavt come from such hours
When a man thinks, there is a spot of tire alive in his mind -and it
is proper that he should have the burning point of a ugaiette as his
one expression ’

“Do they ever think' she asked involuntarily and stopped the
question was her one personal torture and she did not want to dts
cuss it

The old man looked as if he had noticed the sudden stop and
understood it but he did not start discussing it, he said instead, l
don’t like the thing that s happening to people Miss 1 aggart *

1 What'’

“l don’t know But I ve watched them here tor twenty years and
1 \e seen the change The\ used to rush through here, and it was
wondeiful to watch it was the hurry ot men who knew where they
were going and were eager to gel there Now they’re huirying be-
cause they arc afiaid It’s not a purpose that dmes them, it’s fear
They’re not going anywhere, thcyTe escaping And 1 don’t think
they know what it is that they want to escape They don t look at
one another ITicy jerk when brushed against they smile too much
but it’s an ugly kind of smiling it’s not joy it s pleading 1 don’t
know what it is that s happening to the world ’ He shrugged “Oh.
well who is John Galt 7 ’

“He’s just a meaningless phrase 1 ’

She was startled b\ the sharpness of her own voice, and she added
in apology i don’t like that empty piece of slang What does U
mean 9 Where did it come from 9 ”

“Nobody knows,” he answered slowly

“Why do people keep saying it ' Nobody scents able to explain just
what it stands for, yet they all use it as it they?knew the meaning ’
“Why does it disturb you 7 ” he asked
“l don’t like what they seem to mean when &hcy say it ”

“1 don’t, either. Miss Taggart ”

* *

Eddie Wtllers ate his dinners in the employees’ cafeteria ol the
Taggart Terminal There was a restaurant »n the building, patronized

64

by Taggart executives, but he did not Hite it. The cafeteria seemed
part of the railroad, and he felt more at home.

The cafeteria lay underground. It was a large room with walls of
white tile that glittered in the reflections of electric lights and looked
like silver brocade. It had a high ceiling, sparkling counters of glass
and chromium, a sense of space and light.

There was a railroad worker whom Eddie Willers met at times in
the cafeteria. Eddie liked his face. They had been drawn into a
chance conversation once, and then it became their habit to dine
together whenever they happened to meet.

Eddie had forgotten whether he had ever asked the worker’s name
oi the nature of his job; he supposed that the job wasn’t much,
because the man’s clothes were rough and grease-stained. Ilte man
was not a person to him, but only a silent presence with an enormous
intensity of interest in the one thing which was the meaning of his
own life: in Taggart Transcontinental.

Tonight, coming down late, Eddie saw the worker at a table in a
corner of the half-deserted room. Eddie smiled happily, waving to
him, and carried his tray of food to the worker’s table.

In the privacy of their comer. Eddie felt at ease, relaxing after
the long strain of the day He could talk as he did not talk anywhere
else, admitting things he would not confess to anyone, thinking
aloud, looking into the attentive eyes ot the worker across the tabic,

“The Rio Norte Line is our last hope,” said Eddie Willers. “But
it will save us Well have at least one branch in good condition,
wheie it’s needed most, and that will help to save the rest. , . . It’s
tunny—isn’t it? -to speak about a last hope for Taggart Transconti-
nental. Do you take it seriously if somebody tells you that a meteor
is going to destroy the earth? . . J don’t, either. . . ‘From Ocean
to Ocean, forever’ — that’s what we heard all through our childhood,
she and 1. No. they didn’t say ‘forever,’ hut that’s what it meant. . . ,
You know. I'm not any kind of a great man. I couldn’t have built
that railroad. If it goes, 1 won’t be able to bring it back Til have to
go with it. . . . Don’t pay any attention to me I don’t know why I
should want to say things like that Guess I’m just a little tired
tonight. . . Yes, I worked late. She didn’t ask me to stay, but there
was a light under her door, long after all the others had gone . . .Yes,
she’s gone home now. . . . Trouble? Oh, there’s always trouble in
the office. But she’s not worried. She knows she can pull us
through. . . . OI course, it’s bad. We re having many more accidents
than you hear about. We lost two Diesels again, last week. One —
just from old age, the other —in a head-on collision. . . . Yes, we
have Diesels on order, at the United Locomotive Works, but we’ve
waited tor them for two years. I don’t know whether we’U ever get
them or not. . . . God, do we need them! Motive power — you can’t
imagine how important that is. That’s the heart of everything. . . .
What are you smiling at? . . . Well, as I was saying, it’s bad. But at
least the Rio Norte Line is set. The first shipment of rail will get to
the site in a few weeks. In a year, well run the first train on the
new track. Nothing’s going to stop us, this time. . . . Sure, I know
who’s going to lay the rail. McNamara, of Cleveland. He’s the con-

65

tractor who finished the San Sebastian Line for us There, at least,
is one man who knows his job So we’re safe We tan count oil him
There aren't many good contractors left We’re rushed as hell,
but I like it I've been coming to the office an hour earlier than
usual, but she beats me to if She s always there first What >

1 don't know what she does at night Nothing much 1 guess
No, she never goes out with anyone She sits at home, mostly, and
listens to music She plays recoids What do >ou care, which
lecords* Richard Halley She loves the music of Richard Halley
Outside the railroad that’s the only thing she loves ”

Chapter IV THE IMMOVABLE MOVERS

Motive power — thought Dagnv, looking up at the laggart Building
in the twilight - was its first need motive powti, to keep that build-
ing standing, movement to keep it immovable It did not rest on
piles driven into granite, it rested on the engines that lolled across
a continent

She telt a dim touch of anxiety She was back from a trip to the
plant of the United Locomotive Works in New Jersey where she
had gone to see the president of the company m person She had
learned nothing neither the reason for the delays nor any indication
of the date when the Diesel engines would be produced The presi
dent of the company had talked to her for two hours But none of
his answers had connected to any of her questions His manner had
conveyed a peculiar note of condescending reproach whenever she
attempted to make the conversation specific, as if she were giving
proof of ill breeding by breaking some unwritten code known to
everyone else

On her way through the plant, she had seen an enormous piece
of machinery left abandoned in a corner of the vard It had been a
precision machine tool once, long ago of a kind that could not be
bought anywhere now It had not been worn out it had been rotted
by neglect, eaten by rust and the black dnppings of a dirty oil She
had turned her face away from it A sight of that nature always
blinded her for an instant by the burst of too violent an anger She
did not know why, she could not define her own feeling she knew
only that there was, in her leeling, a scream of protest against injus
tice, and that it was a response to something much beyond an old
piece of machinery

The rest of her staff had gone when she entered the anteroom of
her office, but Fddie Willers was still there, waiting lor her She
knew at once that something had happened, by the way he looked
and the way he followed her silently into her jnfhce
‘ What’s the matter, Eddie 7 ’

“McNamara quit ”

She looked at him blankly “What do you ijtean, quit 7 ”

“Left Retired Went out of business ’’

“McNamara, our contractor 7 ’’

“Yes ”

66

“But that’s impossible!”

“I know it.”

“What happened? Why?”

“Nobody knows.”

Taking her time deliberately, she unbuttoned her coat, sat down
at her desk, started to pull off her gloves. Then she said, “Begin at
the beginning, Lddie. Sit down.”

lie spoke quietly, but he remained standing. “I talked to his chief
engineer, long distance. The chiel engineer called from Cleveland,
to tell us. That’s all he said. He knew nothing else.”

“What did he say?”

“That McNamara has closed his business and gone.”

“Where?”

“He doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”

She noticed that she was holding with one hand iwo empty lingers
of the glove ot the other, the glove half-removed and forgotten She
pulled it off and dropped it on the desk.

Kddie said, “He’s walked out on a pile of contracts that are worth
a fortune. He had a waiting list ol clients for the next three
years. ...” She said nothing. He added, his voice low. “I wouldn’t
be frightened if 1 could understand u. . . . But a thing that can't
have any possible reason . . She icmained silent “He was the
best contractor in the country ”

They looked at each other. What she wanted to say was, “Oh
God, Kddie!” Instead, her voice even, she said. “Don't worry. We’ll
find another contractoi for the Rio Norte Line ”

It was late when she let! her office. Outside, on the sidewalk at
the door of the building, she paused, looking at the streets, She felt
suddenly empty of energy, of purpose, of desire, as if a motor had
crackled and stopped.

A faint glow streamed from behind the buildings into the sky. the
i ejection of thousands of unknown lights, the electric breath of the
city. She wanted to rest. To rest, she thought, and to find enjoy-
ment somewhere

Her work was all she had or wanted. But there were times, like
tonight, when she felt that sudden, peculiar emptiness, which was
not emptiness, but silence, not despair, but immobility, as if nothing
within her were destroyed, but everything stood still. Then she felt
the wish to find a moment's joy outside, the wish to be held as a
passive spectator by some work or sight of greatness. Not to make
it, she thought, but to accept: not to begin, but to respond; not to
create, but to admire. 1 need it to let me go on, she thought, because
joy is one’s fuel.

She had always been — she closed bci eyes with a faint smile of
amusement and pain— the motive power of her own happiness. For
once, she wanted to feel herself carried by the power of someone
else’s achievement. As men on a dark prairie liked to see the lighted
windows of a train going past, her achievement, the sight of power
and purpose that gave them reassurance in the midst of empty miles
and night— so she wanted to feel it for a moment, a brief greeting,

67

a single glimpse, just to wave her arm and say Someone is gomg
somewhere

She starttd w diking slowly her hands in the pockets of hei coat
the shadow of her slanting hat brim across her face The buildings
mound her rose to such heights that her glance could not hnd the
sky She thought It has taken so much to build this city it should
have so much to offer

Above the door of a shop the black hole ol a radio loudspeaker
was hurling sounds at the streets They were the sounds of a sym
phonv concert being given somewhere in the city They were a long
screech without shape as ol cloth and flesh bung tom at landom
They scattered with no melody no haimony no rhythm to hold
them It music was emotion and emotion came from thought then
this was the scream of chaos ol the irrational of the helpless of
man s self abdication

She walked on She slopped at the window ol a bookstore The
window displayed a pyramid ot slabs m brownish purple jackets in
scribed Hie Vulture Is Molting The novel of our century said a
placard * The penetrating study ol a businessman s greed A feailess
revelation of man s depravity

She walked past a movie theater Its lights wiped out half a block
leaving only a huge photograph and some letters suspended in bid/
mg mid air ITie photograph was of a smiling \oung woman looking
at her faee one felt the weariness of having seen it for years even
while seeing it for the first lime I he letters said in a inomtn
tous drama giving the answer to the great problem Should a
woman tejl 7

She walked past the door of a night club A couple came stag
gering out to a taxicab The girl had blurred eves a perspiring face
an ermine eape and a beautiful evening gown that had slipped oft
one shoulder like a slovenly housewife s bathrobe revealing too
much of her bteast not tn a manner of daring but in the manner
of a drudge’s indifference Her escort steered her gripping her naked
arm, his face did not have the expression of a man anticipating a
romantic adventure but the sly look of a boy out to write obscenities
on fences

What had she hoped to find'— she thought walking on These
were the things men lived by the forms of their spirit, of their cul
ture, of their enjoyment She had seen nothing else anywhere not
for many years

At the corner of the street where she lived she bought a newspa-
per and went home

Her apartment was two rooms on the top floor of a skyscraper
The sheets of glass in the corner window of her living room made
it look like the prow of a ship in motion and the Ugjpts of the city
were like phosphorescent sparks on the black wavef of steel and
stone When she turned on a lamp, long triangles of shadow cut the
bare walls, m a geometrical pattern of light rays broken by a few
angular pieces of furniture ?

She stood m the middle of the room, alone between sky and city
There was only one thing that could give her the feeling she wanted

68

to experience tonight; it was the only form of enjoyment she had
found. She turned to a phonograph and put on a record of the music
of Richard Halley.

It was his Fourth Concerto, the last work he had written. Hie
crash of its opening chords swept the sights of the streets away from
her mind. Hie Concerto was a great cry of rebellion. It was a “No”
flung at some vast process of torture, a denial of suffering, a denial
that held the agony of the struggle to break free. The sounds weic like
a voice saying: There is no necessity for pain — why, then, is the worst
pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity? — we who
hold the love and the secret of joy, to what punishment have we
been sentenced for it, and by whom? . , . The sounds of torture
became defiance, the statement ol agony became a hymn to a distant
vision for whose sake anything was worth enduring, even this. It was
the song of rebellion— and of a desperate quest.

She sat still, her eyes closed, listening

No one knew what had happened to Richard Halley, or why. The
story of his life had been like a summary written to damn greatness
by showing the price one pays for it. It had been a procession of
years spent in garrets and basements, years that had taken the gray
tinge of the walls imprisoning a man whose music overflowed with
violent color. It had been the gray ol a struggle against long flights
of unlighled tenement stairs, against frozen plumbing, against the
price of a sandwich in an ill-smelling delicatessen store, against the
faces of men who listened to music, their eyes empty. It had been a
struggle without the relief of violence, without the recognition of
finding a conscious enemy, with only a deal wall to batter, a wall of
the most effective soundproofing, indifference, that swallowed blows,
chords and screams— a battle of silence, for a man who could give
to sounds a greater eloquence than they had ever carried — the si-
lence of obscurity, of loneliness, of the nights when some rare orches-
tra played one ot his works and he looked at the darkness, knowing
that his soul went in trembling, widening circles from a radio tower
through the air of the city, but there were no receivers tuned to
hear it.

“The music of Richard Halley has a quality of the heroic. Our age
has outgrown that stuff,” said one critic. “The music of Richard
Halley is out of key with our times It has a tone of ecstasy. Who
cares for ecstasy nowadays?” said another.

His life had been a summary of the lives of all the men whose
reward is a monument in a public park a hundred years after the
time when a reward can matter — except that Richard Halley did not
die soon enough. He lived to see the night which, by the accepted
laws of historv, he was not supposed to see. He was forty-three years
old and it was the opening night of Phaethon, an opera he had
written at the age of twenty-four. He had changed the ancient Greek
myth to his own purpose and meaning: Phaethon, the young son of
Helios, who stole his father s chariot and, in ambitious audacity,
attempted to drive the sun across the sky, did not perish, as he
perished in the myth; in Halley's opera, PhaCthon succeeded. The
opera had been performed then, nineteen years ago, and had closed

69

after one performance, to the sound of booing and catcalls. That
night, Richard Halley had walked the streets of the city till dawn,
trying to find an answer to a question, which he did not find*

On the night when the opera was presented again, nineteen years
later, the last sounds of the music crashed into the sounds of the
greatest ovation the opera house had ever heard. The ancient walls
could not contain it, the sounds of cheering burst through to the
lobbies, to the stairs, to the streets, to the boy who had walked those
streets nineteen years ago.

Dagny was in the audience on the night of the ovation. She was
one of the few who had known the music of Richard Halley much
earlier, but she had never seen him. She saw him being pushed out
on the stage, saw him facing the enormous spread of waving arms
and cheering heads. He stood without moving, a tall, emaciated man
with graying hair. He did not bow, did not smile; he just stood there,
looking at the crowd. His face had the quiet, earnest look of a man
staring at a question.

‘The music ot Richard Halley,” wrote a critic next morning, 'be-
longs to mankind. It is the product and the expression of the great-
ness of the people.” “There is an inspiring lesson,” said a minister,
“in the life of Richard Halley. He has had a terrible struggle, but
what docs that matter? It is proper, it is noble that he should have
endured suffering, injustice, abuse at the hands of his brothers - in
order to enrich their lives and teach them to appreciate the beauty
of great music.”

On the day after the opening, Richard Halley retired.

He gave no explanation. He merely told his publisher that his
career was over. He sold them the rights to his works for a modest
sum, even though he knew that his royalties would now bring him
a fortune. *He went away, leaving no address. It was eight years ago:
no one had seen him since.

Dagny listened to the Fourth Concerto, her head thrown back, her
eyes closed. She lay hall-stretched across the corner ol a couch, her
body relaxed and still; but tension stressed the shape of her mouth
on her motionless face, a sensual shape drawn in lines of longing.

Aftei a while, she opened her eyes. She noticed the newspaper
she had thrown down on the couch. She reached for it absently, to
turn the vapid headlines out of sight. The paper fell open. She saw
the photograph of a face she knew, and the heading of a story. She
slammed the pages shut and flung them aside.

It was the face of Francisco d’Anconia. The heading said that he
had arrived in New York. What of it? —she thought. She would not
have to see him. She had not seen him for years.

She sat looking at the newspaper on the floor. Don’t read it. she
thought; don't look at it. But the face, she thought, had not changed.
How could a face remain the same when everything else was gone?
She wished they had not caught a picture of him whpn he smiled.
That kind of smile did not belong in the pages of a newspaper. It
was the smile of a man who is able to see, to know |md to create
the glory of existence. It was the mocking, challenging smile of a

70

brilliant intelligence- Don’t read it, she thought; not now— not to
that music — oh, not to that music!

She reached for the papci and opened it.

The story said that Softer Francisco d’Anconia had granted an
interview to the press in his suite at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. He
said that he had come to New York for two important reasons: a
hatchcck girl at the Cub Club, and the liverwurst at Moe’s Delicates-
sen on Third Avenue, He had nothing to say about the coming di-
vorce tiial of Mr and Mrs. Gilbert Vail. Mrs. Vail, a lady of noble
breeding and unusual loveliness, had taken a shot at her distin-
guished young husband, some monlhs ago, publicly declaring that
she wished to get rid of him for the sake of her lover, Francisco
d’Anconia. She had given to the press a detailed account of her
secret romance, including a description of the night of last New
Year’s Eve which she had spent at d’Anconia’s villa in the Andes.
Her husband had survived the shot and had sued for divorce. She
had countered with a suit for half of her husband’s millions, and
with a recital of his private life which, she said, made hers look
innocent. All of that had been splashed over the newspapers for
weeks. But Senor d’Anconia had nothing to say about it, when the
reporters questioned him. Would he deny Mrs. Vail’s story, they
asked. “I never deny anything,” he answered. The reporters had
been astonished by his sudden arrival in town; they had thought that
he would not wish to be there just when the worst of the scandal
was about to explode on the front pages. But they had been wrong.
Francisco d’Anconia added one more comment to the reasons for
his ai rival ”1 wanted to witness the farce,” he said.

Dagny let the paper slip to the floor. She sat, bent over, her head
on her arms. She did not move, but the strands of hair, hanging
down to hei knees, trembled in sudden jolts once in a while.

The great chords oi Halley’s music went on. filling the room, pierc-
ing the glass of the windows, streaming out over the city. She was
hearing the music. It was her quest, her cry,

* *

James Taggart glanced about the living room of his apartment,
wondering what time it was; he did not feel like moving to find his
watch. He sat in an armchair, dressed in wnnkled pajamas, bare-
tooled: it was too much trouble to look for his slippers. The light of
the gray sky in the windows hurt his eyes, still sticky with sleep. He
felt, inside his skull, the nasty heaviness which is about to become
a headache. He wondered angrily why he had stumbled out into the
living room. Oh yes, he remembered, to look for the time.

He slumped sidewise over the arm of the chair and caught sight
of a clock on a distant building: it was twenty minutes past noon.

Through the open door of the bedroom, he heard Betty Pope
washing her teeth in the bathroom beyond. Her girdle lay on the
floor, by the side of a chair with the rest of her clothes: the girdle
was a laded pink, with broken strands of rubber.

“Hurry up, will you?” he called irritably. k Tve got to dress.”

She did not answer. She had left the door of the bathroom open;
he could hear the sound of gargling.

71

Why do 1 do those things 9 he thought, remembering last night
But it was too much trouble to look for an anvwer
Betty Pope came into the living room, dragging the tolds of a satin
harlequin negligee — checkered in orange and purple She looked
awful in a negligee, thought Taggart, she was ever so much better
m a nding habit, in the photographs on the society pages of the
newspapers She was a lanky girl, all bones and loose joints that did
not move smoothly She had a homely face, a bad complexion and
a look ot impertinent condescension derived tTom the fact that she
belonged to one of the very best families

“Aw hell r she said at nothing m particular, stretching heiself
to limber up 'Jim, where arc your nail clippers 7 ! ve got to trim
my toenails

“I don t know I have a headache Do it at home
“\ou look unappeti/ing in the morning she said indifferently
“You look like a snail '

“Why don't you shut up ?

She wandered aimlessly about the room “I don t want to go
home,” she said with no particular feeling “I hate morning Here’s
another day and nothing to do 1 ve got a tea session on for this
afternoon, at L»/ Blanc’s Oh well, it might be tun, because 1 1 / is a
bitch She picked up a glass and swallowed the stale remnant of a
drink ‘Why don t you have them icpair your an conditioner 7 this
place smells

* Are >ou through in the bathroom 7 he asked 1 have to dress
I have an important engagement today ’

‘ Go right in 1 don’t mind I 11 share the bathroom with you l
hate to be rushed ’

While he shaved, he saw her dressing in front of the open bnth
room door She took a long time twisting herself into her girdle
hooking garteis to her stockings, pulling on an ungainly expensive
tweed suit The harlequin negligee, picked from an advertisement in
the smartest fashion magazine was like a uniform which she knew
to be expected on certain occasions which she had woin dutifully
for a specified purpose and then discarded
The nature of then relationship had the same quality Ihere was
no passion m it, no desire, no actual pleasure not even a sense of
shame To them the act of sex was neither joy noi sin It meant
nothing They had heard that men and women were supposed to
sleep together, so they did

“Jim, why don’t you take me to the Armenian restaurant tonight* 7 ’
she asked “I love shish-kebab ”

“1 can’t,” he answered angrily through the soap lather on his face
“I’ve got a busy day ahead ”

“Why don’t you cancel it* 7 ”

“What 9 ’

“Whatever it is ”

**Il is very important, my dear It is a meeting our Board of
Directors ”

’*Oh, don’t be stuffy about youT damn railroad It’$ boring I hate
businessmen They’re dull ”

72

He did not answer

She glanced at him slyly, and hoi voice acquired a livelier note
when she dtawled “Jock Benson said that you have a soft snap on
that railroad anyway because it s your sistei who runs the whole
works ”

‘Oh, he did, did he } ’

“I think that your sister is awful I think it’s disguslmg—a woman
aumg like a grease -monkey and posing aiound like a big executive
It’s so unfeimmne Who does she think she is anvway'’

laggart stepped out to the threshold He leaned against the door-
jamb studying Betty Pope 1 here was a taint smile on his face sarcastic
and confident They had he thought, a bond in common

4 It might interest you to know my dear 1 he said, ‘ that 1 m putting
the skids under my sister this afternoon
No’ ’ she said interested ‘ Really ;

And that is why this Board meeting is so important ’

‘Arc you really going to kick her out r

4 No That’s nut necessary or advisable l shall merely put her m
her place It’s the chance I \e been waiting for ’

You got something on her 9 Some scandal 9
‘No no You wouldn t understand It’s merely that she $ gone too
far for once and shi s going to get slapped down She s pulled an
inexcusable soit of stunt without consulting anybody It s a venous
offense against our Mexican neighbors When the Board hears about
it, they I] pass a couple of new rulings on the* Operating Department,
which will make my sister a little easier to manage ’

‘You’re smart, Jim she said

“1 d better get dressed He sounded pleised He turned back to
the washbowl adding checrtully Maybe I will take you out tonight
and buy you some shish kebab ’

I he telephone rang

He lilted the recover 1 he operatoi announced a longdistance
call from Mexico ( lty

the hysteiical voice that came on the wire was that ot his political
man in Mexico

l eouldn t help it lim’ it gulped l couldn t help it’ We
had no warning, 1 swear to Ciod, nobody suspected, nobody saw it
coming, I’ve done my best you can t blame me, Jim, it was a bolt
out ot the blue’ The decree came out this morning, just five minutes
ago they sprang it on us like that without any notice’ I he govern-
ment ot the People’s State ot Mexico has nationalized the San Sebas-
tian Mines and the San Sebastian Railroad ”

+ *

and, therefore', f can assure the gentlemen of the Board that
there is no occasion tor panic The event of this morning is a regrettable
development, but J have full confidence — based on my knowledge of
the inner processes shaping our foreign policy in Washington-— that
our government will negotiate an equitable settlement with the gov-
ernment of the People’s State ot Mexico, and that we will receive
lull and just compensation for our property "

73

James Taggart stood at the long table, addressing the Board of
Directors His voice was precise and monotonous; it connoted safety *
‘Tm giad to report, however, that I foresaw the possibility of such
a turn of events and look ever> precaution to protect the interests
ol Taggart Transcontinental Some months ago I instructed oui Op-
erating Department to cut the schedule on the San Sebastian Lint
down to a single train a day, and to remove from it oui best motive
power and rolling stock, as well as ever) piece of equipment that
could be moved The Mexican government was able to sei/e nothing
but a few wooden cars and one superannuated locomotive M> deu
sion has saved the company many millions of dollars —I shall have
the exact figures computed and submit them to you I do feel, how-
ever, that our stockholders will be justified in expecting that those
who bore the major responsibility for this venture should now bear
the consequences of their negligence 1 would suggest, therefore, that
we request the resignation of Mr Clarence Eddington, our economic
consultant, who recommended the construction of the San Sebastian
Line, and ol Mr Jules Mott, our icpresentative in Mexico City ”
The men sal around the long table, listening I hey did not think
of what (hey would have to do, but of what they would have to
say to the men they represented Taggart’s speech gave them what
they needed

+ *

Orren Boyle was waiting tor him, when Taggart returned to his
office Once they were alone Taggart s manner changed He leaned
against the desk, sagging his face loose, and white
" • Well 0 ” he asked

Boyle spiead his hinds out helplessly 1 l vc checked Jim,” he
said “ft’s straight all right d'Anconias lost fifteen million dollars of
his own money in those mines No, there wasn’t anything phony
about that he didn’t pull any sort of trick, he put up his own cash
and now he’s lost it ’

“WeH, what's he going to do about U 9 ’

“That — T don’t know Nobody docs ”

‘He’s not going to let himself be robbed is he 7 He’s too smart
for that He must have something up his sleeve ”

“T sure hope so ”

“He’s outwitted some of the slickest combinations of money-
grubbers on earth Is he going to be taken by a bunch of Greaser-
politicians with a decree 9 He must have something on them, and
he’ll get the last word and we must be sure to be m on it, too 1 ”
“That’s up to you, Jim You’re his friend ”

“Friend be damned* I hate his guts ”

He pressed a button for his secretary l he seci clary entered uncer
tainiy, looking unhappy, he was a young man, no loiter loo young,
with a bloodless face and the well-bred mannci of genteel poverty
“Did you get me an appointment with Franuscb d’Ancoma 7 ”
snapped Taggart
“No, sir ”

“But, God damn it, I told you to call the--”

“I wasn’t able to, sir l have tried ”

74

“Well, try again.”

“I mean I wasn’t able to obtain the appointment, Mr. Taggart,”
“Why not?”

“He declined it.”

“You mean he refused to see me?”

“Yes, sir, that is what I mean.”

“He wouldn't see me?”

“No, sir, he wouldn't.”

“Did you speak to him in person?”

“No, sir, I spoke to his secietary.”

“What did he tell you? Just what did he say?” The young man
hesitated and looked more unhappy. “What did he say?”

“He said that Senor d'Anconia said that you bore him, Mr.
Taggart."

<c *

The proposal which they passed was known as the “Anti-dog-eat-
dog Rule.” When they voted tor it, the members of the National
Alliance of Railroads sat in a large hall m the deepening twilight of
a late autumn evening and did not look at one another.

I he National Alliance ol Raiiioads was an organization termed,
it was claimed, to protect the welfare ol the railroad industry. This
was to be achieved by developing methods of co-operation for a
common purpose: this was to be achieved by the pledge ol every
member to subordinate his own interests to those of the industry as a
whole, the interests of the industry as a whole were to be determined
by a majority vote, and every member was committed to abide by any
decision the major ity chose to make.

“Members ol the same protession or of the same industry should
stick together,” the organizers ot the Alliance had said. “We all have
the same problems, the same interests, the same enemies. We waste
our energy fighting one another, instead of presenting a common
front to the world. We can all glow and prosper together, it we pool
our efforts." “Against whom is this Alliance being organized?” a
skeptic had asked. The answet had been: “Why, its not ‘against'
anybody. But it you want to put it that way, why, it’s against shippers
or supply manufacturers or anyone who might try to take advantage
of us. Against whom is any union organized?" “That's what 1 wonder
about,” the skeptic had said.

When the Anti-dog-eal-dog Rule was offered to the vote of the
full membership of the National Alliance of Railroads at its annual
meeting, it was the lirsl mention of this Rule in public. But all the
members had heard of it; it had been discussed privately for a long
time, and more insistently in the fast few months. The men who sat
in the large hall of the meeting were the presidents of the railroads.
They did not like the Anti-dog-cat-dog Rule; they had hoped it
would never be brought up. But when it was brought up, they voted
for it.

No railroad was mentioned by name in the speeches that preceded
the voting. The speeches dealt only with the public welfare. It was
said that while the public welfare was threatened by shortages of
transportation, railroads were destroying one another through vicious

75

competition, on “the brutal policy ot dog-eat-dog ” While there ex
isted blighted aieas where rail service had been discontinued, there
existed at the same time large regions wheie two or more railroads
were competing for a traffic barely sufficient for one It was said that
there were great opportunities for younger railroads in the blighted
areas While it was true that such areas offered little economic mcen
tive at present, a public spirited railroad, it was said would under
take to provide transportation for the struggling inhabitants since
the prime purpose of a raihoad was public service not prolit

TTien it was said that large established railroad systems were es
sential to the public welfare and that the collapse ot one of them
would be a national catastrophe and that if ont such system had
happened to sustain a ciushing loss in a public spirited attempt to
contribute to international good will it was entitle d to public support
to help it survive the blow

No railroad was mentioned by name But when thi chairman ot
the meeting raised his hand as a solemn signal that they were about
to vole everybody looked at Dan Conway president of the Phoenix
Durango

I here were only five, dissenters who voted agunst it \ct when
the chairman annoum^d that the measure had pissed theie was no
cheering no sounds of approval no movement nothing but \ heav\
silence To the last minute tvuy one of ihtm had hoped that some
one would save ttKm trom it

Ihe Anti dog eat ciog Rule w is dt scribed as a measure ol \olun
tarv self regulation intend* d the better to enforce the laws long
since passed bv the country s I egislatuie Ihe Rule provided that
the members ot the National Alhtnee of Railroads wire tot bidden
to engage in practices delmed is ‘destructive competition that m
regions declared to be icstnUed no more than one tailroad would
be permitted to operate that in such regions seniority belonged to
the oldest railroad now operating then and that the newcomers
who had encroached unfauly upon its terrttoiy would suspend oper
dlions within nine months after being so ordered that the £ xecutive
Board of the National Alliance of Railroads was empowered to de
cide at its sole discretion which regions were to be restricted

When the meeting adjourned the men hastened to leave Hierc
were no private discussions, no lnendlv loitering The gicat hall be
came deserted m an unusually short time Nobody spoke to or
looked at Dan Conway

In the lobby of the building James Taggart met Orrcn Boyle
They had made no appointment to meet but laggart saw a bulky
figure outlined against a marble wall and knew who it was before
he saw the face I hey approached cMch other, and Boyle said his
smile less soothing than usual I vt dtliveied Vour twin now
Jimmy * ‘You didn t have to come here Why did you ; said lag
gart sullenly * Oh, just (or the fun of it said Boyfe

Dan Conway sat alone among rows of t mpty sdats He was still
there when the charwoman came to clean the hall When she hailed
him, he rose obediently and shuffled to the door Passing her in the
aisle, he fumbled in his pocket ano handed her 4 live dollar bill

76

silently meekly, not looking at her face He did not seem to know
what he was doing he acted as if he thought that he was m some
place where generosity demanded that he give a tip before leaving
Dagny was still at her desk when the door of her office flew open
and James Taggart rushed in It was the first time he had ever en-
tued in such manner His face looked feverish
She had not seen him since the nationalization of the San Sebas-
tian 1 ine He had not sought to discuss it with her, and she had said
nothing about it She had been proved right so eloquently, she had
thought, that comments were unnecessary A feeling which was part
courtesy part men y had stopped h< r from stating to him the eonclu
sion to be drawn from the events In all reason and justice there
was but one conclusion he could draw She had heard about his
spetch to the Board ot Directors She had shrugged, contemptuously
amused if it served his puiposc whatever that was, to appropriate
hei achievements then lor his own advantage if for no other reason
he would leave her tree to achieve from now on

So vou think you’re the only one who s doing anything tor this
railroad *

She looked at him bewildered His voice was shrill he stood in
front ot her desk tense with excitement

So you think that I ve ruined the company don't you*’ he
yelled And now you’re the only one who can save us* Think l
have no way to make up foi the Mexican loss*

She asked slowly What do vou want*

I want to tell you some news Do you remember the Anti dog
eat dog pioposal ot the Railroad Alii inee that 1 told you about
months ago* You didn t like the idea You didn t like it at ail
I remember What about it*

It has been passed
What has been passe d *

Ihe Anti dog eat dog Rule Just a few minutes ago At the meet-
ing Nine months trom now there s not going to be any Phoenix
Durango Railroad in Coloiado’

A glass ashtray crashed to the floor off the desk as she leaped to
her feet

You rotten bastards’

He stood motionless He was smiling

She knew that she was shaking open to him, without defenve and
that this was the sight he enjoyed but it did not matter to her Then
she saw his smile— and suddenly the blinding anger vanished She
felt nothing She studied that smile with a cold impersonal curiosity
They stood facing each other He l<x>ked as if, for the first time,
he was not afraid ot her He was gloating 1 he event meant some
thing to him much beyond the destruction of a competitor It was
not a victory over Dan C on way, but over her She did not know
why or m what manner but she felt certain that he knew
For the flash ot one instant, she thought that here, before her, m
Janies Taggart and in that which made him smile, was a secret she
had never suspected, and it was crucially important that she learn to
understand it But the thought flashed and vanished

77

She whirled to the door of a closet and seized her coat.

“Where are you going?” Taggart’s voice* had dropped; it sounded
disappointed and faintly warned.

She did not answer She rushed out of the oflice.

* *

“Dan, you have to light them. I’ll help vou. I’ll fight for you with
everything I’ve got/’

Dan Conway shook his head.

He sat at his desk, the empty expanse of a faded blotter before
him, one feeble lamp lighted in a corner of the room. Dagny had
rushed straight to the city office of the Phoenix- Duvango. Conway
was there, and he still sat as she had found him He had smiled at
her entrance and said, “Funny, f thought you would come,” his voice
gentle, lifeless. They did not know each other well, but they had met
a few times m Colorado.

“No,” he said, “it's no use ”

“Do you mean because of that Alliance agreement that >ou
signed? It won’t hold. This is plain expropriation No court will up-
hold tt. And ll Jim tties to hide behind the usual looters’ slogan of
‘public welfare.’ I'll go on the stand and swear that Taggart trans-
continental can’t handle the whole traffic of Colorado. And if anv
court rules against you, you can appeal and keep on appealing for
the next ten years ”

“Yes,” he said, “I could . . . I'm not sure I’d win, but 1 could try
and l could hang onto the rati toad lor a lew years longer, but
No, it\ not the legal points that I'm thinking about, one wa> or the
other. It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“I don’t want to light it, I)agn>."

She looked at him incredulously. It was the one sentence which,
she felt sure, he had never uttered before, a man could not reverse
himself so late in life

Dan Conway was approaching fifty. He had the square, stolid,
stuhborn face of a tough freight engineer, rather than a company
president, the face of a fighter, with a young, fanned skin and graying
hair He had taken over a shaky little railroad m Arizona, a road
whose net revenue was less than that of a successful gioceiy store,
and he had built it into the best lailroad of the Southwest. He spoke
little, seldom read books, had never gone to college. I he whole
sphere of human endeavors, with one exception, left him blankly
indifferent; he had no touch of that which people called culture. But
he knew railroads.

“Why don’t you want to fight?"

“Because they had the right to do it.”

“Dan ” she asked, “have you lost yout mind?” *

“I’ve never gone back on my word in my life,” hju said tunelessly
“1 don’t care what the courts decide. 1 promised to dbey the majority.
I have to obey.” *

“Did you expect the majority to do this to you?*’

“No.” There was a kind of faint convulsion in the stolid face. He
spoke softly, not looking at her, the helpless astonishment still raw

78

withm him “No I didn’t expect it 1 heard them talking about it foT
over a year, but l didn’t believe it Even when they were voting, i
didn’t believe it ”

“What did you expect 7 ”

“1 thought They said all of us were to stand for the common
good 1 thought what I had done down there m Colorado was good
Good for everybody ”

“Oh, you damn tool 1 Don’t you see that that’s what you’re being
punished for— because it was good 7 ”

fie shook his head “I don’t understand it,” he said “But 1 see
no way out ’

‘ Did you promise them to agree to destroy yourself 7 ’

“There doesn’t seem to be any choice for any oi us '

“What do you mean' 7 ”

*Dagn\ the whole world s in a terrible state right now I don’t
know what’s wrong with it, but something’s very wrong Men have
to get together and tmd a way out But who’s to decide which way
to take unless it’s the majority? J guess that’s the only fair method
ol deciding, 1 don’t see any other I suppose somebody’s got to be
sacrificed If it turned out to be me I have no right to complain
The right’s on their side Men have to get together ’

She made an effort to speak calmly, she was trembling with anger
‘It that s the price of getting together then I II be damned if I want
lo live on the same caith with anv human beings* If the rest of them
can survive only bv destroving us, then why should we wish them to
survive 7 Nothing can make self immolation proper Nothing can give
them the right to turn men into sacrificial animals Nothing can make
U moral to destroy the best One can’t be punished for being good
One can t be penalized for ability If that is right, then we’d better
start slaughtering cm another, because there isn’t any right at all in
the wot Id*

He did not answer fie looked at her helplessly
if it s that kind oi world how tan we live in it?” she asked
‘ I don t know * he whispered

“Dan, do you really think it’s right 7 In all truth, deep down, do
you think it’s right 7 ’

He dosed his tyes “No.” he said Then he looked at her and she
saw a look of tortute for the first time “That’s what I’ve been silting
here trying to understand I know that I ought to think it’s right —
but I can’t It’s as it my tongue wouldn’t turn to say it I keep seeing
every ue of the track down there, every signal light, every bridge,
every night that I spent when ” His head dropped down on his
amis “01\ God, it’s so damn unjust*”

*Dan,” she said thiough her teelh, ‘tight it ”

He raised his head His eyes were empty “No,” he said “U would
be wrong I’m just selfish ”

*Oh, damn that rotten tripe* You know better than that!”

“I don’t know ” His voice was very tired. “I’ve been sitting
here, trying to think about it I don’t know what is right any
more ” He added. “1 don’t think I care ”

She knew suddenly that all further words were useless and that

79

Dan Conway would never be a man of action again. She did not
know what made her certain of it. She said, wondering, “You’ve
never given up in the face of a battle before.”

“No, 1 guess I haven’t. . . He spoke with a quiet, indifferent
astonishment. T’ve fought storms and floods and rock slides and rail
fissure. ... I knew how to do it, and I liked doing it. . , . But this
kind of battle — it’s one I can’t fight.’’

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Who knows why the world is what it is? Oh. who
is John Galt?”

She winced. ‘Then what are you going to do?”

“1 don’t know . .

“I mean — ” She stopped.

He knew what she meant. “Oh, there’s always something to
do. ...” He spoke without conviction. “I guess it’s only Colorado
and New Mexico that they’re going to declare restricted. I’ll still
have the line in Arizona to run.” He added, “As it was twenty years
ago . . . Well, it will keep me busy. I’m getting tired. Dagny. I didn’t
take time to notice it, but 1 guess I am ”

She could say nothing

“I’m not going to build a line through one of their blighted areas.”
he said m the same indifferent voice. “1 hat’s what they tried to hand
me for a consolation prize, but I think it’s just talk. You can't build
a railroad where there's nothing for hundreds ot miles but a couple
of farmers who're not growing enough to feed themselves. You can’t
build a road and make it pay. If you don't make it pay, who’s going
to? It doesn’t make sense to me They just didn't know what they
were saying.”

“Oh, to hell with their blighted areas! It’s you I’m thinking about.”
She had to name it. “What will you do with yourself?”

“I don’t know . . . Well, there’s a lot of things I haven’t had time
to do. Fishing, for instance. I’ve always liked fishing. Maybe I’ll start
reading books, always meant to Guess I'll take it easy now. Guess
I'll go tishing. There’s some nice places down in Arizona, where it’s
peaceful and quiet and you don’t have to see a human being for
miles. . . He glanced up at her and added, “Forget it. Why should
you worry about me 7 ”

“It’s not about you, it’s . Dan,” she said suddenly, “I hope you
know it's not for your sake that I wanted to help you fight.”

He smiled: it was a faint, friendly smile. “1 know,” he said

“It’s not out of pity or charity or any ugly reason like that. U>ok.
I intended to give you the battle of your life, down there m Colorado.
I intended to cut into your business and squeeze you to t!?e wall and
drive you out, if necessary.”

He chuckled faintly; it was appreciation. * You would have made
a pretty good try at it, too,” he said.

“Only I didn’t think it would be necessary, I thought there was
enough room there for both of us.”

“Yes,” he said. “There was.”

“Still, if I found that there wasn’t, I would have fotight you, and
if I could make my road better than yours. I’d have broken you and

80

not given a damn about what happened to you But this Dan, I
don’t think 1 want to look at our Rio Norte Line now 1 Oh
God, Dan, I don’t want to be a looter’”

He looked at her silently for a moment It was an odd look, as it
horn a great distance He said softly, “You should have been born
about a hundred years earlier kid Then you would have had a
chance ’

* f o hell with that 1 intend to make my own chance ”

‘Dial’s what I intended at youi age ’

You succeeded ”

Have P

She sat still suddvnly unable to move

He sat up stiaight and said shaiply almost as if he were issuing
orders You'd better look at that Rio Norte Line of yours, and
you’d better do it fast Get it ready before I move out, because if
you don t that will be the end of hllis Wyatt and all the rest of
them down there, and they’re the best people left in the country
You can t let that happen It s all on your shoulders now It would
be no use tiymg to explain to \otn brother that it’s going to be much
tougher for you down there without me to compete with But you
and I know it So go to it Whatever you do you won’t be a looter
No looter could lun a railroad in that part of the country and last
at it Whatever you make down there you will have earned it Lice
like your brothel don t count anyway It’s up to you now ”

She sat looking at him wondi ring what it was that had defeated
a man of this kind she knew that it was not fames Taggart

She saw him looking at her as il he weic struggling with a question
mark of his own 1 hen he smiled and she saw incredulously, that
the smile held sadness and pity

You’d better not feel soriy lor me ” he said T think, of the two
of us, its >ou who have the harder time ahead And I think you’re
going to get it worse than 1 did ’

* *

She had telephoned the mills and made an appointment to see
Hank Reaiden that afternoon She had just hung up the receiver
and was bending over the maps of the Rio Norte Line spread on
her desk, when the door opened Dagny looked up, startled, she did
not expect the door ol her office to open without announcement
The man who entered was a stranger He was young, tall, and
something about him suggested violence, though she could not say
what it was, because the first trait one grasped about him was a
quality of self-control that seemed almost arrogant He had dark
eves, disheveled hair and his clothes were expensive, but worn as if
he did not care or notice what he wore
‘Fllis Wyatt ” he said in self-introduction

She leaped to her feet, involuntarily She understood why nobody
had or could have stopped him m the counter office
“Sit down, Mr Wyatt,” she said, smiling

“It won’t be necessary” He did not smile “i don’t hold long
conferences ”

81

Slowly, taking her time by conscious intention, she sat down and
leaned back, looking at him.

'‘Well?'’ she asked.

“I came to see you because 1 understand you’re the only one
who's got any brains in this rotten outfit.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You can listen to an ultimatum.” He spoke distinctly, giving an
unusual clarity to every syllable. “I expect Taggart Transcontinental,
nine months from now. to run trains in Colorado as my business
requires them to he run. If the snide stunt you people perpetrated
on the Phocnix-Durango was done for the purpose of saving yourself
from the necessity of effort, this is to give you notice that you will
not get away with it. 1 made no demands on you when you could
not give me the kind of service I needed. I found someone who
could. Now you wish to force me to deal with you. You expect to
dictate terms by leaving me no choice You expect me to hold my
business down to the level of your incompetence. This is to tell you
that you have miscalculated.”

She said slowly, with effort. “Shall 1 tell you what 1 intend to do
about our service tn C olorado?”

“No. I have no interest in discussions and intentions. 1 expect
transportation. What >ou do to furnish it and how you do it. is your
problem, not mine. I am merely giving you a warning. Those who
wish to deal with me. must do .so on my terms or not at all 1 do
not make terms with incompetence. 11 >ou expect to earn mone> by
carrying the oil I produce, you must be as good at your business as
1 am at mine. 1 wish this to be understood.”

She said quietly, “I understand.”

“I shan’t waste lime proving to you why you'd better take my
ultimatum seriously. If you have the intelligence to keep this corrupt
organization functioning at all, you have the intelligence to judge
this for yourself. We both know that if Taggart Transcontinental runs
trains in Colorado the way it did five years ago. it will ruin me. I
know that this is what you people intend to do You expect to feed
oft me while you can and to find another carcass to pick dry after
you have finished mine. That is the policy of most of mankind today.
So here is my ultimatum: it is now in your power to destroy me; I
may have to go; but if 1 go, I’ll make sure that I take all the rest of
you along with me.”

Somewhere within her, under the numbness that held her still to
receive the lashing, she felt a small point of pain, hot like the pain
of scalding. She wanted to tell him of the years she had spent looking
for men such as he to work with; she wanted to teU him that his
enemies were hers, that she was fighting the same bat$e; she wanted
to cry to him; I'm not one of them! But she knew (hat she could
not do it. She bore the responsibility for Taggart Transcontinental
and for everything done in its name; she had no |ight to justify
herself now.

Sitting straight, her glance as steady and open as hii she answered
evenly, “You will get the transportation you need, Mr. Wyatt,”

She saw a faint hint of astonishment in his face; this was not the

82

manner or the answer he had expected; perhaps it was what she had
not said that astonished him most: that she offered no defense, no
excuses. He took a moment to study her silently. Then he said, his
voice less sharp:

“All right. Thank you. Good day/’

She inclined her head. He bowed and left the office.

* *

“That’s the story, Hank. I had worked out an almost impossible
schedule to complete the Rio Norte Line in twelve months. Now FH
have to do it in nine. You were to give us the rail over a period of
one year. Can you give it to us within nine months? If there’s any
human way to do it, do it. If not, I’ll have to find some other means
to finish it.”

Reardon sat behind his desk. His cold, blue eyes made two hori-
zontal cuts across the gaunt planes of his face: they remained hori-
zontal, impassively half-closed: he said evenly, without emphasis:

“I'll do it.' 1

Dagny leaned back m her chair. The short sentence was a shock.
It was not merely relief: it was the sudden realization that nothing
else was necessary to guarantee that it would be done; she needed
no proofs, no questions, no explanations; a complex problem could
rest safely on three syllables pronounced by a man who knew what
he was saying.

“Don’t show that you're relieved " His voice was mocking. “Not
too obviously." His narrowed eyes were watching her with an unre-
\ealing smile. “I might think that I hold Taggart Transcontinental in
my power."

“You know that, anyway "

"1 do And 1 intend to make you pay for it."

“I expect to. How much?"

“Twenty dollars extra per tun on the balance ol the order deliv-
ered alter today."

“Pretty sleep. Hank. Is that the best price you can give me?"

“No. But that's the one Pm going to get. I could ask twice that
and you’d pay it."

“Yes, l would. And you could. But you won’t."

“Why won't l?"

“Because you need to have the Rio Norte Line built. It's your
first showcase fot Reardon Metal."

He chuckled. “That's right 1 like to deal with somebody who has
no illusions about getting favors."

“Do you know what made me feel relieved, when you decided to
take advantage of it?"

“What?"

“That 1 was dealing, for once, with somebody who doesn’t pretend
to give favors."

His smile had a discernible quality now: it was enjoyment. “You
always play it open, don’t you?" he asked.

;Tve never noticed you doing otherwise."

“I thought 1 was the only one who could afford to."

“I’m not broke, in that sense. Hank."

“I think I’m going to break you some day — in that sense ”
“Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to ”

“Don’t you have enough cowaids around you'”

“That's why I'd enjo> trying it — because you’re the only exception
So you think it’s right that 1 should squeeze every penny of profit 1
can, out of your emergency''”

“Certainly I’m not a fool I don't think you’re in business lor
m> convenience ”

“Don’t you wish I were'”

“I'm not a moocher, Hank '

“Aien't you going to hnd it hard to pay'”

“That’s my problem, not youts I want that rail '

'At twenty dollars extra pei ton '

“Okay, Hank ”

“Fine You'll get the rail I may get my exorbitant profit - or lag-
gart Transcontinental may crash before 1 collect”

She said, without smiling, “If l don’t get that line built in nine
months, iaggart Transcontinental will crash ”

'It won t so long as you run it ’

When he did not smile, his face looked inanimate, only his eyes
remained alive, active with a cold brilliant dantv ol peu option But
what he was made to led by the things he perceived no one would
be permitted to know she thought, perhaps not even himself
‘They’ve done their best to make it harder foi you haven’t they >T
he said

‘Yes I was counting on Colorado to save the 1 augart system
Now its up to me to save Colorado Nine months from now Dan
Conway will dose his road If mine isn t ready, it won t be any use
finishing it You can’t leave, those men without tiansportation fin a
single day let alone a week or a month At the rate they \e been
growing, you can't slop them dead and then expect them to continue
It’s like slamming brakes on an engine coing two hundred miles
an hour ’

* I know ’

“I can run a good railroad 1 can't run it across a continent ol
sharccroppci s who’re not good enough to glow turnips successfully
I’ve got to have men like Fills Wyatt to produce something to fill
the trains I run So I’ve got to give him a tiain and a tiack nine
months from now, it I have to blast all the rv.st ol us into hell to
do id”

He smiled, amused ‘You h el very strongly about il don’t you'* ‘
“Don t you > ’

He would not answer but merely held the smile

‘Aren t you concerned about it *” she asked, almost angrily

‘No ” '

“Jhen you don’t realize what it means*'”

4 I realize that I’m going to get the rail rolled and you’re going to
gel the track laid in nine months ” <

She smiled, relaxing, weanly and a little guiltily “Yes I know we
will I know it’s useless— getting angry at people like Jim and his

K4

friends. We haven’t any time for it. First, I have to undo what they’ve
done. Then afterwards” — she stopped, wondering, shook her head
and shrugged — “afterwards, they won’t matter.”

“That’s right. They won’t. When 1 heard about that Anti-dog-eat-
dog business, it made me sick. But don’t worry about the goddamn
bastards.” The two words sounded shockingly violent, because his
face and voice remained calm. “You and I will always be there to
save the country from the consequences of their actions.” He got
up: he said, pacing the office, “Colorado isn’t going to be stopped.
You’ll pull it through. Then Dan Conway will be back, and others.
All that lunacy is temporary. It can’t last. It’s demented, so it has to
defeat itself. You and I will just have to work a little harder for a
while, that’s all.”

She watched his tall figure moving across the office. The office
suited him; it contained nothing but the few pieces of furniture he
needed, all ol them harshly simplified down to their essential pur-
pose. all of them exorbitantly expensive in the quality of materials
and the skill of design. The room looked like a motor — a motor held
within the glass case of broad windows. But she noticed one aston-
ishing detail, a vase ot jade that stood on top of a filing cabinet. The
vase was a solid, dark green stone carved into plain surfaces; the
texture of its smooth curses provoked an irresistible desire to touch
it. It seemed startling in that office, incongruous with the sternness
of the rest: it was a touch ol sensuality.

“Colorado is a great place,' he said. “It's going to be the greatest
m the counity You’re not sure that I’m concerned about it? Chat
state’s becoming one of my best customers, as you ought to know if
you take time to read the reports on your freight traffic.”

“I know I read them *’

*Tvc been thinking of building a plant there in a tew years. To
save them your transportation charges.” He glanced at her, “You’ll
lose an awful lot of steel freight, tf I do.”

“Go ahead. I’ll be satisfied with cairying vour supplies, and the
groceries tor your workers, and the freight of the factories that will
follow you there — and perhaps I won’t have rime to notice that I’ve
lost your steel . . . What ate you laughing at?”

“It’s wonderful.”

“What?”

“The way you don't react as everybody else does nowadays.”

“Still, I must admit that tor the time being you’re the most impor-
tant single shipper ot Taggart Transcontinental.”

“Don’t you suppose I know it?”

“So I can't understand why Jim — ” She stopped

“—tries his best to harm my business? Because your brother Jim
is a fool.”

“He is. But it’s more than that. There’s something worse than
stupidity about it.”

“Don’t waste time trying to figure him out. Let him spit. He’s no
danger to anyone. People like Jim Taggart just clutter up the world.”

“I suppose so.”

85

“Incidentally, what would you have done if I’d said I couldn’t
deliver your rails sooner

“I would have torn up sidmgs or closed some branch line any
branch line, and I would have used the rails to hmsh the Rio Norte
track on time ’

He chuckled ‘I hats why 1 m not worried about laggail trans-
continental But you won’t have to stait getting rati out ot old sidmgs
Not so long as I m in business

She thought suddenly that she was wrong about his lack ot emo
(ton the hidden undertone ot his manna was enjoyment She teal
l/ed that she had always fell a sense of light-hearted relaxation m
his presence and known that he shared it He was the only man she
knew to whom she could speak without strain or elfort I his, she
tliought, was a mmd she respected an adveisaiy worth matching
\ct there had always been an odd sense ot distance between them
the sense ot a closed door there was an unpcisonal qiuhty in his
manner something within him that could not be re tched

He had stopped at the window He stood tor i moment looking
out Do you know that the (irst load of rail is being ddiurtd to
you today } he asked
Ot course I know it
C omc here

She approachtd him He pointed siientlv l ai m (he distance be
yond the mill structures >lie saw a string ol gondol is waiting on a
siding Ihc bridge ol in overhead crane cut the sk\ above them
I he crane was moving Its huge magnet held i load ot rails glued
to a disk by the soL powu ol contact Ihcre was no tnct of sun
m the grav spread ot cloud > yet the rails glistened as it the metal
caught light out of space l he metal was a greenish blue Ihc gieat
chain stopped over i car descended jerked in a brie! spasm and letl
the rails m the ear I he crane moved back in majestu mdifterence
it looked like the giant drawing of a gcomttmal theorem moving
above the men and the earth

They stood at the window watching silently intently She did not
speak until another load of green blue met il came moving icross
the sky Ihen the hist words she said were rot about rail tra k or
an order completed on time She said as if greeting i new phenomc
non of nature
‘Reardcn Metal

He noticed that, but said nothing He glanced at her then turned
back to the window
‘ Hank this is great
4 Yes

He said it simply openly There was no Haltered pleasure in his
voice and no modesty Ibis she kntw was a tnbtate to her the
rarest one person could pay another the tribute o| feeling free to
acknowledge one’s own greatness, knowing that it li understood
She said 4 When 1 think of what that metal can do, what it will
make possible Hank, this is the most important thing happening
in the world today, and none of them know it ”

*‘We know it ’

86

They did not look at each other They stood watching the crane
On the tront of the locomotive in the distance, she could distinguish
the letters TI She could distinguish the rails of the busiest industrial
siding of the Taggart system

4 As soon as I can hnd a plant able to do it she said ‘I’m going
to order Diesels made ot Reardon Metal

You 11 need them How fast do you run your trams on the Rio
Norte track*

Now* We it lucky if we manage to make twenty miles an hour ”
He pointed at the ears When that rail is laid you 11 be able to
run trains at two hundred and fitly it you wish

1 will m a tew yeais when we II have cars of Rearden Metal,
which will be half the weight of steel and twice as safe

You II have to look out tor the airlines Were woiking on a
plane of Rearden Metal It will weigh practically nothing and litt
anything You II see the dty ot long haul heavy freight air traffic *

1 vc been thinking ot what thit metal will do tor motors any
motois and what sort ot thing one can design now

Have you thought ol what it will do tor chicken wire* Just plain
chicken wiic fences made of Rearden Metal that will cost a few
pennies a mile and last two hundred years And kitchenware that
will be bought at the dime store md pissed on from generation to
generation And ocean Imeis that one wont be able to dent with
i toipedo

Did 1 tell you that I m having tests made of communications wire
ot Real den Metal*

I m making so many tests tint 1 It never get through showing
people what can be done with it and how to do it

l hey spoke ol the metal and ol ttu possibilities which they could
not exhaust It was as if they were standing on a mountain top
seeing a limitless plain below and roads open in all directions But
they merelv spoke of mithematical figures of weights pressures
resistances costs

She had forgotten hci brothel and his National Alliance She had
forgotten every problem person and even! behind her thes had
always been clouded in hei sight to be hurried past to be brushed
aside nevei final never quite red I his was reality she thought this
stnse ol clear outlines of purpose oi lightness of hope ITm was
the way she had expected to live -she had wanted to spend no hour
md take no action that would mean less than this
She looked at him in the exact moment when he turned to look
at her Ihcy stood very close to each othei She saw in his eyes
that he felt as she did If joy is the aim and the core oi existence,
she thought and it that which has the powei to give one joy is always
guarded as one's deep< st secret then they had seen each other naked
in that moment

He made a step back and said in a strange tone of dispassionate
wonder. We're a couple of blackguards, aren t we**'

‘Why 9

4 We haven’t any spiritual goals or qualities All we’re after is
material things I hat’s all we care for ”

87

She looked at him* unable to understand. But he was looking past
her* straight ahead* at the crane in the distance. She wished he had
hot said it. The accusation did not trouble her, she never thought of
herself m such terms and she was completely incapable ol experienc-
ing a feeling of fundamental guilt. But she felt a vague apprehension
which she could not define, the suggestion that there was something
of grave consequence in whatever had made him say it, something
dangerous to him. He had not said it casually. But there had been
no feeling in his voice, neither plea nor shame. He had said it indif-
ferently, as a statement of fact.

Then, as she watched him, the apprehension vanished. He was
looking at his mills beyond the window; there was no guilt in his
face, no doubt, nothing but the calm of an inviolate self-confidence

“Dagny,” he said, “whatevei we are, it’s we who move the world
and it’s we who’ll pull it through ”

Chapter V THE CLIMAX OF THE D'ANCONIAS

The newspaper was the first thing she noticed It was clutched tightly
in Eddie's hand, as he entered her office. She glanced up at his lace:
it was tense and bewildered

“Dagny, aie you verv busv?”

■Why?”

“I know that you don’t like to talk about him But there's some
thing here 1 think you ought to see.”

She extended her hand silently foi the newspaper.

The story on the front page announced that upon taking over the
San Sebastian Mines, the government of the People’s State of Mexico
had discovered that they were worthless— blatantly, totally, hope-
lessly vyorthless. There was nothing to justify the five years of work
and the millions spent, nothing but empty excavations, laboriously
cut. The few ttaces of copper were not worth the effort of extracting
them No great deposits of metal existed or could be expected to
exist there, and there were no indications that could have permitted
anyone to be deluded. The government of the People’s State of
Mexico was holding emergency sessions about their discovery, in an
uproar of indignation, they felt that they had been cheated.

Watching her, Eddie knew that Dagny sat looking at the newspa-
per long after she had finished reading. He knew that he had been
right to feel a hint of fear, even though he could not tell what fright-
ened him about that story

He waited. She raised her head She did not look 3 1 him. Her eyes
were fixed, intent in concentration, as if trying to diicern something
at a great distance.

He said, his voice low, “Franctsco is not a fool. Vjfhatever else he
may be, no matter what depravity he’s sunk to — add I’ve given up
trying to figure out why— he is not a fool, He couldn’t have made a
mistake of this kind. It is not possible. 1 don’t understand it “

“I’m beginning to.”

She sat up, jolted upright by a sudden movement that ran through
her body like a shudder. She said:

“Phone him at the Wayne-Falkland and tell the bastard that 1
want to see him/’

“Dagny,” he said sadly, reproachfully, “it’s Frisco d’Anconia.”

“It was.”

* +

She walked through the early twilight of the city streets to the
Wayne-Falkland Hotel. ‘He says, any tune you wish,” Eddie had
told her. The first lights appeared in a lew' windows high under the
clouds. The skyscrapers looked like abandoned lighthouses sending
teeble, dying signals out into an empty sea where no ships moved
any longer. A few snowflakes came down, past the dark windows of
empty stoics, to melt m the mud of the sidewalks. A string of red
lanterns cut the street, going oft into the murky distance.

She wondered why she felt that she wanted to run, that she should
be running: no, not down this street: down a green hillside in the
blazing sun to the road on the edge of the Hudson, at the foot of
the Taggart estate. That was the way she always ran when Eddie
yelled, “It’s Frisco d’Ancoma’” and they both flew down the hill to
the car appioaching on the road below

He was the onlv guest whose arrival was an event in their child-
hood, then biggest e\cnt. I he running to meet him had become part
ol a contest among the three ol them. There was a birch tree on the
hillside, halfway between the road and the house: Dagny and Eddie
tried to get past the tree, before Francisco could race up the hill to
meet them. On all the many days ol his arrivals, in all the many
summers, they never reached the birch tree: Francisco reached it first
and stopped them when he was way past it. Francisco always won,
as he always won eveiy thing.

His parents weie old tnends of the Taggart family. He was an
only son and he was being brought up all over the world; his father,
it was said, wanted him to consider the world as his future domain.
Dagny and Eddie could never be certain ot where he would spend
his winter: but once a year, every summer, a stern South American
tutor brought him for a month to the Taggart estate.

Francisco found it natural that the Taggart children should be
chosen as his companions: they were the crown heirs of Taggart
Transcontinental, as he was of d’Anconia Copper. “We are the only
aristocracy left in the world— the aristocracy of money,” he said to
Dagny once, when he was fourteen. “It's the only real aristocracy,
if people understood what it means, which they don’t.”

He had a caste system of his own. to him, the Taggart children
were not Jim and Dagny, but Dagny and Eddie. He seldom volun-
teered to notice Jim’s existence. Eddie asked him once, “Francisco,
you’re some kind of very high nobility, aren’t you?” He answered,
“Not yet. The reason my family has lasted for such a long time is
that none of us has ever been permitted to think he is bom a d’Ait-
conia. We are expected to become one.” He pronounced his name
as if he wished his listeners to be struck in the face and knighted by
the sound of it.

89

Sebastian d’Ancoma, his ancestor, had left Spain many centuries
ago, at a time when Spam was the most powerful country on earth
and his was one of Spam s proudest hgures He left because the
lord of the Inquisition did not approve of his manner of thinking
and suggested, at a court banquet, that he change it Sebastian d’An-
coma threw the contents ot his wine glass at the tace ot the lord ot
the Inquisition, and escaped before he could be seized He left be-
hind him his fortune his estate his marble palace and the girl he
loved- and he sailed to a new world
His first estate in Argentina was a wooden shack m the foothills
ol the Andes I he sun bla/ed like a beacon on the silvci coat of
arms of the d’Ancomas, nailed over the door ol the shack while
Sebastian d’Anconia dug tor the copper ot his hrst mine He spent
years, pickax m hand, breaking rock from sunrise till darkness, with
the help of a few stray derelicts deserters from the armies ot his
countrymen, escaped convicts starving Indians
Fifteen years after he left Spain, Sebastian d Antonia sent lor the
girl he loved she had waited for him When she arrived she tound
the silver coat of arms above the entrance ot a marble palace the
gardens of a great estate, and mountains slashed by pits ot red ore
in the distance He carried her m his arms across the threshold of
his home He looked younger than when she had seen him last
“My ancestors and jours Francisco told Dagny would have
liked each other

Through the years of her childhood Dagny lived in the luture
in the world she expected to tind where she would not have to feel
contempt or boredom But tor one month each year she was free
For one month, she could live in the present When she raced down
the hill to meet Francisco d’ \ncoma it was a release from prison
‘Hi, Slug’

“Hi Frisco’”

They had both resented their nicknames at hrst She had asked
him angnlv What do you think you mean He had answered In
case you don’t know it ‘Slug means a great fire m a locomotive
firebox ” “Where did you pick that up > ‘ From the gentlemen along
the Taggart iron ” He spoke live languages and he spoke t nglish
without a trace of accent a precise cultured Fnghsh deliberately
mixed with slang She had retaliated bv calling him I risco He had
laughed, amused and annoyed ‘ft you barbarians had to degrade
the name of a great utv ol yours you could at least refrain from
doing it to me “ But they had grown to like the nicknames

U had started \n the days of then second summer together, when
he was twelve years old and she was ten That summer, Fnsco began
vanishing every morning for some purpose nobody could discover
He went off on his bicycle before dawn and returned m time to
appear at the white and crystal table' set tor lunch on the terrace,
his manner courteously punctual and a little too innocent He
laughed, refusing to answer, when Dagny and bddie questioned him
They tned to follow him once, through the cold, prc-motning dark-
ness, but they gave it up, no one could track him when he did not
want to be tracked.

90

After a while, Mrs. Taggart began to worry and decided to investi-
gate. She never learned how he had managed to by-pass all the child-
labor laws, but she found Francisco working — by an unofficial deal
with the dispatcher — as a call boy for Taggart Transcontinental, at
a division point ten miles away. The dispatcher was stupefied by her
personal visit; he had no idea that his call boy was a house guest of
the Taggarts. The boy was known to the local railroad crews as
Frankie, and Mrs. Taggart preferred not to enlighten them about his
full name. She merely explained that he was working without his
parents' permission and had to quit at once. The dispatcher was
sorry to lose him; Frankie, he said, was the bCvSt call boy they had
ever had. “I’d sure like to keep him on. Maybe we could make a
deal with his parents?" he suggested. *Tm afraid not,” said Mrs,
Taggart faintly.

"Francisco.” she asked, when she brought him home, "what would
your father say about this, it he knew 0 ”

”Mv lather would ask whether I was good at the job or not That's
all he'd want to know."

"Come now, Fm serious ”

Francisco was looking at her politely, his eouiteous manner sug-
gesting centuries of breeding and drawing rooms; but something in
his eyes made her feel uncertain about the politeness. "I ast winter,”
he answered, "I shipped out as a cabin boy on a cargo steamer that
carried d'Anconia copper. My lather looked toi me for three months,
but that's all he asked me when l came back ”

"So that’s how you spend >oui winters?” said Jun Taggart. Jim's
smile had a touch ol liiumph, the triumph ot finding cause to feel
contempt

"That was last winter.” Francisco answered pleasantly, with no
change in the innocent, casual tone of his voice. "The winter before
last l spent in Madiid, at the home of the Duke ot Alba.”

"Why did you want to work on a railroad/” asked Dagny.

They stood looking at each other hers was a glance of admiration,
his of mockery; but it was not the mockery of malice — it was the
laughter of a salute.

"To learn what's it's like, Slug,” he answered, "and to tell you
that I've had a job with Taggart Transcontinental befotc you did.”

Dagny and luldie spent their winters trying to master some new
skill, in older to astonish Francisco and beat him, for once. They
never succeeded. When they showed him how to hit a ball with a
bat, a game he had never played before, he watched them for a few
minutes, then said, ‘i think 1 get the idea Let me try.” He took the
bat and sent the ball flying over a line ot oak tiees far at the end
ot the field.

When Jim was given a motorboat for his birthday, they all stood
on the river landing, watching the lesson, while an instructor showed
Jim how to run it. None of them had ever driven a motorboat before.
The sparkling white craft, shaped like a bullet, kept staggering clum-
sily across the water, its wake a long record of shivering, its motor
choking with hiccoughs, while the instructor, sealed beside him, kept
seizing the wheel out of Jim's hands. For no apparent reason, Jim

91

raised his head suddenly and yelled at Francisco, “Do >ou think you
can do it any better 7 ” “1 can do it ” ‘Try it 1 ”

When the boat came back and its two occupants stepped out,
Francisco slipped behind the wheel “Wait a moment,” he said to
the instructor, who remained on the landing “Let me take a look
at this ” Then, before the instructor had time to move the boat shot
out to the middle of the river, as if tired Irom a gun It was streaking
away beiore they giasped what they were seeing As it went shrink-
ing mto the distance and sunlight, Dagnv’s picture ot it was three
straight lines its wake the long shriek oi its motor and the aim of
the driver at its wheel

She noticed the stiance expression ot her fathers face as he looked
at the vanishing speedboat He said nothing, he just stood looking
She remembered that she had seen him look that way once before
It was when he inspected a complex system of pulleys which Fran-
cisco, aged twelve, had erected to make an elevator to the top of a
rock, he was teaching Daeny and Eddie to dive from the rock into
the Hudson Franciscos notes of calculations were still scattered
about on the ground her lather picked them up looked at them,
then asked, “Francisco how many years ot algebra have you had 7 ’
“Two years “ 4 Who taught you to do this ^ 1 4 Oh, that’s just some
thing I hgured out * She did not know that what her father held on
the crumpled sheets of paper was the crude version of a differen-
tial equation

The heirs of Sebastian d’Ancoma had been an unbroken line ot
first sons, who knew how to bear his name It was a tradition of the
family that the man to disgrace them would be the heir who died
leaving the d Anconia loitune no greater than he had received it
Throughout the generations that disgrace had not come An Argen
tinian legend said that the hand of a d Anconia had the miraculous
power of the saints — onl> it was not the power to heal, but the power
to produce

The d’Artconia heirs had been men of unusual ability, but none
of them could match what Francisco d Anconia promised to become
It was as if the centuries had sifted the famil> s qualities through a
fine mesh, had discarded the irrelevant, the inconsequential the
weak, and had let nothing through except pure talent as if chance,
for once, had achieved an entity devoid ot the accidental

Francisco could do anything he undertook, he could do it better
than anyone else and he did it without effort 1 here was no boasting
in his manner and consciousness, no thought of comparison His
attitude was not “1 can do it better than you,” but simply “1 can
do it ” What he meant by doing was doing superlatively.

No matter what discipline was required of him by Jus father’s
exacting plan for his education, no matter what subject he was or-
dered to study, Franusco mastered it with effortless amusement His
father adored him, but concealed it carefully, as he concealed the
pnde of knowing that he was bringing up the most brilharst phenome-
non of a brilliant family line Francisco, it was said, wai to be the
Climax of the d’Ancomas

“I don’t know what sort of motto the d’Ancomas have on their

92

family crest,” Mrs Taggart said once, “but I’m sure that Francisco
will change it to ‘What for?’ ” It was the fust question he asked
about any activity proposed to him— and nothing would make him
act, if he found no valid answer He flew through the days of his
summer month like a rocket, but it one stopped him m midflight, he
could always name the purpose of his every random moment Two
things were impossible to him to stand still or to move aimlessly

*Let\ find out” was the motive he gave to Dagny and Eddie for
anything he undertook, 01 “Ixt’s make it ” These were his only
lorms ol enjoyment

‘ 1 can do it ” he said, when he was building his elevator, clinging
to the side of a cliff driving metal wedges into rock, his arms moving
with an expert’s thythm, drops of blood slipping, unnoticed, from
under a bandage on his wrist “No, we can’t take turns, Eddie, you’re
not big enough vet to handle a hammer Just cart the weeds off and
ke'ep the wav clear tor me. I’ll do the test What blood } Oh,
that s nothing just a cut J got yesterday Dagny run to the house
and bring me a clean bandage

Jim watched them Ihev Jett him alone, but they often saw him
standing in the distance watching Francisco with a peculiar kind
of intensity

He seldom spoke in I rancisco s piesence But hc‘ would corner
Digny and he would smile derisive 1\ saying All those* airs you put
on pretending that you ie an iron woman with a mind ot her own 1
\ou re a spineless dishrat> 1 hat s all sou aie It s disgusting the way
you let that conceited punk ordei sou about He can twist vou
Jiound his little finger Vou hasen t any pride at all The way you
run when he whistles and wait on him’ Whs don’t you shine his
shoes* Because he* hasn t told me to’ she answered

1 rancisco could win any game in any local contest He noser on
tcred contests He could have iuled tho |umoi country club He never
came within sight of their clubhouse ignoring then eage*r attempts
to enroll the most famous heir m the world Dagny and Eddie were
his onlv luuuis I hey could not tell whether they owned him or
were owned bv him completely, it made no difference either concept
made them happy

The three of them set out tvery morning on adventures ol their
own kmd Once an elderly professor of literature Mrs laggart’s
Iriend saw them on top of a pile in a junk yaid dismantling the
cauass ol an automobile He stopped shook his head and said to
l rancisco ‘A young man of sour position ought to spend his time
in libraries, absorbing the culture ol the world ’ ‘ What do you think
I’m doing asked fianusco

There were no lactones m the neighborhood but Francisco taught
Daeny and 1 dtiio to steal rides on laggart tiams to distant towns,
where they climbed fences into mill yards or hung on window sills,
watching machinery as other chitdicn watched movies ‘When I run
d' Antonia Topper ” said Francisco They never had to explain

the rest to each other, they knew each other's goal and motive

Railroad conductors taught them, once in a while Then a station-
master a hundred miles away would telephone Mis laggart ‘We've

9 }

£ 0 t three young tramps here who say that they are— ’ Yes Mrs
Faggart would sigh, ‘ they are Please send them back
"Francisco, Eddie asked him once as they stood by the tracks
ot the Taggart station you ve been just about everywhere m the
world What’s the most important thing on earth* This answered
Francisco pointing to the emblem H on the front of an engine He
added, I wish l could have mti N it Taggart
He noticed Dagny s glance at him He said nothing else But mm
utes later when the\ went on through the woods down a narrow
path of damp earth ferns and sunlight lu said Dagny 1 11 always
bow to a coat of arms l ll ilways worship the symbols ot nobility
Am I not supposed to be an aristocrat’ Only l don l give a damn
for moth eaten turrets and tenth hand unicorns l he coats of arms
ot our day are to be found on billboards and in the ids ol populat
magazines What do you me in ’ isked I ddie Industrial trade
marks Eddie he answered l raneiseo w is fifteen yens old th it
summer

When l run d Antonia Coppu l m studying mining and

mineralogy because l must be indy foi the time when 1 lun d An
coma Coppei Im studying electric tl engineering because

power compimes are the best customers ol d Antonn Loppet
I m going to study phtlosoph\ bee uise I 11 net d it to protect d An
coma C opper

Don t vou evu think ot anvthing but d \ncom i C opper’ hm
asked him onet
No

It seems to me that theie m othei things in the world
Let others think iboul them
Isn t thU i ven selfish ittitude 1
It is

Wlnt aie vou itter ’

Money

Don t vou have enough ’

In his lifetime every one of mv meestors r used the production
of d Aneonia C opper b\ ibout ten pel cent 1 intend to ruse it b\
one hundred

What for 9 hm asked in soeistie unit ition of I r meiseo s voice
When I die I hope to go to heaven whatevei the hell th it is
and l want to be able to at toed the price ot ldnussion
\irtue is the price ot admission Jim sud haughtily
thdts what I mean James So I w int to be prepared to claim
the greatest virtue of all that l was a man who made money
Any grafter can m ike money

James you ought to diseover some div that words have in
exact meaning

Francisco smiled it was a smile of radiant mocker^ Watching
them Dagny thought suddenly of the difference betwe^i Francisco
and her brother Jim Both of thtm smiled derisively Bflt l raneiseo
seemed to laugh at things because he saw something mfcth greater
Jim laughed as if he wanted to let nothing remain great
She noticed the pirticular quality of Franciscos smil$ again, one

night* when she sat with him and Eddie at a bonfire they had built in
the woods. The glow of the lire enclosed them within a fence of broken,
moving strips that held pieces of tree trunks, branches and distant
stars. She felt as if there were nothing beyond that fence, nothing but
black emptiness, with the hint of some breath -stopping, frightening
promise . , . like the future. But the future, she thought, would be
like Francisco’s smile, there was the key to it, the advance warning
of its nature— in his face in the firelight under the pine branches —
and suddenly she felt an unbearable happiness, unbearable because
it was too full and she had no way to express it. She glanced at
Eddie. He was looking at Francisco, In some quiet way of his own,
Eddie felt as she did.

“Why do you like Francisco?” she asked him weeks later, when
Francisco was gone.

Eddie looked astonished; it had never occurred to him that the
teeling could be questioned. He said, “He makes me feel safe.”

She said, “He makes me expect excitement and danger.”

Francisco was sixteen, next summer, the day when she stood alone
with him on the summit of a cliff by the river, their shorts and shirts
torn in their climb to the top. They stood looking down the Hudson;
they had heard that on clear days one could see New York in the
distance. But they saw only a haze made of three different kinds of
light merging together: the river, the sky and the sun.

She knelt on a rock, leaning forward, trying to catch some hint of
the city, the wind blowing her hair acioss her eyes. She glanced back
over her shoulder ~ and saw that Francisco was not looking at the
distance, he stood looking at her. It was an odd glance, intent and
unsmiling. She remained still (or a moment, her hands spread flat
on the rock, her arms tensed to support the weight of her body;
inexplicably, his glance made her aware of her pose, of her shoulder
showing tluough the torn shirt, of her long, scratched, sunburned
legs slanting from the lock to the ground. She stood up angrily and
backed away from him. And while throwing her head up, resentment
in her eyes to meet the sternness in his, while feeling certain that
his was a glance of condemnation and hostility, she heard herself
asking him, a tone of smiling defiance in her voice:

"What do you like about me?”

He laughed; she wondered, aghast, what had made her say it. He
answered, “There’s what 1 like about you,” pointing to the glittering
rails of the Taggart station in the distance,

“It's not mine,” she said, disappointed.

“What 1 like is that it’s going to be.”

She smiled, conceding his victory by being openly delighted. She
did not know why he had looked at her so strangely; but she felt
that he had seen some connection, which she could not grasp, be-
tween her body and something within her that would give her the
strength to rule those rails some day.

He said brusquely, “Let's sec if we can see New York,” and jerked
her by the arm to the edge of the cliff. She thought that he did not
notice that he twisted her arm in a peculiar way, holding it down
along the length of his side; it made her stand pressed against him,

95

and she felt the warmth of the sun in the skin of his legs against
hers. They looked far out into the distance, but they saw nothing
ahead except a haze of light.

When Francisco left, that summer, she thought that his departure
was like the crossing of a frontier which ended his childhood: he was
to start college, that fall. Her turn would come next. vShe felt an
eager impatience touched by the excitement of fear; as it he had
leaped into an unknown danger. It was like the moment, years ago,
when she had seen him dive first from a rock into the Hudson, had
Seen him vanish under the black water and had stood, knowing that
he would reappear in an instant and that it would then be her turn
to follow

She dismissed the tear; dangeis, to Francisco, were merely oppor
tunities for another biilliant performance: there were no battles he
amid lose, no enemies to beat him. And then she thought of a
remark she had heard a few years earlier. It was a strange remark -
and it was strange that the words had remained in her mind, even
though she had thought them senseless at the time. The man who
said it was an old professor of mathematics, a friend of her father,
who came to their country house tor just that one visit. She liked
his face, and she could still see the peculiar sadness in his eyes when
he said to her father one evening, siUing on the terrace in the fading
light, pointing to Francisco's figure in the garden, "I hat boy is vul-
nerable. He has too great a capacity for joy. What will he do with
it in a world where there’s so little occasion for it?"

Francisco went to a great American school, which his father had
chosen lor him long ago. It was the most distinguished institution of
learning left in the world, the Patrick Henry University ot Cleveland.
He did not come to visit her in New York, that winter, even though
he was only a night’s journey away They did not write to each other,
they had never done it. But she knew that he would come back to
the country for one summer month

There were a few times, that winter, when she felt an undefined
apprehension: the professor’s words kept returning to her mind, as
a warning which she could not explain. She dismissed them. When
she thought of Francisco, she felt the steadying assurance that she
would have another month as an advance against the future, as a
proof that the world she saw ahead was real, even though it was not
the world ot those around her.

"Hi, Slug!"

"Hi, Frisco!"

Standing on the hillside, in the first moment of seeing him again,
she grasped suddenly the nature of that world which they, together,
held against all others. It was only an instant’s paused she felt her
cotton skirt beating in the wind against her knees, fell the sun on
her eyelids, and the upward thrust of such an immense relief that
she ground her feet into the grass under her sandals,) because she
thought she would nse. weightless, through the w<ml.

It was a sudden sense of freedom and safety— because she realized
that she knew nothing about the events of his life, had itever known
and would never need to know. The world of ehance+~of families,

%

meats, schools, people, of aimless people dragging the load of some
unknown guilt— was not theirs, could not change him, could not mat-
ter He and she had never spoken of things that happened to them,
but only ot what they thought and of what they would do . She
looked at him silently, as if a voice within her were saying Not the
things that are, but the things we’ll make We are not to be
stopped, you and [ Forgive me the fear if 1 thought I could lose
you to them forgive me the doubt, they’ll never reach you— HI
never be afraid for you again

He, too, stood looking at her for a moment- and it seemed to her
that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of
someone who had thought of her every day of that year She could
not be certain, it was only an inslant so brief that just as she caught
it he was turning to point at the birch tiee behind him and saying
in the tone of their childhood game

I wish you’d Icatn to run faster 1 II always have to wait for you ”

‘ Will you wait for me 9 ” she asked gaily
He answered, without smiling, ‘Always

As they went up the hill to the house, he spoke to Fddie, while
she walked silently by his side She felt that there was a new reti-
cence between them which, strangely was a new kind of intimacy
She did not question him about the university Days later, she
asked him only whethu he liked it

Ihc\ re teaching a lot ot drivel nowadays * he answered, “but
thert arc a tew courses I like ’

Hav< >ou made anv fnends there * ’

‘Two ’

He told her nothing else

Jim was approaching his scnioi \ear m a college m New York
His studies had given him a manner of odd, quavering belligerence,
as if he had found a new weapon He addressed Francisco once,
without provocation stopping him in the middle of the lawn to say
in a tone of aggressive seif righteousness

1 think that now that you ve icached college age, you ought to
learn something about ideals It’s time to forget your selfish greed
and give some thought to voui social responsibilities, because I think
that all those millions you’re going to inherit are not for your per-
sona! pleasure they arc a trust for the benefit of the undu privileged
and the poor, becauNe l think that the person who doesn’t reakrc
this is the most depraved type of human being ’

Francisco answered courteously, “It is not advisable, James, to
venture unsolicited opinions You should spare yourself the embar
rassing discover v of their exact value to your listener”

Dagny asked him, as they walked awa\ “Arc there many men
like Jim m the world 9 ”

Francisco laughed ‘A great many ’

“Don't you mind it*”

“No 1 don't have to deal with them Why do you ask that?”
“Because I think they’re dangerous in some way I don’t
know how “

97

“Good God* Dagny! Do you expect me to be afraid of an object
like James?”

It was days later when the> were alone, walking Through the
woods on the shore ot the river, that she asked

“Francisco what’s the most depraved type of human being >”
“The man without a purpose ”

She was looking at the straight shatts of the trees that stood against
the great, sudden, shining spread ot space beyond The forest was
dun and cool, but the outer branches caught the hot silver sun rays
from the water She wondered whv she enjoyed the sight, when she
had never taken any nonce of the country around her why she was
so aware of her enjoyment, of her movements, ot her body m the
process of walking She did not want to look at f ranusco She felt
that his presence seemed more intensely real when she kept her e\cs
away from him, almost as if the stressed awareness of hersell came
from him. like the sunlight from the watei

“You think you’re good don t you f he asked
“I always did ’ she answered defiantly without tinning
“Well, let me see you prove it Let me sec how far vou It rise with
Taggart Transcontinental No mallei how good vou are I’ll expect
you to wring everything you've got, trying to be still better And
when you ve worn yourself out to reach a goal I II expect you to
start for another ’

'Why do you think that I care to prove anything to \ou ? ’ she
asked

* Want me to answer >

’‘No she whispered her eves tixed upon the other shore ot the
river in the distance

She heard him chuckling and alter a while he said ’Dagny
there's nothing of anv impoitance tn life -except how well >ou do
your work Nothing Only that Whatever else you are, will come
from that It s the only measure of human value All the codes of
ethics they 11 try to ram down your throat are just so much paper
money pu{ out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues 1 he
code of competence is the only system ot morality that's on a gold
standard When vou grow up, sou II know what 1 mean

“1 know it now Bui Francisco why arc you and l the only
ones who seem to know it?’

“Why should you care about the others }1

“Because I like to understand things and there's something about
people that 1 can t understand ’

’What }

“Well I’ve always been unpopular m school and it didn’t bother
me, but now I’ve discovered the reason It s an impossible kind of
reason They dislike me not because I do things badly, but because
I do them well They dislike me because 1 ve always h&d the best
grades m class I don’t even have to study I always get A’s l>o you
suppose I should try to get D’s for a change and become the most
popular girl m school

Francisco stopped, looked at her and slapped her fac$

What she telt was contained in a single instant, while the ground

98

rocked under her feet, in a single blast of emotion within her. She
knew that she would have killed any other person who struck her,
she felt the violent fury which would have given her the strength for
it— and as violent a pleasure that Francisco had done it. She felt
pleasure Irom the dull, hot pain in her cheek and from the taste of
blood in the corner of her mouth. She felt pleasure in what she
suddenly grasped about him, about herself and about his motive.

She braced her feet to stop the di/ziness, she held her head straight
and stood facing him in the consciousness of a new power, feeling
herself his equal for the first time, looking at him with a mocking
smile of tuumph.

“Did 1 huit you as much as that'**' she asked.

He looked astonished; the question and the smile were not those
of a child, lie answered, “Yes- -if it pleases you.”

“It does.”

“Don't ever do that again. Don't crack jokes of that kind.”

“Don’t be a fool. Whatever made you think that 1 cared about
being popular *’’

“When you grow up, you'll undo stand what sort of unspeakable
thing you said.”

“I understand it now.”

He turned abruptly, took out his handkerchief and dipped it in
the water of the liver “C ome here,” he ordered.

She laughed, stepping back 'Oh, no. I want to keep it as it is. I
hope it swells terribly 1 like it ”

He looked at her lor a long moment He said slowly, very ear-
nestly, “Dagny. you’re wonderful.”

“I thought that you always thought so.” she answered, her voice
insolently casual.

When she came home, she told her mother that she had cut her
lip by falling against a rock. It was the only he she ever told. She
did not do it to protect i ranusco, she did it because she felt, for
some reason which she could not define, that the incident was a
secret too precious to share.

Next summer, when Francisco came, she was sixteen She started
running down the hill to meet him, but stopped abruptly. He saw it,
stopped, and they stood for a moment, looking at each other across
the distance of a long, green slope It was he who walked up toward
her, walked very- slowly, while she stood waiting.

When he approached, she smiled innocently, as if unconscious of
any contest intended or won.

“You might like to know,” she said, “that 1 have a job on the
railroad. Night operator at Rockdale ”

He laughed “All right, Taggart Transcontinental, now it's a race.
Let's see who’ll do greater honor, you— to Nat Taggart, or 1 — to
Sebastian d’Anconia."

Tltal winter, she stripped her life down to the bright simplicity of
a geometrical drawing: a tew straight lines — to and from the engi-
neering college in the city each day, to and from her job at Rockdale
Station each night — and the closed circle of her room, a room littered

99

with diagrams of motors, blueprints of steel structures, and rail-
road timetables.

Mrs. Taggart watched her daughter in unhappy bewilderment. She
could have forgiven all the omissions, but one: Dagny showed no
sign of interest in men, no romantic inclination whatever. Mrs, Tag-
gart did not approve of extremes; she had been prepared to contend
with an extreme of the opposite kind, if necessary; she found herself
thinking that this was worse. She felt embarrassed when she had to
admit that her daughter, at seventeen, did not have a single admirer.

“Dagny and Francisco d'Anconia?” she said, smiling ruefully, in
answer to the curiosity of her friends. “Oh no. it's not a romance,
ft’s an international industrial cartel of some kind. That’s all they
seem to care about.”

Mrs. Taggart heard James say one evening, in the presence of
guests, a peculiar tone of satisfaction in his voice, “Dagny, even
though you were named after her. you really look more like Nat
Taggart than like that first Dagny Taggart, the famous beauty who
was his wife.” Mrs. Taggart did not know which otfended her most:
that James said it or that Dagny accepted it happily as a compliment.

She would never have a chance, thought Mrs. Taggart, to form
some conception of her own daughter. Dagny was only a figure hur-
rying in and out of the apartment, a slim figure in a leather jacket,
with a raised collar, a short skirt and long show-girl legs. She walked,
cutting across a room, with a masculine, straight-line abruptness, but
she had a peculiar grace of motion that was swift, tense and oddly,
challengingty feminine.

At times, catching a glimpse of Dagny’s face, Mrs. Taggart caught
an expression which she could not quite define: it was much more
than gaiety, it was the look of such an untouched purity of enjoyment
that she found it abnormal, too: no young girl could be so insensitive
to have discovered no sadness in life. Her daughter, she concluded,
was incapable of emotion.

“Dagny,*’ she asked once, “don’t you ever want to have a good
time?’’ Dagny looked at her incredulously and answered, “What do
you think I’m having?”

The decision to give her daughter a formal debut cost Mrs. Taggart
a great deal of anxious thought. She did not know whether she was
introducing to New York society Miss Dagny Taggart of the Social
Register or the night operator of Rockdale Station; she was inclined
to believe it was more truly this last; and she felt certain that Dagny
would reject the idea of such an occasion, She was astonished when
Dagny accepted it with inexplicable eagerness, for once like a child.

She was astonished again, when she saw Dagny dressed for the
party. It was the first feminine dress she had ever worn-fa gown of
white chiffon with a huge skirt that floated like a cloud, hfrs, Taggart
had expected her to look like a preposterous contrast. Ddgny looked
like a beauty. She seemed both older and more radiantly innocent
than usual; standing in front of the mirror, she held her lead as Nat
Taggart’s wife would have held it.

“Dagny,” Mrs. Taggart said gently, reproachfully, “do $ou see how
beautiful you can be when you want to?’

100

'Yes,” said Dagny, without any astonishment
The ballroom of the Way ne- Falkland Hotel had been decorated
under Mrs Taggart's direction she had an artist’s taste, and the
setting of that evening was her masterpiece “Dagny, there are things
I would like you to learn to notice,” she said, “lights, colors, flowers*
music Ihey are not as negligible as you might think” “I’ve nevet
thought they’re negligible, ’ Dagny answered happily For once, Mrs
Iaggarl felt a bond between them Dagny was looking at her with
a child's grateful trust “IhevTe the things that make life beautiful,”
said Mrs Iaggarl ' 1 want this evening to be very beautiful ior you,
Dagny lbe lirst ball is the most romantic event ol one's life ”

To Mrs laggart the greatest surprise was the moment when she
saw Dagny standing under the lights looking at the ballroom TCus
was not a child not a girl, but a woman of such confident dangerous
power that Mrs laggart stared at hci with shocked admiration In
an age ol casual cynical, indifferent routine among people who held
ihtmsches as if thev wuc not flesh but metal- Dagnv’s beating
seemed almost indecent because this was the way a woman would
ha\c faced a balhoom centuiics ago when the act of displaying one’s
h tlf naked body for the admualion of men was an act of daring,
when if had meaning and but one meaning acknowledged bv all as
a high adventure And this -thought Mrs laggart smiling was the
mrl she had believed to be devoid of sexual eipieitv She felt an
immense relu l md a touch ol amusement at the thought that a
discos erv of this kind should make her feel relieved

lh< »ehcf lasted only for i few hours At the end of the evening
she saw Dagny in a tomci ol the biHioom sitting on a balustrade
as it it were i fence rail hei less dmglme under the chiffon skirt as
it she were diesseel m slacks She w is i \lkmg to i couple ot hcdpless
young men hei lace conn mpiuously i mpty
Neither Dagny nor Mrs 1 aggait said a woid when they rode home
tog< ther But hours later on a sudden impulse Mrs Taggart went
to her daughter s 100m Dagnv stood bv the window still wearing
the white evening gown it looked like a cloud supporting a body
that now seemed too thin tor it, a small body with sagging shoulders
Beyond the window the clouds were gray in Ihe hrst light of
morning

When Dagny turned Mrs laggart saw only puzzled helplessness
in her face the ta< e was calm but something about it made Mrs
Taggart wish she had not wished that hei daughtci should discovei
sadness

Mother do they think it s exaulv in reverse ’ ’ she asked
'What’ asked Mis Taggart bewildeied

Ihe things you weie talking about Ihe Itghts and the flowers
Do thev expect thosi things to make them romantic not the other
wav around’’

Darling what do you mean ’

'Iheie wasn’t a person thcic who uijoved it she said her voice
lifeless, ‘ or who thought or telt anything at all Ihey moved about,
and they said the same dull things they say anvwheie I suppose they
thought the lights would make it brilliant ’

101

"Darling, you take everything too seriously One is not supposed
to be intellectual at a hall One is simply supposed to be gay ”
"How* By being stupid 9

"I mean for instance didn t \ou enjoy meeting the young men*”
"What men* I here wasn t a man thete I couldn t squash ten of
Days later, silting at her desk at Rockdale Station feeling light
heartedly at home Dagny thought of the partv and shrugged in
contemptuous reproach at htr own disappointment She looked up
it was spring and there were leaves on the tree branches m the
darkness outside the air was still and warm She asked heiselt what
she had expeeted trom that party She did not know But she teit it
again here now as she sit slouched over a battered desk looking
out into the dirkness a sense ot expectation without ob|cct rising
through her body slowly like a warm liquid She slumped torwaid
across the desk la/ily feeling neither exhaustion nor desire to work
When Francisco came th it summer she told him about the parts
and about her disappointment He listened silently looking at her
for the tirst time with that glance ol unmovmg mockeiv which he
rtsetvcd for others a glance tint seemed to see too mm h She tell
as if he heard in her words moie than she knew she told him
She saw the smic gl met m his cve* on the evening when she leit
him too eailv lhc\ were done silting on the short ol th< nur
She had another houi before sht was due at Rockdale I here vun
long thm strips ol fne in the sk\ and led sp irks floating !a/il> on
the water He hid been silent lor i long time when she rose jhruplK
and told him that she had to go He did not try to stop her he leaned
back his elbows m the griss and looked it her without moving his
glance seemed to sa\ that he knew her motive Hunting tngnlv up
the slope to the house she wondtrtd what had made her leave she
did not know n had been i sudden resth ssness thit came from a
feeling she did not identifv till now i feeling ol expectation

tach night she drove the live null s trom the lountiv house to
Rockdale She came back it dawn slept a lew hours md got up
with the rest of the household She lelt no desire to sleep Undtcssim?
for bed in the lust ra\s ol the sun she lelt t tense joyous causeless
impatience to lace the div thit w is starting

She saw Franciscos mocking gl met igun across tin net ot a
tenms court She did not remember the beginning ot that gmic they
had often played tenms together and he had dways won She did
not know at what moment she dctidid that she would win this time
When she became aware of it it was no longer a decision oi a wish
but a quiet iury rising within he! She did not know why she had to
win she did not know why it seemed so crucially urgently necessary
she knew only that she had to and that she would

It seemed casv to play it was as if her will had vanished md
someone s power were playing for her She watched f raujpistos tig
ure — a tall swill ligurc the suntan of his arms stressed b# his short
white shirt sleeves She teit an arrogant pleasure in seuim the skill
of his movements because this was the thing which she wk>uld beat
so that his every expert gesture became her victory and t$e brilliant
competence of his body became the triumph of hers

102

She felt the rising pain of exhaustion — not knowing that it was
pain, feeling it only in sudden stabs that made her aware of some
part of her body for an instant, to be forgotten in the next: her arm
socket — her shoulder blades— her hips, with the white shorts sticking
to her skin -“the muscles of her legs, when she leaped to meet the
ball, but did not remember whether she came down to touch the
ground again— her eyelids, when the sky went dark icd and the ball
came at her through the darkness like a whirling white flame— the
thin, hot wire that shot from her ankle, up her back, and went on
shooting straight across the air, driving the ball at Francisco’s
figure. . . . She felt an exultant pleasure — because every stab of pain
begun in her body had to end in his, because he was being exhausted
as she was- what she did to herself, she was doing it also to him —
this was what he felt — this was what she drove him to — it was not
her pain that she felt or her body, but his.

In the moments when she saw his face, she saw that he was laugh-
ing. He was looking at her as if he understood. He was playing, not
to win, but to make it haider toi her — sending his shots wild to
make her run-losing points to see her twist her body in an agonizing
backhand — standing still, letting her think he would miss, only to let
his arm shoot out casually at the last moment and send the bail back
with such force that she knew she would miss it. She felt as if she
could not move again, not evei— and it was strange to find herself
landing suddenly at the other side of the court, smashing the ball in
lime, smashing it as if she wished it to burst to pieces, as if she
wished it were Francisco’s face.

Just once more, she thought, even it the next one would crack the
bones of her arm . . Just once more, even it the air which she
forced down in gasps past her tight, swollen throat, would be stopped
altogether . . . Then she felt nothing, no pain, no muscles, only the
thought that she had to beat him. to see him exhausted, to see him
collapse, and then she would be free to die in the next moment.

She won. Perhaps it was his laughing that made him lose, for once.
He walked to the net, while she stood still, and threw his racket
across, at her feet, as it knowing that this was what she wanted. He
walked out ot the court and fell down oil the grass of the lawn,
collapsing, his head on his arm.

She approached him slowly. She stood over him, looking down at
his body stretched at her feet, looking at his sweat-drenched shirt
and the strands of his hair spilled across his arm. He raised his head.
His glance moved slowly up the line of her legs, to her shorts, to
her blouse, to her eyes. U was a mocking glance that seemed to see
straight through her clothes and through her mind. And it seemed
to say that he had won.

She sat at her desk at Rockdale that night, alone in the old station
building, looking at the sky in the window. It was the hour she liked
best, when the top panes of the window grew lighter, and the rails
of the track outside became threads of blurred silver across the lower
panes. She turned off her lamp and watched the vast, soundless mo-
tion of light over a motionless earth. Tilings stood still, not a leaf

103

trembled on the branches, while the sky slowly lost its color and
hec&tne an expanse that looked like a spread of glowing water.

Her telephone was silent at this hour, almost as if movement had
stopped everywhere along the system. She heard steps approaching
outside, suddenly, close to the door. Francisco came in. He had never
come here before, but she was not astonished to see him.

“What are you doing up at this hour?” she asked.

“I didn't feel like sleeping."

“How did you get here? 1 didn't hear your car."

“I walked."

Moments passed before she realized that she had not asked him
why he came and that she did not want to ask it.

He wandered through the room, looking at the dusters of waybills
that hung on the walls, at the calendar with a picture of the Taggart
Comet caught in a proud surge of motion toward the onlooker. He
seemed casually at home, as if he felt that the place belonged to
them, as they always felt wherever they went together. But he did
not seem to want to talk. He asked a few questions about her job,
then he kept silent.

As the light grew outside, movement grew down on the line and
the telephone started ringing in the silence She turned to her work.
He sat in a comer, one leg thrown over the ami of his chair, waiting.

She worked swiftly, teelmg inordinately clear-headed. She found
pleasure in the rapid precision of her hands. She concentrated on
the sharp, bright sound of the phone, on the figures ot train numbers,
car numbers, order numhers. She was conscious of nothing else

But when a thin sheet of paper fluttered down to the floor and
she bent to pick it up. she was suddenly as intently conscious of that
particular moment, of herself and her own movement. She noticed
her gray linen skirt, the rolled sleeve of her gray blouse and her
naked arm reaching down for the paper. She felt her heart stop
causelessly in the kind of gasp one feels in moments of anticipation.
She picked up the paper and turned back to her desk.

It was almost full daylight. A train went past the station, without
stopping. In the purity of the morning light, the long line of car roofs
melted into a silver string, and the train seemed suspended above
the ground, not quite touching it, going past through the air. The
floor of the station trembled, and glass rattled in the windows. She
watched the train’s flight with a smile of excitement. She glanced at
Francisco; he was looking at her, with the same v srmle.

When the day operator arrived, she turned the station over to
him, and they walked out into the morning air. 7be sun had not yet
risen and the air seemed radiant in its stead. ,She felt no exhaustion.
She felt as if she were just getting up.

She started toward her car, but Francisco said, “Let’s Jvalk home.
We’ll come for the car later,"

“All right."

She was not astonished and she did not mind the Prospect of
walking five miles. It seemed natural: natural to the moment's pecu-
liar reality that was sharply clear, but cut off from everything, imme-

104

diate, but disconnected, like a bright island in a wall of fog, the
heightened, unquestioning reality one feels when one is drunk.

The road led through the woods. They left the highway for an old
trail that went twisting among the trees across miles of untouched
country. There were no traces of human existence around them. Old
ruts, overgrown with grass, made human presence seem more distant,
adding the distance of years to the distance of miles. A haze of
twilight remained over the ground, hut in the breaks between the
tree trunks there were leaves that hung in patches ol shining green
and seemed to light the forest. The leaves hung still. They walked,
alone to move through a motionless world. She noticed suddenly
that they had not said a word tor a long time.

They came to a clearing. It was a small hollow at the bottom of
a shaft made of straight rock hillsides. A stream cut across the grass,
and tree branches flowed low to the ground, like a curtain of green
fluid. The sound of the water stressed the silence. The distant cut of
open sky made the place seem more hidden. Far above, on the crest
oi a hill, one tree caught the first rays of sunlight
They stopped and looked at each other. She knew, only when he
did it, that she had known he would. He seized her. she felt her lips
on his mouth, felt her arms grasping him in violent answer, and knew
for the first time how much she had wanted him to do it.

She felt a moment's rebellion and a hint of fear. He held her,
pressing the length of his body against hers with a tense, purposeful
insistence, his hand moving over her breasts as if he were learning
a proprietor’s intimacy with her body, a shocking intimacy that
needed no consent from her, no permission. She tried to pull herself
away, but she only leaned back against his arms long enough to see
his face and his smile, the smile that told her she had given him
permission long ago She thought that she must escape: instead, it
was she who pulled his head down to find his mouth again.

She knew that fear was useless, that he would do what he wished,
that the decision was his, that he left nothing possible to her except
the thing she wanted most™ -to submit. She had no conscious realiza-
tion of his purpose, her vague knowledge of it was wiped out, she
had no power to believe it clearly, in this moment, to believe it about
herself, she knew only that she was afraid — yet what she felt was as
if she were crying to him: Don't ask me for it— oh, don't ask me —
do it!

She braced her feet for an instant, to resist, but his mouth was
pressed to hers and they went down to the ground together, never
breaking their lips apart. She lay still— as the motionless, then the
quivering object of an act which he did simply, unhesitatingly, as of
right, the right of the unendurable pleasure it gave them.

He named what it meant to both of them in the first words he
spoke afterwards. He said, “We had to learn it from each other.”
She looked at his long figure stretched on the grass beside her, he
wore black slacks and a black .shirt, her eyes stopped on the belt
pulled tight across his slender waistline, and she felt the slab of an
emotion that was tike a gasp of pride, pride in her ownership of his

105

body, vShe tav on her back, looking up at the sky, feeling no desire to
move or think or know that there was any time beyond this moment.

When she came home, when she lay in bed, naked because her
body had become an unfamiliar possession, too precious for the
touch of a nightgown, because it gave her pleasure to feel naked
and to feci as if the white sheets of her bed were touched by Francis-
co’s body — when she thought that she would not sleep, because she
did not want to rest and lose the most wonderful exhaustion she had
ever known — her last thought was of the times when she had wanted
to express, but found no way to do it, an instant's knowledge of a
feeling greater than happiness, the feeling of one’s blessing upon the
whole of the earth, the feeling of being in love with the fact that
one exists and in this kind of world; she thought that the act she
had learned was the way one expressed it. If this was a thought of
the gravest importance, she did not know it, nothing could be grave
in a universe from which the concept of pain had been wiped out,
she was not there to weigh her conclusion; she was asleep, a faint
smile on her face, in a silent, luminous room filled with the light
of morning.

That summer, she met him in the woods, in hidden corners by the
river, on the floor of an abandoned shack, in the cellar of the house.
These were the only times when she learned to feci a sense of
beauty — by looking up at old wooden rafters or at the steel plate of
an air-conditioning machine that whirred tensely, rhythmically above
their heads. She wore slacks or cotton summer dresses, yet she was
never so feminine as when she stood beside him, sagging in his arms,
abandoning herself to anything he wished, in open acknowledgment
of his power to reduce her to helplessness by the pleasure he had
the power to give her. He taught her every manner ot sensuality he
could invent. “Isn’t it wonderful that our bodies can give us so much
pleasure?” he said to her once, quite simply. They were happy and
radiantly innocent. They were both incapabie of the conception that
joy is sin.

They kept their secret from the knowledge of others, not as a
shameful guilt, but as a thing that was immaculately theirs, beyond
anyone's right of debate or appraisal. She knew the general doctrine
on sex, held by people in one form or another, the doctrine that sex
was an ugly weakness of man's lower nature, to be condoned regret-
fully. She experienced an emotion of chastity that made her shrink
not from the desires of her body, but from any contact with the
minds who held this doctrine.

That winter, Francisco came to see her in New York, at unpredict-
able intervals. He would fly down from Cleveland, withoqt warning,
twice a week, or he would vanish for months. She would sit on the
floor of her room, surrounded by charts and blueprints, !shc would
hear a knock at her door and snap, ‘Tm busy’” then hearja mocking
voice ask, “Are you?” and leap to her feet to throw the floor open,
to find him standing there. They would go to an apartment he had
rented in the city, a small apartment in a quiet neighborhood. “Fran-
cisco,” she asked him once, in sudden astonishment, “I’nl your mis-
tress, am f not?” He laughed. ‘That’s what you are.” felt the

106

pride a woman is supposed to experience at being granted the title
of wife.

In the many months of his absence, she never wondered whether
he was true to her or not; she knew he was. She knew, even though
she was too young to know the reason, that indiscriminate desire
and unseleetive indulgence were possible only to those who regarded
sex and themselves as evil.

She knew little about Francisco’s life. It was his last year in college;
he seldom spoke of it, and she never questioned him. She suspected
that he was working too hard, because she saw, at limes, the unnatu-
rally bright look of his face, the look of exhilaration that comes
from driving one’s energy beyond its limit. She laughed at him once,
boasting that she was an old employee of Taggart Transcontinental,
while he had not started to work for a living. He said; “My father
refuses to let me work for d’Anconia Copper until 1 graduate. 1 '
“When did you learn to be obedient?’* “I must respect his wishes.
He is the owner of d’Anconia Copper . . . He is not, however, the
owner ol all the copper companies in the world." There was a hint
of secret amusement in his smile.

She did not learn the story until the next fall, when he had gradua-
ted and returned to New York alter a visit to his father in Buenos
Aires, Then he told her that he had taken two courses of education
during the last lour years: one at the Patrick Henry University, the
other in a copper toundry on the outskirts of Clc\e!amJ, “1 like to
learn things ior myself," he said. He had started working at the
foundry as furnace boy, when he was sixteen — and now. at twenty,
he owned it. He acquired the first title of properly, with the aid ot
some inaccuracy about his age. on the day when he received his
university diploma, and he sent them both to his father.

He showed her a photogtaph ol the foundry. It was a small, grimy
place, disreputable with age, battered bv years of a losing struggle:
above its entrance gate, like a new flag on the mast of a derelict,
hung the sign: d'Ancoma Copper.

The public relations man ol his father’s office in New York had
moaned, outraged. “But. Don Francisco, you can't do that! What
will the public think? That name --on a dump of this kind?" “It’s
my name," Francisco had answered.

When he entered his father’s office in Buenos Aires, a large room,
severe and modern as a laboratory, with photographs of the proper-
ties of d’Anconia Copper a* sole ornament on its walls — photographs
of the greatest mines, ore docks and foundries in the world- -he saw,
in the place of honor, facing his father's desk, a photograph of the
Cleveland foundry with the new sign above its gate.

His father’s eyes moved from the photograph to Francisco’s face
as he stood in front of the desk.

“Isn't it a little too soon?" his father asked.

“1 couldn't have stood lour years of nothing but lectures."

“Where did you gel the money for your first payment on that
property?”

'“By playing the New York stock market."

"What? Who taught you to do that?”

107

“It is not difficult to judge which industrial ventures will succeed
and which won't."

“Where did you get the money to play with?"

“From the allowance you sent me, and from my wages."

“When did you have time to watch the stock market?"

“While 1 was writing a thesis on the influence — upon subsequent
metaphysical systems — of Aristotle's theory of the Immovable
Mover."

Francisco's stay in New York was brief, that fall. His father was
sending him to Montana as assistant superintendent of a d’Anconia
mine. “Oh well," he said to Dagny, smiling, “my father does not
think it advisable to let me rise too fast. I would not ask him to take
me on faith. If he wants a factual demonstration, I shall comply."
In the spring, Francisco came back — as head of the New York office
of d'Anconia Copper.

She did not see him often in the next two years. She never knew
where he was, in what city or on what continent, the day after she
had seen him. fie always came to her unexpectedly — and she liked
it, because it made him a continuous presence in her life, like the
ray of a hidden light that could hit hei at any moment

Whenever she saw him in his office, she thought of his hands as
she had seen them on the wheel of a motorboat: he drove his busi-
ness with the same smooth, dangerous, confidently mastered speed.
But one small incident remained in her mind as a shock it did not
fit him. She saw him standing at the window of hi** office. one eve-
ning, looking at the brown winter twilight of the city. He did not
move for a long time. His lace was hard and light; it had the look
of an emotion she had never believed possible to him* ol bitter,
helpless anger. He said, “There's something wrong in the world
There’s always been. Something no one has ever named or ex-
plained " He would not tell her what i( was.

When she saw him again, no trace of that incident remained in
his manner. It was spring and they stood together on the roof terrace
of a restaurant, the light silk of her evening gown blowing in the
wind against his tall figure in formal black clothes. They looked at
the city. In the dining room behind them, the sounds of the music
were a concert £tude by Richard Halley, Halley’s name was not
known to many, but they had discovered it and they loved his music.
Francisco said, “We don’t have to look for skyscrapers in the dis-
tance, do we? We’ve reached them." She smiled and said, “I think
we’re going past them. . . . I’m almost afraid . . . we’re on a speeding
elevator of some kind." “Sure. Afraid of what? Let it speed. Why
should there be a limit?"

He was twenty-three when his father died and he went to Buenos
Aires to take over the d’Anconia estate, now his. She did not see
him again for three years.

He wrote to her, at first, at random intervals. He trrule about
d’Anconia Copper, about the world market, about issi|es affecting
the interests of Taggart Transcontinental. His letters wer^ brief, writ-
ten by hand, usually at night. ■

She was not unhappy in his absence. She, too, was taking her first

108

steps toward the control of a future kingdom. Among the leaders of
industry, her father’s friends, she heard it said that one had better
watch the young d’Ancoma heir; if that copper company had been
great before, it would sweep the world now, under what his manage-
ment promised to become. She smiled, without astonishment. There
were moments when she felt a sudden, violent longing for him, but
it was only impatience, not pain. She dismissed it, in the confident
knowledge that they were both working toward a future that would
bring them everything they wanted, including each other. Then his
letters stopped.

She was twenty-four on that day of spring when the telephone
rang on her desk, in an office of the Taggart Building. “Dagny,”
said a voice she recognized at once, “I’m at the Wayne-Falkland.
Come to have dinner with me tonight. At seven.” He said it without
greeting, as if they had parted the day before. Because it took her
a moment to regain the art of breathing, she realized for the first
tune how much that voice meant to her. “AH light . . . Francisco,”
she answered. They needed to say nothing else. She thought, replac-
ing the receiver, that his return was natural and as she had always
expected it to happen, except that she had not expected her sudden
need to pronounce his name or the stab of happiness she felt while
pronouncing it.

When she entered his hotel room, that evening, she stopped short.
He stood in the middle of the room, looking at her — and she saw a
smile that came slowly, involuntarily, as if he had lost the ability to
smile and was astonished that he should regain it. He looked at hei
incredulously, not quite believing what she was or what he felt. His
glance was like a plea, like the cry lor help of a man who could
never cry. At her entrance, he had started their old salute, he had
started to say, “Hi—” but he did not finish it. Instead, after a mo-
ment. he said, ‘You’re beautiful, Dagny.” He said it as if it hurt him.

“Francisco, I—”

He shook his head, not to let her pronounce the words they had
never said to each other — even though they knew that both had said
and heard them in that moment.

He approached, he took her in his arms, he kissed her mouth and
held her foi a long time. When she looked up at his face, he was
smiling down at her confidently, derisively. It was a smile that told
her he was in control of himself, of her, of everything, and ordered
her to forget what she had seen in that first moment. “Hi, Slug ”
he said.

Feeling certain of nothing except that she must not ask questions,
she smiled and said, “Hi, Frisco.”

She could have understood any change, but not the things she saw.
There was no sparkle of life in his face, no hint of amusement; the
face had become implacable. The plea of his first smile had not been
a pica of weakness; he had acquired an air of determination that
seemed merciless. He acted like a man who stood straight, under
the weight of an unendurable burden. She saw what she amid not
have believed possible*, that there were tines of bitterness in his face
and that he looked tortured.

109

“Dagny, don’t be astonished by anything 1 do,” he said, “or by
anything I may ever do in the future.”

That was the only explanation he granted her, then proceeded to
act a$ if there were nothing to explain.

She could feel no more than a faint anxiety; it was impossible to
feel fear for his fate or in his presence. When he laughed, she thought
they were back in the woods by the Hudson: he had not changed
and never would.

The dinner was served in his room. She found it amusing to face
him across a table laid out with the icy formality pertaining to exces-
sive cost, in a hotel room designed as a European palace.

The Wayne-Falkland was the most distinguished hotel left on any
continent. Its style of indolent luxury, of velvet drapes, sculptured
panels and candlelight, seemed a deliberate contrast to its function:
no one could afford its hospitality except men who came to New
York on business, to settle transactions involving the world. She
noticed that the manner ot the waiters who served theii dinner sug-
gested a special deference to this particular guest of the hotel, and
that Francisco did not notice it. He was indifferently at home. He
had long since become accustomed to the fact that he was Seftor
d’Anconia of d’Anconia Copper.

But she thought it strange that he did not speak about his work.
She had expected it to be his only interest, the first thing he would
share with her He did not mention it. He led her to talk, instead,
about her job. her progress, and what she felt for Taggart Transconti-
nental. She spoke of it as she had always spoken to him. in the
knowledge that he was the only one who could understand her pas-
sionate devotion. He made no comment, but he listened intently.

A waiter had turned on the radio for dinner music: they had paid
no attention to it But suddenly, a crash of sound jarred the room,
almost as if a subterranean blast had struck the walls and made them
tremble. The shock came, not from the loudness, but from the quality
of the sounds. It was H alley's new Concerto, recently written, the
Fourth.

They sat in silence, listening to the statement of icbellion— the
anthem of the triumph of the great victims who would refuse to
accept pain. Francisco listened, looking out at the city.

Without transition or warning, he asked, hi:> voice oddly un-
stressed, “Dagny, what would you say if 1 asked you to leave Taggait
Transcontinental and let it go to hell, as it will when your brother
takes over?”

“What would I say if you asked me to consider the idea of commit-
ting suicide?” she answered angrily.

He remained silent.

“Why did you say that?” she snapped. *1 didn’t think: you’d joke
about it. It’s not like you.”

There was no touch of humor in his face. He answered quietly,
gravely, “No. Of course. 1 shouldn’t.”

She brought herself to question him about his work. life answered
the questions; he volunteered nothing. She repeated to h|m the com-
ments of the industrialists about the brilliant prospects of d’Anconia

110

Copper under his management. ‘That’s true,” he said, his voice
lifeless.

In sudden anxiety, not knowing what prompted her, she asked,
“Francisco, why did you come to New York?”

He answered slowly, “To see a friend who called for me.”

“Business?”

Looking past her, as if answering a thought of his own, a faint
smile of bitter amusement on his face, but his voice strangely soft
and sad, he answered:

“Yes.”

It was long past midnight when she awakened in bed by his side.
No sounds came from the city below. The stillness of the room made
life seem suspended for a while. Relaxed in happiness and in com-
plete exhaustion, she turned lazily to glance at him. He lay on his
back, half-propped by a pillow. She saw his profile against the foggy
glow of the night sky in the window. He was awake, his eyes were
open. He held his mouth closed like a man lying in resignation in
unbearable pain; bearing it, making no attempt to hide it

She was too frightened to move. He felt her glance and turned to
her. He shuddered suddenly, he threw off the blanket, he looked at
her naked body, then he fell forward and buried his face between her
breasts. He held her shoulders, hanging onto her convulsively. She
heard the words, muffled, his mouth pressed to her skin:

“1 can’t give it up! I can’t!”

“What?” she whispered.

“You.”

“Why should — *'

“And everything.”

“Why should you give it up?”

“Dagny! Help me to remain. To refuse. Even though he’s right!”

She asked evenly. “To refuse what, Francisco?”

He did not answer, only pressed his face harder against her.

She lay very still, conscious of nothing but a supreme need of
caution. His head on her breast, her hand caressing his hair gently,
steadily, she lay looking up at the ceiling of the room, at the sculp-
tured garlands faintly visible in the darkness, and she waited, numb
with terror.

He moaned, “It's right, but it’s so hard to do! Oh God. it’s so
hard!”

After a while, he raised his head. He sal up. He had stopped
trembling.

“What is it, Francisco?"

“I can’t tell you.” His voice was simple, open, without attempt to
disguise suffering, but it was a voice that obeyed him now. “You’re
not ready to hear it.”

“I want to help you.”

“You can’t.”

“You said, to help you refuse.”

“1 can't refuse.”

“Then let me share it with you.”

He shook his head.

111

He sat looking down at her, as if weighing a question. Then he
shook his head again, in answer to himself.

“If I’m not sure I can stand it,” he said, and the strange new note
in his voice was tenderness, “how could you?”

She said slowly, with effort, trying to keep herself from screaming,
“Francisco, 1 have to know.”

“Will you forgive me? f know you’re frightened, and it’s cruel.
But will you do this for me — will you let it go, just let it go, and
don’t ask me anything?”

“ 1 — ”

“That’s all you can do for me. Will you?”

“Yes, Francisco.”

“Don’t be afraid for me. It was just this once. It won’t happen to
me again. It will become much easier . . . later.”

“If 1 could — ”

“No. Go to sleep, dearest.”

It was the first time he had ever used that word.

In the morning, he faced her openly, not avoiding her anxious
glance, but saying nothing about it. She saw both serenity and suffer-
ing in the calm of his face, an expression like a smile of pain, though
he was not smiling. Strangely, it made him look younger. He did not
look like a man bearing torture now, but like a man who sees that
which makes the torture worth bearing.

She did not question him. Before leaving, she asked only, “When
will 1 see you again?”

He answered. “I don’t know. Don’t wait for me. Dagny. Next time
we meet, you will not want to see me. I will have a reason for the
things HI do. But I can’t tell you the reason and you will be right
to damn me. I am not committing the contemptible act of asking
you to take me on faith. You have to live by your own knowledge
and judgment. You will damn me. You will be hurt. Try not to let
it hurt you too much. Remember that I told you this and that it was
all l could tell you.”

She heard nothing from him or about him for a year. When she
began to hear gossip and to read newspaper stories, she did not
believe, at first, that they referred to Francisco d’Anconia. After a
while, she had to believe it.

She read the story of the party he gave on his yacht, in the harbor
of Valparaiso; the guests wore bathing suits, and an artificial ram of
champagne and flower petals kept falling upon the decks throughout
the night.

She read the story of the party he gave at an Algerian desert
resort; he built a pavilion of thin sheets of ice and presented every
woman guest with an ermine wrap, as a gift to be worn; for the
occasion, on condition that they remove their wraps, then t|ieir eve*
ning gowns, then all the rest, in tempo with the melting of Ijjhe walls.

She Tead the accounts of the business ventures he undertook at
lengthy intervals; the ventures were spectacularly successful and ru-
ined his competitors, but he indulged in them as in an occasional
sport, staging a sudden raid, then vanishing from the industrial scene

112

for a year or two, leaving d’Anconia Copper to the management of
his employees.

She read of the interview where he said* “Why should I wish to
make money? 1 have enough to permit three generations of descen-
dants to have as good a time as I’m having,”

She saw him once, at a reception given by an ambassador in New
York. He bowed to her courteously, he smiled, and he looked at her
with a glance m which no past existed. She drew him aside. She said
only, “Francisco, why?” “Why— what?” he asked. She turned away.
“1 warned you,” he said. She did not try to see him again.

She survived it. She was able to survive it, because she did not
believe in suffering. She faced with astonished indignation the ugly
fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter. Suffering was a
senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it. She would
not allow pain to become important. She had no name for the kind
of resistance she offered, for the emotion from which the resistance
came; but the words that stood as its equivalent in her mind were:
It does not count — it is not to be taken seriously. She knew these
were the words, even in the moments when there was nothing left
within her but screaming and she wished she could lose the faculty
of consciousness so that it would not tell her that what could not be
true was true. Not to be taken seriously — an immovable certainty
within her kept repeating- pain and ugliness are never to be taken
seriously.

She fought it. She recovered. Years helped her to reach the day
when she could face her memories indifferently, then the day when
she felt no necessity to face them. It was finished and of no concern
to her any longer.

There had been no other men in her life. She did not know
whether this had made her unhappy. She had had no time to know.
She found the clean, brilliant sense of life as she wanted it — in her
work. Once, Francisco had given her the same sense, a feeling that
belonged with her work and in her world. The men she had met
since were like the men she met at her first ball.

She had won the battle against her memories But one form of tor-
ture remained, untouched by the years, the torture of the word “why?”

Whatever the tragedy he met. why had Francisco taken the ugliest
way of escape, as ignoble as the way of some cheap alcoholic? 'The
boy she had known could not have become a useless coward. An
incomparable mind could not turn its ingenuity to the invention of
melting ballrooms. Yet he had and did. and there was no explanation
to make it conceivable and to let her forget him in peace. She could
not doubt the fact of what he had been; she could not doubt the
fact of what he had become; yet one made the other impossible. At
times, she almost doubted her own rationality or the existence of
any rationality anywhere; but this was a doubt which she did not
permit to anyone. Yet there was no explanation, no reason, no clue
to any conceivable reason— and in all the days of ten years she had
found no hint of an answer.

No, she thought— as she walked through the gray twilight past
the windows of abandoned shops, to the Wayne- Falkland Hotel—

113

fto, there could be no answer. She would not seek it. It did not
matter now.

The remnant of violence, the emotion rising as a thin trembling
within her, was not for the man she was going to see; it was a cry
of protest against a sacrilege — against the destruction ot what had
been greatness.

In a break between buildings, she saw the towers of the Waync-
Fatkland. She felt a slight jolt, in her lungs and legs, that stopped
her for an instant. Then she walked on evenly.

By the time she walked through the marble lobby, to the elcvatoi,
then down the wide, velvet-carpeted, soundless corridors of the
Wayne -Falkland, she fell nothing but a cold anger that grew colder
with every step.

She was certain of the anger when she knocked at his door. She
heard his voice, answering, “runic in.” She jerked the door open
and entered.

Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d’Anconia sat on the
floor, playing marbles.

Nobody ever wondered whether Francisco d’Anconia was good-
looking or not; it seemed irrelevant, when he entered a room, it was
impassible to look at anyone else. His tall, slender figure had an air
of distinction, too authentic to be modern, and he moved as if he
had a cape floating behind him in the wind. People explained him
by saying that he had the vitality of a healthy animal, but they knew
dimly that that was not correct. He had the vitality of a healthy
human being, a thing so rare that no one could identity it He had
the power of certainty.

Nobody described his appearance as Latin, yet the word applied
to him, not in its present, but in its original sense, not pertaining to
Spain, but to ancient Rome. His body seemed designed as an exercise
in consistency of style, a style made ot gauntness, of light flesh, of
long legs and swift movements. His features had the line precision
of sculpture, flis hair was black and straight, swept back. The suntan
of his skin intensified the startling color of his eyes: they were a
pure, clear blue. His face was open, its rapid changes of expression
reflecting whatever he felt, as if he had nothing to hide. The blue
eyes were still and changeless, never giving a hint of what he thought.

He sat on the floor of his drawing room, dressed in sleeping paja-
mas of thin black silk. The marbles spread on the carpet around him
were made of the semi-precious stones of his native country: carne-
lian and rock crystal. He did not rise when Dagny entered. He sal
looking up at her, and a crystal marble fell like a teardrop out of
his hand. He smiled, the unchanged, insolent, brilliant smile of his
childhood.

“Hi, Slug!”

She heard herself answering, irresistibly, helplessly, happily:

“Hi, Frisco!”

She was looking at his face; it was the face she had knowfi. It bore
no mark of the kind of life he had led, nor of what she hal seen on
their last night together. There was no sign of tragedy, no bitterness,
no tension — only the radiant mockery, matured and stressed, the

114

look of dangerously unpredictable amusement, and the great, guilt*
less serenity of spirit* But this, she thought, was impossible; this was
more shocking than all the rest*

His eyes were studying her: the battered coat thrown open, half-
slipping off her shoulders, and the slender body in a gray suit that
looked like an office uniform.

“If you came here dressed like this in order not to let me notice
how lovely you are,” he said, “you miscalculated. You're lovely: i
wish I could tell you what a relief it is to see a face that's intelligent
though a woman’s. But you don’t want to hear it. That’s not what
you came here for.”

The words weie improper in so many ways, yet were said so tightly
that they brought her back to reality, to anger and to the purpose
of her visit. She remained standing, looking down at him, her face
blank, refusing him any recognition of the personal, even of its power
to offend her. She said, “I came here to ask you a question.”

"Go ahead.”

“When you told those reporters that you came to New York to
witness the tarce, which farce did you mean?”

He laughed aloud, like a man who seldom finds a chance to enjoy
the unexpected.

“That’s what I like about you. Dagny. There are seven million
people in the city of New York, at present Out of seven million
people, you are the only one to whom it could have occurred that I
wasn’t talking about the Vail divorce scandal.”

“What were you talking about?”

“What alternative occurred to you?”

“The San Sebastian disaster.”

“That's much more amusing than the Vail divorce scandal, isn’t
it.”

She said in the solemn, merciless tone of a prosecutor. “You did
it consciously, cold bloodedly and with full intention.”

“Don’t you think it would be better if you took your coat off and
sat down?”

She knew she had made a mistake by betraying loo much intensity.
She turned coldly, removed her coat and threw it aside. He did not
rise to help her. She sat down in an armchair. He remained on the
floor, at some distance, but it seemed as it he were sitting at her feet.

“What was it 1 did with full intention?” he asked.

“'1 lie entire San Sebastian swindle.”

“What was my full intention?”

“Thai is what I want to know,”

He chuckled, as if she had asked him to explain in conversation
a complex science requiring a lifetime of study.

“You knew that the San Sebastian mines were worthless,” she
said. “You knew it before you began the whole wretched business.”

“Then why did I begin it?”

“Don’t start telling me that you gained nothing. I know it. I know
you lost fifteen million dollars of your own money. Yet it was done
on purpose.”

“Can you think of a motive that would prompt me to do it?”

115

“No. It’s inconceivable.”

“Is it? You assume that I have a great mind, a great knowledge
and a great productive ability, so that anything 1 undertake must
necessarily be successful. And then you claim that I had no desire
to put out my best effort for the People’s State of Mexico. Inconceiv-
able, isn’t it?”

“You knew, before you bought that property, that Mexico was in
the hands of a looters' government. You didn't have to start a mining
project for them.”

“No, I didn't have to.'’

“You didn’t give a damn about that Mexican government, one
way or another, because — ”

“You’re wrong about that.”

■* — because you knew they’d seize those mines sooner or later.
What you were after is your American stock holders.”

“That’s true ” He was looking straight at her, he was not smiling,
his face was earnest. He added, “That's part of the truth.”

“What’s the rest?”

“U was not all I was after.”

“What else?”

“That’s for you to ligure out.”

“I came here because 1 wanted you to know that I am beginning
to understand your purpose ”

He smiled. “If you did. you wouldn’t have come here ”

“That’s true. I don’t understand and probably never shall. I am
merely beginning to see part of it.”

“Which part?”

“You had exhausted every other form of depravity and sought a
new thrill by swindling people like Jim and his friends, in order to
watch them squirm. I don't know what sort of corruption could make
anyone enjoy that, but that’s what you came to New York to see,
at the right time.”

“They certainly provided a spectacle of squirming on the giand
scale. Your brother James In particular.”

“They’re rotten fools, but in this case their only crime was that
they trusted you. They trusted your name and your honor.”

Again, she saw the look of earnestness and again knew with cer-
tainty that it was genuine, when he said, “Yes. They did. 1 know it.”

“And do you find it amusing?”

“No. f don’t find it amusing at all.”

He had continued playing with his marbles, absently, indifferently,
taking a shot once in a while. She noticed suddenly the faultless
accuracy of his aim, the skill of his hands. He merely flicked his wrist
and sent a drop of stone shooting across the carpet to click sharply
against another drop. She thought of his childhood and of tpe predic-
tions that anything he did would be done superlatively.

“No,” he said, “1 don’t find it amusing. Your brother lames and
his friends knew nothing about the copper-mining industry. They
knew nothing about making money. They did not think necessary
to learn. They considered knowledge superfluous and judgment ines-
sential. They observed that there 1 was in the world and t6at I made

116

it ray honor to know. They thought they could trust ray honor. One
does not betray a trust of this kind, does one?”

“Then you did betray it intentionally?”

“That’s for you to decide, it was you who spoke about their trust
and my honor. 1 don’t think in such terms any longer. . . He
shrugged, adding, “I don’t give a damn about your brother James
and his friends. Their theory was not new, it has worked for centu-
ries. But it wasn’t foolproof. There is just one point that they over-
looked. They thought it was s^fe to ride on my brain, because they
assumed that the goal of my journey was wealth, AH their calcula-
tions rested on the premise that I wanted to make money. What if
i didn’t?”

“If you didn't, what did you want?”

“They never asked me that. Not to inquire about my aims, motives
or desires is an essential part of their theory.”

“If you didn’t want to make money, what possible motive could
you have had?”

“Any number of them. For instance, to spend it.”

“To spend money on a certain, total failure?”

“How was I to know that those mines were a certain, total
failure?”

“How could you help knowing it?”

“Quite simply By giving it no thought.”

“You started that project without giving it any thought?”

“No, not exactly. But suppose I slipped up? I’m only human. I
made a mistake. I failed. I made a bad job of it.” He flicked his
wrist; a crystal marble shot, sparkling, across the floor and cracked
violently against a brown one at the other end of the room.

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

“No? But haven’t I the right to be what is now accepted as
human? Should I pay for everybody’s mistakes and never be permit-
ted one of my own?”

“That’s not like you.”

“No?” He stretched himself full-length on the carpet, lazily, re-
laxing. “Did you intend for me to notice that if you think I did it
on purpose, then you still give me credit for having a purpose?
You’re still unable to accept me as a bum?”

She closed her eyes. She heard him laughing; it was the gayest
sound in the world. She opened her eyes hastily; but there was no
hint of cruelty in his face, only pure laughter.

“My motive, Dagny? You don’t think that it’s the simplest one of
all — the spur of the moment?”

No, she thought, no, that’s not true; not if he laughed like that,
not if he looked as he did. The capacity for unclouded enjoyment,
she thought, does not belong to irresponsible fools; an inviolate
peace of spirit is not the achievement of a drifter; to be able to laugh
like that is the end result of the most profound, most solemn
thinking.

Almost dispassionately, looking at his figure stretched on the car-
pet at her feet, she observed what memory it brought back to her:
the black pajamas stressed the long lines of his body, the open collar

117

showed a smooth, young, sunburned skin— and she thought of the
figure in black slacks and shirt stretched beside her on the grass at
sunrise. She had felt pride then, the pride of knowing that she owned
his body; she still felt it. She remembered suddenly, specifically, the
excessive acts of their intimacy; the memory should have been offen-
sive to her now, but wasn’t. It was still pride, without regret or hope,
an emotion that had no power to reach her and that she had no
power to destroy.

Unaccountably, by an association of feeling that astonished her,
she remembered what had conveyed to her recently the same sense
of consummate joy as his.

“Francisco," she heard ho sell saying softly, “we both loved the
music of Richard Halley ..."

“I still love it."

"Have vou ever met him?"

"Yes Why?'’

"Do you happen to know whether he has written a Fifth
Concerto?"

He remained perfectly still. She had thought him impervious to
shock, he wasn't. But she could not attempt to guess why of all the
things she had said, this should be the first to reach him. It was only
an instant: then he asked evenlv. "What makes \ou think he has?"

"Well, has he?"

"You know that there are onlv foui Halley Concertos."

"Yes. But l wondered whether he had written another one."

"He has stopped writing."

"I know."

“Then what made you ask that?"

"Just an idle thought. What is he doing now? Where is he?"

"I don't know. 1 haven’t seen him for a long time. What made
you think that there was a Fifth Concerto'*"

"I didn't say there was 1 merely wondered about it."

"Why did you think of Richard Halley just now‘ > "

"Because" — she felt her control ciacking a little- "because my
mind can’t make the leap from Richard Halley's music to , to
Mrs. Gilbert Vail."

He laughed, relieved "Oh, that? . . . Incidentally, il you’ve been
following my publicity, have you noticed a funny little discrepancy
in the story of Mrs. Gilbert Vail?"

"1 don't read the stuff,"

"You should. She gave such a beautiful description of last New
Year’s Eve, which we spent together in my villa in the Andes. The
moonlight on the mountain peaks, and the blood-red flowers hanging
on vines in the open windows. See anything wrong in tlje picture?"

She said quietly, "It’s I who should ask you that, <|nd I m not
going to."

"Oh. I see nothing wrong — except that last New Yearfs Eve l was
in El Paso, Texas, presiding at the opening of the San Sebastian Line
of Taggart Transcontinental, as you should remember, even if you
didn't choose to be present on the occasion. I had my picture taken

118

with my arms around your brother James and the Seflor Orrcn
Boyle ”

She gasped, remembering that this was true, remembering also
that she had seen Mrs Vail's story in the newspapers

“Francisco, what what does that mean?”

He chuckled “Diaw your own conclusions Dagny” — his face

was serious— “why did you think of Halley writing a Filth Concerto?
Why not a new symphony or opera ? Why specifically a concerto 7 ”

“Why does that disturb you

“It doesn’t ” He added softly, “I still love his music, Dagny ” Hien
he spoke lightly again “But it belonged to another age Our age
provides a different kind of entertainment *

He rolled over on his back and lay with his hands crossed under
his head, looking up as if he were watching the scenes of a movie
farce unrolling on the ceiling

Dagny didn’t you enjoy the spectacle of the behavior of the
People’s State of Mexico in regard to the San Sebastian Mines 7
Did you read their government’s speeches and the editorials in their
newspapers 0 1 hey are saymg that 1 am an unscrupulous cheat who
has defrauded them f htv expected to have a successful mining con
cern to sei/e I had no right to disappoint them like that Did you
read about the scabby little bureaucrat who wanted them to sue
me y

He laughed, lying flat on his back his aims were thrown wide on
the carpet forming a cross with his body, he seemed disarmed re-
laxed and young

‘ It was woith whatever it s cost me I could afford the price of
that show It I had staged it intentionally 1 would have beaten the
lecord of the Lmperor Nero What s burning a city — compared to
tearing the lid off hell and letting men see it } *

He raised himself, picked up a few marbles and sat shaking them
absently m his hand, they clicked with the soft, clear sound of good
stone She icali/ed suddenly that playing with those marbles was not
a deliberate affectation on his part it was icstlessness he could not
remain inactive for long

’The government of the Peoples State of Mexico has issued a
proclamation ’ he said ‘asking the people to be patient and put up
with hardships just a little longer It seems that the copper fortune
of the San Sebastian Mines was part of the plans of the central
planning council It was to raise everybody's standard of living and
provide a roast of pork every Sunday for every man. woman, child
and abortion in the People’s State of Mexico Now the planners are
asking then people not to blame the government but to blame the
depravity of the rich, because l turned out to be an irresponsible
playboy, instead of the greedy capitalist 1 was expected to be How
were they to know, they’re asking, that 1 would let them down 7
Well, true enough How were they to know it>’

She noticed the way he fingered the marbles in his hand He was
not conscious of it, he was looking off into some grim distance, but
she felt certain that the action was a relief to him. perhaps as a
contrast His fingers were moving slowly, feeling the texture of the

119

stones with sensual enjoyment. Instead of finding it crude, she found
*t strangely attractive — as if, she thought suddenly, as if sensuality
were not physical at all, but came from a fine discrimination of the
spirit.

“And that’s not all they didn’t know,” he said. “They’re in for
some more knowledge. There’s that housing settlement for the work-
ers of San Sebastian. It cost eight million dollars. Steel-frame houses,
with plumbing, electricity and refrigeration. Also a school, a church,
a hospital and a movie theater. A settlement built for people who
had lived in hovels made of driftwood and stray tin cans. My reward
for building it was to be the privilege of escaping with my skm, a
special concession due to the accident of my not being a native of
the People’s State of Mexico. That workers’ settlement was also part
of their plans. A model example of progressive State Housing. Well,
those steel-frame houses are mainly cardboard, with a coating of
good imitation shellac. They won’t stand another year. The plumbing
pipes — as well as most of our mining equipment — were purchased
from dealers whose main source of supply are the city dumps of
Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. I’d give those pipes another five
months, and the electric system about six. The wonderful roads we
graded up four thousand feet of rock for the People's Slate of Mex-
ico. will not last beyond a couple of winters: they’re cheap cement
without foundation, and the bracing at the bad turns is just painted
clapboard Wait for one good mountain slide The church. I think,
will stand. They’ll need it.”

“Francisco.” she whispered, “did you do it on purpose?”

He raised his head; she was startled to see that his face had a look
of infinite weariness. “Whether I did it on purpose,” he said, “or
through neglect, or through stupidity, don’t you understand that that
doesn’t make any difference? The same element was missing.”

She was trembling. Against all her decisions and control, she cried,
“Francisco! If you see what's happening in the world, if you under-
stand all the things you said, you can't laugh about it! You. of all
men, you should fight them!”

“Whom?”

“The looters, and those who make world-looting possible. The
Mexican planners and their kind.”

His smile had a dangerous edge. “No, my dear. It’s you that 1
have to fight.”

She looked at him blankly. ‘What are you trying to say?”

“I am saying that the workers’ settlement of San Sebastian cost
eight million dollars.” he answered with slow emphasis, his voice
hard. “The price paid for those cardboard houses was the price that
could have bought steel structures. So was the price paid for every
other item. That money went to men who grow rich by such methods.
Such men do not remain rich for long. The money will g<j into chan-
nels which will carry it, not to the most productive, but jo the most
corrupt. By the standards of our time, the man who has the least to
offer is the man who wins. That money will vanish in pfojects such
as the San Sebastian Mines.”

She asked with effort, “Is that what you’re after?”

120

“Yes.”

‘is that what you find amusing?”

“Yes”

“I am thinking of your name,” she said, while another part of her
mind was crying to her that reproaches were useless. “It was a tradi-
tion of your family that a d’Anconia always left a fortune greater
than the one he received.”

“Oh yes, my ancestors had a remarkable abitity for doing the right
thing at the right time — and for making the right investments. Of
course, ‘investment* is a relative term. It depends on what you wish
to accomplish. For instance, look at San Sebastian. It cost me fifteen
million dollars, but these fifteen million wiped out forty million be-
longing to Taggart Transcontinental, thirty-five million belonging to
stockholders such as James Taggart and Orren Boyle, and hundreds
of millions which will be lost in secondary consequences. That's not
a bad return on an investment, is it, Dagny?”

She was sitting straight. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Oh, fully! Shall I beat you to it and name the consequences you
were going to reproach me for? First, 1 don’t think that Taggart
Transcontinental will recover from its loss on that preposterous San
Sebastian Line, You think it will, but it won’t. Second, the San Sebas-
tian helped your brother, James, to destroy the Phoenix-Durango,
which was about the only good railroad left anywhere.”

“You realize all that?”

“And a great deal more.’*

“Do you” — she did not know why she had to say it, except that
the memory of the face with the dark, violent eyes seemed to stare
at her — “do you know Ellis Wyatt?”

“Suie.**

“Do you know what this might do to him?”

“Yes. He’s the one who’s going to be wiped out next.”

“Do you . . . find that , . . amusing?”

“Much more amusing than the ruin of the Mexican planners.”

She stood up. She had called him corrupt for years; she had feared
it, she had thought about it, she had tried to forget it and never
think of it again; but she had never suspected how far the corruption
had gone.

She was not looking at him; she did not know that she was saying
it aloud, quoting his words of the past: ”... who’ll do greater honor,
you — to Nat Taggart, or I — to Sebastian d’Anconia ...”

“But didn't you realize that 1 named those mines in honor of my
great ancestor? I think it was a tribute which he would have liked,”

It took her a moment to recover her eyesight; she had never
known what was meant by blasphemy or what one felt on encoun-
tering it; she knew it now.

He had risen and stood courteously, smiling down at her; it was
a cold smile, impersonal and unrevealing,

vShe was trembling, but it did not matter. She did not care what
he saw or guessed or laughed at.

“I came here because I wanted to know the reason for what you’ve
done with your life,” she said tonelessly, without anger.

121

* *i have told you the reason,” he answered gravely; “but you don’t
want to believe it.”

*i kept seeing you as you were. I couldn’t forget it. And that
you should have become what you are — that does not belong in a
rational universe.”

“No? And the world as you see it around you does?”

'‘You were not the kind of man who gets broken by any kind
of world ”

“True.”

“Then— why?”

He shrugged. “Who is John Galt?”

“Oh. don’t use gutter language!”

He glanced at her. His lips held the hint of a smile, but his eyes
were still, earnest and, for an instant, distuibingly perceptive.

“Why?” she repeated.

He answered, as he had answered in the night, in this hotel, ten
years ago, “You’re not ready to hear it ”

He did not follow her to the door She had put her hand on the
doorknob when she lumed — and stopped He stood across the room,
looking at her; it was a glance directed at her whole person; she
knew its meaning and it held her motionless.

“I still want to sleep with you,” he said. “But I am not a man
who is happy enough to do it ”

“Not happy enough?” she repeated m complete bewilderment.

He laughed. “Is it proper that that should be the first thing you’d
answer?” He waited, but she remained silent. ‘ You want it, too,
don’t you'*”

She was about to answer “No,” but realized that the truth was
worse than that “Yes,” she answered coldly, “but it doesn’t matter
to me that I want it.”

He smiled, in open appreciation, acknowledging the strength she
had needed to say it

But he was not smiling when he said, as she opened the door to
leave, “Yod have a great deal of courage, Dagny. Some day. you’ll
have enough of it.”

“Of what? Courage 9 ”

But he did not answer

Chapter V! THE NONCOMMERCIAL

Rearden pressed his forehead to the mirror and tried not to think.

That was the only way he could go through with it, he told himself.
He concentrated on the relief ot the mirror’s cooling touch, wonder-
ing how one went about forcing one’s mind into blankness, particu-
larly after a lifetime lived on the axiom that the constant clearest,
most ruthless function of his rational faculty was his forefenost duty.
He wondered why no effort had ever seemed beyond his capacity,
yet now he could not scrape up the strength to stick a* few black
pearl studs into his starched white shirt front.

This was his wedding anniversary and he had knowiji for three

122

months that the party would take place tonight, as Lillian wished.
He had promised it to her, safe in the knowledge that the party was
a long way off and that he would attend to it, when the time came,
as he attended to every duty on his overloaded schedule. Then, dur-
ing three months of eighteen-hour workdays, he had forgotten it
happily — until half an hour ago, when, long past dinner time, his
secretary had entered his office and said firmly, “Your party, Mr,
Rearden.” He had cried, “Good God!” leaping to his feet; he had
hurried home, rushed up the stairs, started tearing his clothes off
and gone through the routine of dressing, conscious only of the need
to hurry, not of the purpose. When the full realization of the purpose
struck him like a sudden blow, he stopped.

“You don't care for anything but business. 1 ' He had heard it all
his life, pronounced as a verdict of damnation. He had always known
that business was regarded as some sort of secret, shameful cult,
which one did not impose on innocent laymen, that people thought
of it as of an ugly necessity, to be performed but never mentioned,
that to talk shop was an offense against higher sensibilities, that just
as one washed machine grease off one's hands before coming home,
so one was supposed to wash the stain of business off one’s mind
before entering a drawing ioom He had never held that creed, but
he had accepted it as natural that his family should hold it. He took
it for granted— wordlessly, in the manner of a feeling absorbed in
childhood, left unquestioned and unnamed — that he had dedicated
himself, like the maityr of some dark religion, to the service of a
faith which was his passionate love, but which made him an outcast
among men, whoso sympathy he was not to expect.

He had accepted the tenet that it was his duty to give his wife
some form of existence unrelated to business. But he had never
found the capacity to do it or even to experience a sense ot guilt.
He could neither force himself to change nor blame her if she chose
to condemn him.

He had given Lillian none of his time foi months — no, he thought,
for years; for the eight years of their marriage. He had no interest
to spare for her interests, not even enough to learn just what they
were. She had a large circle ot friends, and he had heard it said that
their names repiesented the heart of the country's culture, but he
had never had time to meet them or even to acknowledge their fame
by knowing what achievements had earned it. He knew only that he
often saw their names on the magazine covers on newsstands. If
Lillian resented his attitude, he thought, she was right. If her manner
toward him was objectionable, he deserved it. If his family called
hirn heartless, it was true.

He bad never spared himself in any issue. When a problem came
up at the mills, his first concern was to discover what error he had
made; he did not search for anyone's fault but his own; it was of
himself that he demanded perfection. He would grant himself no
mercy now; he took the blame. But at the mills, it prompted him to
action in an immediate impulse to correct the error; now, it had no
effect. ... Just a few more minutes, he thought, standing against the
mirror, his eyes closed.

123

He couki not stop the thing in his mind that went on throwing
words at him; it was like trying to plug a broken hydrant with his
bare hands. Stinging jets, part words, part pictures, kept shooting at
his brain. . . . Hours of it, he thought, hours to spend watching the
eyes of the guests getting heavy with boredom if they were sober or
glassing into an imbecile stare if they weren’t, and pretend that he
noticed neither, and strain to think of something to say to them,
when he had nothing to say — while he needed hours of inquiry to
find a successor for the superintendent of his rolling mills who had
resigned suddenly, without explanation — he had to do it at once —
men of that sort were so hard to find— and if anything happened to
break the flow of the rolling mills — it was the Taggart rail that was
being rolled. ... He remembered the silent reproach^ the look of
accusation, long-bearing patience and scorn, which he always saw in
the eyes of his family when they caught some evidence of his passion
for his business — and the futility of his silence, of his hope that they
would not think Rearden Steel meant as much to him as it did —
like a drunkard pretending indifference to liquor, among people who
watch him with the scornful amusement of their full knowledge of
his shameful weakness. . . . “1 heard you last night coming home at
two in the morning, where were you?” his mother saying to him at
the dinner table, and Lillian answering, “Why, at the mills, of
course.” as another wife would say, “At the corner saloon.” ... Or
Lillian asking him, the hint of a wise half-smile on her face, “What
were you doing in New York yesterday?” “It was a banquet with the
boys.” “Business?” “Yes,” “O/ course ” — and Lillian turning away,
nothing more, except the shameful realization that he had almost
hoped she would think he had attended some sort of obscene stag
party. . . . An ore carrier had gone down in a storm on Lake Michi-
gan, with thousands of tons of Rearden ore— those boats were falling
apart — if he didn’t take it upon himself to help them obtain the
replacements they needed, the owners of the line would go bankrupt,
and there ya$ no other line left in operation on Lake Michigan. . . .
“That nook?” said Lillian, pointing to an arrangement of settees and
coffee tables in their drawing room. “Why, no, Henry, it’s not new,
but I suppose I should feel flattered that three weeks is all it took
you to notice it. It’s my own adaptation of the morning room of a
famous French palace — but things like that can’t possibly interest
you, darting, there’s no stock market quotation on them, none what-
ever,” . . . The order for copper, which he had placed six months
ago, had not been delivered, the promised date had been postponed
three times — “We can’t help it, Mr. Rearden” —he had to find an-
other company to deal with, the supply of copper was becoming
increasingly uncertain. . , , Philip did not smile, when he! looked up
in the midst of a speech he was making to some friend of their
mother’s, about some organization he had joined, but| there was
something that suggested a smite of superiority in the lodse muscles
of his face when he said, “No, you wouldn’t care for tiis, it’s not
business, Henry, not business at all, it’s a strictly noncommercial
endeavor.” . . . That contractor in Detroit, with the job ot rebuilding
a large factory, was considering structural shapes of Rearden Metal —

124

he should fly to Detroit and speak to him in person — he should have
done it a week ago — he could have done it tonight, . . . “You’re hot
listening/’ said his mother at the breakfast table, when his mind
wandered to the current coal price index, while she was telling him
about the dream she’d had last night. “You’ve never listened to a
living soul. You’re not interested in anything but yourself. You don’t
give a damn about people, not about a single human creature on
God’s earth.” . . .The typed pages lying on the desk in his office
were a report on the tests of an airplane motor made of Reardon
Metal—perhaps of all things on earth, the one he wanted most at
this moment was to read it — it had lain on his desk, untouched, for
three days, he had had no time for it — why didn’t he do it now and —

He shook his head violently, opening his eyes, stepping back from
the mirror.

He tried to reach for the shirt studs. He saw his hand reaching,
instead, for the pile of mail on his dresser. It was mail picked as
urgent, it had to be read tonight, but he had had no time to read it
in the office. His secretary had stuffed it into his pocket cm his way
out He had thrown it there while undressing.

A newspaper clipping fluttered down to the floor. It was an edito-
rial which his secretary had marked with an angry slash in red pencil.
It was entitled “Equalization of Opportunity.' ” He had to read it:
there had been too much talk about this issue in the Iasi three
months, ominously too much.

He read it, with the sound of voices and forced laughter coming
from downstairs, reminding him that the guests were arriving, that
the parly had started and that he would face the bitter, reproachful
glances of his family when he came down.

The editorial said that at a time of dwindling production, shrinking
markets and vanishing opportunities to make a living, it was unfair
to let one man hoard several business enterprises, while others had
none; it was destructive to let a few corner all the resources, leaving
others no chance; competition was essential to society, and it was
society’s duty to see that no competitor ever rose beyond the range
of anybody who wanted to compete with him. The editorial predicted
the passage of a bill which had been proposed, a bill forbidding any
person or corporation to own more than one business concern.

Wesley Mouch, his Washington man, had told Rearden not to
worry; the fight would be stiff, he had said, but the bill would be
defeated. Rearden understood nothing about that kind of fight. He
left it to Mouch and his staff. He could barely find time to skim
through their reports from Washington and to sign the checks which
Mouch requested for the battle.

Rearden did not believe that the bill would pass. He was incapable
of believing it. Having dealt with the dean reality of metals, technol-
ogy, production all his life, he had acquired the conviction that one
had to concern oneself with the rational, not the insane — that one
had to seek that which was right, because the right answer always
won — that the senseless, the wrong* the monstrously unjust could not
work, could not succeed, could do nothing but defeat itself. A battle
against a thing such as that bill seemed preposterous and faintly

125

embarrassing to him, as if he were suddenly asked to compete with
a man who calculated steel mixtures by the formulas of numerology.

He had told himself that the issue was dangerous. But the loudest
.screaming of the most hysterical editorial roused no emotion in
him — while a variation of a decimal point in a laboratory report on
a test of Rearden Metal made him leap to his feet tn eagerness or
apprehension. He had no energy to spare tor anything else.

He crumpled the editorial and threw it into the wastebasket. He
felt the leaden approach of that exhaustion which he never felt at
his job, the exhaustion that seemed to wait for him and catch him
the moment he turned to other concerns. He felt as if he were inca-
pable of any desire except a desperate longing tor sleep

He told himself that he had to attend the party— that his family
had the right to demand it of him — that he had to learn to hke their
kind of pleasure, for their sake, not his own.

He wondered why this was a motive that had no power to impel
him. Throughout his life, whenever he became convinced that a
course of action was right, the desire to follow it had come automati-
cally. What was happening to him? — he wondered The impossible
conflict of feeling reluctance to do that which was right— wasn't it
the basic formula of moral coiruption? To recognize one’s guilt, yet
feel nothing but the coldest, most profound indifference— wasn't it
a betrayal of that which had been the motor of his life-course and
of his pride?

He gave himself no time to seek an answer. He finished dressing,
quickly, pitilessly.

Holding himself erect, his tall figure moving with the unstressed,
unhurried confidence of habitual authority, the white of a fine hand-
kerchief in the breast pocket of his black dinner jacket, he walked
slowly down the stairs to the drawing room, looking— to the satisfac-
tion ol the dowagers who watched him -like the perfect figure of a
great industrialist.

He saw BiUtan at the foot of the stairs. The patrician lines of a
lemon-yellow Empire evening gown stressed her graceful body, and
she stood like a person proudly in control of her proper background.
He smiled; he liked to see her happy; it gave some reasonable justifi-
cation to the party.

He approached her — and stopped. She had always shown good
taste in her use of jewelry, never wearing too much of if. But tonight
she wore an ostentatious display a diamond necklace, earrings, rings
and brooches. Her arms looked conspicuously bare by contrast. On
her right wrist, as sole ornament, she wore the bracelet of Rearden
Metal. The glittering gems made it look like an ugly picc$ of dime-
store jewelry.

When he moved his glance from her wrist to her face| he found
her looking at him. Her eyes were narrowed and he could Jiot define
their expression; it was a look that seemed both veiled an$ purpose-
ful the look of something hidden that flaunted its security from
detection.

He wanted to tear the bracelet off her wrist. Instead, in Obedience

126

to her voice gaily pronouncing an introduction, he bowed to the
dowager who stood beside her, his face expressionless.

“Man? What is man? He’s just a collection of chemicals with delu-
sions of grandeur,” said Dr. Pritchett to a group of guests across
the room.

Dr. Pritchett picked a canape off a crystal dish, held it speared
between two straight fingers and deposited it whole into his mouth.

“Man’s metaphysical pretensions,” he said, “are preposterous. A
miserable bit of protoplasm, full of ugly little concepts and mean
little emotions — and it imagines itself important! Really, you know,
that is the root of all the troubles in the world.”

“But which concepts are not ugly or mean, Professor?” asked an
earnest matron whose husband owned an automobile factory.

“None,” said Dr. Pritchett. “None within the range of man’s
capacity.”

A young man asked hesitantly, “But it we haven’t any good con-
cepts, how do we know that the ones we’ve got are ugly? 1 mean,
by what standard?”

“There aren’t any standards.”

This silenced his audience.

“The philosophers of the past were superficial,” Dr. Pritchett went
on. “It remained for our century to redefine the purpose of philoso-
phy. The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find the meaning
of life, but to prove to them that there isn’t arty.”

An attractive young woman, whose father owned a coal mine,
asked indignantly, “Who can tell us that?”

“1 am trying to.” said Dr. Pritchett. For the last three years, he
had been head of the Department of Philosophy at the Patrick
Henry University.

Lillian Reardon approached, her jewels glittering under the lights.
The expression on her face was held to the soft hint ol‘ a smile, set
and faintly suggested, like the waves of her hair.

“It is this insistence of man upon meaning that makes him so
difficult,” said Dr. Pritchett. “Once he realizes that he is of no impor-
tance whatever in the vast scheme of the universe, that no possible
significance can be attached to his activities, that it does not matter
whether he lives or dies, he will become much more . . . tractable.”

He shrugged and reached for another canape. A businessman said
uneasily, “What I asked you about. Professor, was what you thought
about the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.”

“Oh, that?” said Dr. Pritchett, “But I believe 1 made it dear that
I am in favor of it, because I am in favor of a free economy. A free
economy cannot exist without competition. Therefore, men must be
forced to compete. Therefore, we must control men in order to force
them to be free.”

“But, look . . . isn’t that sort of a contradiction?”

“Not in the higher philosophical sense. You must learn to see
beyond the static definitions of old-fashioned thinking. Nothing is
static in the universe. Everything is fluid.”

“But it stands to reason that if—”

127

“Reason, my dear fellow, is the most nalfve of all superstitions.
That, at least, has been generally conceded in our age."

“But I don’t quite understand how we can — ”

“You suffer from the popular delusion of believing that things can
be understood. You do not grasp the fact that the universe is a
solid contradiction.'’

“A contradiction of what?" asked the matron.

“Of itself?'

“How . . . how’s that?”

“My dear madam, the duty of thinkers is not to explain, but to
demonstrate that nothing can be explained.”

“Yes, of course . . . only . .

“The purpose of philosophy is not to seek knowledge, but to prove
that knowledge is impossible to man.”

“But when we prove it,” asked the young woman, “what’s going
to be left?”

“Instinct” said Dr, Pritchett reverently

At the other end of the room, a group was listening to Balph
Eubank. He sat upright on the edge of an armchair, in order to
counteract the appearance of his face arid figure, which had a ten-
dency to spread if relaxed.

“The literature of the past.” said Balph Eubank, “was a shallow
fraud. It whitewashed life in order to please the money tycoons
whom it served. Morality, free will, achievement, happy endings, and
man as some sort of heroic being — all that stuff is laughable to us.
Our age has given depth to literature for the first time, by exposing
the real essence of life.”

A very young girl in a white evening gown asked timidly, “What
is the real essence of life, Mr. Eubank?”

“Suffering,” said Balph Eubank. “Defeat and sulfering.”

“But ... but why? People are happy . . . sometimes . . . aren’t
they?”

“That is a delusion of those whose emotions are superficial.”

The girl blushed. A wealthy woman who had inherited an oil re-
finery, asked guiltily, “What should we do to raise the people's liter-
ary taste, Mr. Eubank 9 ”

“That is a great social problem,” said Balph Eubank. He was
described as the literary leader of the age, but had never written a
book that sold more than three thousand copies. “Personally, 1 be-
lieve that an Equalization of Opportunity Bill applying to literature
would be the solution.”

“Oh, do you approve of that Bill for industry? I’m not sure 1
know what to think of it.”

“Certainly, I approve of it. Our culture has sunk intri a bog of
materialism. Men have lost all spiritual values in theiif pursuit of
material production and technological trickery. They're tfao comfort-
able. They will return to a nobler life if we teach th|m to bear
privations. So we ought to place a limit upon their matepal greed.”

“I hadn't thought of it that way,” said the woman apologetically.

“But how are you going to work an Equalization of Opportunity

128

Bill for literature, Ralph?” asked Mort Uddy. “That's a new one
on me.”

“My name is Ralph,” said Eubank angrily. “And it’s a new one
on you because it’s my own idea.”

“Okay, okay. I’m not quarreling, am 1? I’m just asking.” Mort
Liddy smiled. He spent most of his time smiling nervously. He was
a composer who wrote old-fashioned scores for motion pictures, and
modern symphonies for sparse audiences.

“It would work very simply,” said Balph Eubank. “There should
be a law limiting the sale of any book to ten thousand copies. This
would throw the literary market open to new talent, fresh ideas and
non-commercial writing. If people were forbidden to buy a million
copies of the same piece of trash, they would be forced to buy bet-
ter books.”

“You’ve got something there,” said Mort Liddy. “But wouldn’t it
be kinda tough on the writers' bank accounts?”

“So much the better. Only those whose motive is not moneymak-
ing should be allowed to write.”

“But, Mr. Eubank,” asked the young girl in the white dress, “what
if more than ten thousand people want to buy a certain book?”

‘Ten thousand readers is enough for any hook.”

‘That’s not what I mean. 1 mean, what if they want it?”

“That is irrelevant.”

“But if a book has a good story which—”

“Plot is a primitive vulgarity in literature,” said Balph Eubank
contemptuously.

Dr. Pritchett, on his way across the room to the bar, stopped to
say, “Quite so. Just as logic is a primitive vulgarity in philosophy.”

“Just as melody is a primitive vulgarity in music,” said Mort Liddy.

“What’s all this noise?” asked Lillian Rcarden, glittering to a stop
beside them.

“Lillian, my angel.” Balph Eubank drawled, “did 1 tell you that
Pm dedicating my new novel to you?”

“Why, thank you, darling.”

“What is the name of your new novel?” asked the wealthy woman.

"'The Heart Is a Milkman

“What is it about?”

“Frustration.”

“But, Mr. Eubank,” asked the young girl in the white dress, blush-
ing desperately, “if everything is frustration, what is there to live
for?”

“Brother-love,” said Balph Eubank grimly.

Bertram Scudder stood slouched against the bar. His long, thin
face looked as if it had shrunk inward, with the exception of his
mouth and eyeballs, which were left to protrude as three soft globes.
He was the editor of a magazine called The Future and he had
written an article on Hank Rearden, entitled “The Octopus.”

. Bertram Scudder picked up his empty glass and shoved it silently
toward the bartender, to be refilled. He took a gulp from his fresh
drink, noticed the empty glass in front of Philip Rearden, who stood
beside him, and jerked his thumb in a silent command to the bar-

129

tender He ignored the empty glass m front of Betty Pope, who stood
at Philips other side

“Look, bud/’ said Bertram Scudder, his eyeballs focused approxi-
mately in the direction of Philip “whethtr you like it or not, the
Equalization of Opportunity Bill represents a great step forward ’

‘ What made you think that 1 did not like it Mr Scudder* Philip
asked humbly

Well its going to pinch isn t it M he long arm of society is going
to trim a little off the hors d’oeuvres bill around here ' He waved
his hand at the bar

“Why do you assume that 1 object to that * *

“You don’t* Bertram Scudder asked without curiosity
“I don t* * said Philip hotly I have always placed the public good
above any personal consideration I have contributed my time and
money to Fucnds of Globa! Progiess in their crusade for the Equal
nation ot Opportunity Bill I think n is ptrfcctly unfair that one man
should get all the breaks and leave none to others
Bertram Scudder considered him speeulatwcly but without partic
ular interest Well that s quite unusually nice of you he said
4 Some people do take moral issues seriously Mr Scudder said
Philip with a gentle stress of pride in his voice

‘What s he talking about Philip* asked Betty Pope Wc don t
know anybody who owns more than one business do wc *

Oh, pipe down' said Bertram ScuddeT his voice bored
“1 don t see why there’s so much tuss about that E*qu dilation ot
Opportunity Bill said Betty Pope aggitssivUy in the lone of an
expert on economics I don t see why businessmen objcit to it It s
to their own advantage If everybody else is poor they won l havt
any market tor their goods But if they stop bung stlhsh and shall
the goods they’ve hoarded — they II have a chance to work hard and
produce some more

“I do not see why industrialists should be considcied at all said
Scudder When the masses are destitute and yet there are goods
available It s idiotic to expect people to Lx stopped by some scrap
ot paper called a property deed Property lights are a supustition
One holds propci ty only by the courtesy of those who do not seize
it The ptople ean seize it at any moment It they can why shouldn t
they*

“They should ’ said C laude Slagenhop They need it Need is the
only consideration If people are in need we’ve got to seize things
first and talk about it afterwards ’

Claude Slagenhop had approached and managed to squeeze him
self between Philip and Scudder, shoving Scudder aside impercepti
bly Slagenhop was not tall or heavy, but he had a squflie eompaet
bulk and a broken nose He was the president of Pnends of Global
Progress

“Hunger won t wait, said ( laude Slagenhop Ideasiare just hot
air An empty belly is a solid tact I’ve said in all my speeches that
it’s not necessary to talk too much Society is suffering for lack ot
business opportunities at the moment, so we’ve got the fight to seize
such opportunities as exist Right is whatever’s good fair society ”

130

“He didn’t dig that ore single-handed, did he?” cried Philip sud-
denly, his voice shrill. “He had to employ hundreds of workers. They
did it. Why does he think he’s so good?”

The two men looked at him, Scudder lifting an eyebrow, Slagen-
hop without expression.

“Oh, dear me!” said Betty Pope, remembering.

Hank Reardon stood at a window in a dim recess at the end of
the drawing room. He hoped no one would notice him for a few
minutes. He had just escaped from a middle-aged woman who had
been telling him about her psychic experiences. He stood, looking
out. Far in the distance, the red glow of Reardon Steel moved in
the sky. He watched it for a moment’s relief.

He turned to look at the drawing room. He had never liked his
house; it had been Lillian’s choice. But tonight, the shifting colors
of the evening dresses drowned out the appearance of the room and
gave it an air of brilliant gaiety. He liked to see people being gay,
even though he did not understand this particular manner of
enjoyment.

He looked at the flowers, at the sparks of light on the crystal
glasses, at the naked arms and shoulders of women. There was a
cold wind outside, sweeping empty stretches of land. He saw the thin
branches of a tree being twisted, like arms waving in an appeal for
help. 'Hie tree stood against the glow of the mills.

1 le could not name his sudden emotion. He had no words to state
its cause, its quality, its meaning. Some part ot it was joy, but it was
solemn like the act of baring one’s head — he did not know to whom.

When he stepped hack into the crowd, he was smiling. But the
smile vanished abruptly; he saw' the entrance of a rtew guest; it was
Dagny Taggart.

Lillian moved forward to meet her, studying her with curiosity. They
had met before, on infrequent occasions, and she found it strange to
see Dagny Taggart wearing an evening gown. It was a black dress
with a bodice that fell as a cape over one arm and shoulder, leaving
the other bare; the naked shoulder was the gown's only ornament.
Seeing her in the suits she wore, one never thought of Dagny Tag-
gart's body. The black dress seemed excessively revealing — because
it was astonishing to discover that the lines of her shoulder were
fragile and beautiful, and that the diamond band on the wrist of her
naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of
being chained.

“Miss Taggart, it is such a wonderful surprise to see you here,”
said Lillian Rearden. the muscles of her face performing the motions
of a smile, “I had not really dared to hope that an invitation from
me would take you away from your ever so much weightier concerns.
Do permit me to feel flattered.”

James Taggart had entered with his sistet. Lillian smiled at him, in
the manner of a hasty postscript, as if noticing him for the first time.

“Hello, James. That’s your penalty for being popular — one tends
to lose sight of you in the surprise of seeing your sister,”

“No one can match you in popularity, Lillian,” he answered, smil-
ing thinly, “nor ever lose sight of you.”

131

“Me? Oh, but I am quite resigned to taking second place in the
shadow of my husband. I am humbly aware that the wife of a great
man has to be contented with reflected glory-— don't you think so,
Miss Taggart?”

“No/’ said Dagny, “1 don’t.”

“Is this a compliment or a reproach. Miss Taggart? But do forgive
me if I confess Fm helpless. Whom may I present to you? Fm afraid
I have nothing but writers and artists to otter, and they wouldn’t
interest you, Fm sure.”

“Fd like to find Hank and say hello to him,”

“But of course. James, do you remember you said you wanted to
meet Balph Eubank? — oh yes, he’s here — Fll tell him that I heard
you rave about his last novel at Mrs. Whitcomb’s dinner!”

Walking across the room, Dagny wondered why she had said that
she wanted to find Hank Rearden, what had prevented her from
admitting that she had seen him the moment she entered.

Rearden stood at the other end of the long room, looking at her.
He watched her as she approached, but he did not step forward to
meet her.

“Hello, Hank.”

“Good evening.”

He bowed, courteously, impersonally, the movement ot his body
matching the distinguished formality of his clothes. He did not smile.

“Thank you for inviting me tonight.” she said gaily.

“I cannot claim that I knew you were coming.”

“Oh? Then I’m glad that Mrs. Rearden thought of me. I wanted
to make an exception.”

“An exception?”

“1 don’t go to parties very often.”

“I am pleased that you chose this occasion as the exception.” He
did not add “Miss Taggart,” but it sounded as if he had.

The formality of his manner was so unexpected that she was un-
able to adjust to it. “I wanted to celebrate,” she said.

“To celebrate my wedding anniversary?”

“Oh, is it your wedding anniversary? I didn’t know. My congratu-
lations. Hank,”

“What did you wish to celebrate?”

“I thought Fd permit myself a rest. A celebration of my own — in
your honor and mine.”

“For what reason?”

Sbe was thinking of the new track on the rocky grades of the
Colorado mountains, growing slowly toward the distant goal of the
Wyatt oil fields. She was seeing the greenish-blue glow of the rails
on the frozen ground, among the dried weeds, the naked' boulders,
the rotting shanties of half-starved settlements.

“In honor of the first sixty miles of Rearden Metal t£ack,” she
answered.

“I appreciate it.” The tone of his voice was the one fiat would
have been proper if he had said, “I’ve never heard of it.?

She found nothing else to say. She felt as if she were speaking to
a stranger.

132

“Why, Miss Taggart!” a cheerful voice broke their silence. “Now
this is what I mean when l say that Hank Rearden can achieve
any miracle!”

A businessman whom they knew had approached, smiling at her in
delighted astonishment. The three of them had often held emergency
conferences about freight rates and steel deliveries. Now he looked
at her, his face an open comment on the change in her appearance,
the change, she thought, which Rearden had not noticed.

She laughed, answering the man’s greeting, giving herself no time
to recognize the unexpected stab of disappointment, the unadmitted
thought that she wished she had seen this look on Rearden’s face,
instead. She exchanged a few sentences with the roan. When she
glanced around, Rearden was gone.

“So that is >our famous sister?” said Balph Eubank to James
Taggart, looking at Dagny across the room.

“I was not aware that my sister was famous,” said Taggart, a faint
bite in his voice.

“But, my good man, she’s an unusual phenomenon in the held of
economics, so you must expect people to talk about her. Your sister
is a symptom of the illness of our century. A decadent product of
the machine age. Machines have destroyed man’s humanity, taken
him away from the soil, robbed him of his natural arts, killed his
soul and turned him into an insensitive robot. There’s an example
of it — a woman who runs a railroad, instead of practicing the beauti-
ful craft of the handloom and bearing children.”

Rearden moved among the guests, trying not to be trapped into
conversation He looked at the room; he saw no one he wished
to approach.

“Say, Hank Rearden, you’re not such a bad fellow at all when
seen close up in the lion's own den. You ought to give us a press
conference once in a while, you’d win us over.”

Rearden turned and looked at the speaker incredulously. It was a
young newspaperman of the seedier sort, who worked on a radical
tabloid. Ihe offensive familiarity of his manner seemed to imply that
he chose to be rude to Rearden because he knew that Rearden
should never have permitted himself to associate with a man of his
kind.

Rearden would not have allowed him inside the mills; but the man
was Lillian’s guest; he controlled himself: he asked dryly, “What do
you want?”

“You’re not so bad. You’ve got talent. Technological talent. But.
of course, I don’t agree with you about Rearden Metal.”

“I haven’t asked you to agree.”

“Well, Bertram Scudder said that your policy—” the man started
belligerently, pointing toward the bar, but stopped, as if he had slid
farther than he intended.

Rearden looked at the untidy figure slouched against the bar. Lil-
lian had introduced them, but he had paid no attention to the name.
He turned sharply and walked off, in a manner that forbade the
young bum to tag him.

Lillian glanced up at his face, when Rearden approached her in

133

the midst of a group, and, without a word, stepped aside where they
could not be heard.

“Is that Scudder of The Future T y he asked, pointing.

“Why, yes.”

He looked at her silently, unable to begin to believe it, unable to
find the lead of a thought with which to begin to understand. Her
eyes were watching him.

“How could you invite him here?" he asked.

“Now, Henry, don't let's be ridiculous. You don’t want to be narrow-
minded, do you? You must learn to tolerate the opinions of others
and respect their right of free speech.”

“In my house?”

“Oh, don't be stuffy!”

He did not speak, because bis consciousness was held, not by co-
herent statements, but by two pictures that seemed to glare at him
insistently. He saw the article, “The Octopus,” by Bertram Scudder,
which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied
in public— an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an
invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which
nothing was dear except the filthy malice of denouncing without
considering proof necessary. And he saw the lines of Lillian's profile,
the proud purity which he had sought in marrying her.

When he noticed her again, he realized that the vision of her
profile was in his own mind, because she was turned to him fullface,
watching him. In the sudden instant of returning to reality, he
thought that what he saw in her eyes was enjoyment. But m the
next instant he reminded himself that he was sane and that this was
not possible.

“It's the first time you've invited that . . .” he used an obscene
word with unemotional precision, “to my house. It's the last."

“How dare you use such-—"

“Don't argue, Lillian. If you do. HI throw him out right now "

He gave -her a moment to answer, to object, to scream at him if
she wished. She remained silent, not looking at him. only her smooth
cheeks seemed faintly drawn inward, as il deflated

Moving blindly away through the coils of lights, voices and per-
fume, he felt a cold touch of dread. He knew that he should think
of Lillian and find the answer to the riddle of her character, because
this was a revelation which he could not ignore; but he did not think
of her — and he felt the dread because he knew that the answer had
ceased to matter to him long ago.

The flood of weariness was starting to rise again. He felt as if he
could almost see it in thickening waves; it was not within him. but
outside, spreading through the room. For an instant, he felt as if he
were alone, lost in a gray desert, needing help and kno\*ji ng that no
help would come.

He stopped short. In the lighted doorway, the length df the room
between them, he saw the tall, arrogant figure of a mtln who had
paused for a moment before entering. He had never m|t the man,
but of all the notorious faces that cluttered the pages of Newspapers,
this was the one he despised. It was Francisco d’Anconik

134

Rearden had never given much thought to men like Bertram Scud-
der. But with every hour of his life, with the strain and the pride of
every moment when his muscles or his mind had ached from effort,
with every step he had taken to rise out of the mines of Minnesota
and to turn his effort into gold, with all of his profound respect for
money and for its meaning, he despised the squanderer who did not
know how to deserve the great gift of inherited wealth. There, he
thought, was the most contemptible representative of the species.

He saw Francisco d’Anconia enter, bow to Lillian, then walk into
the crowd as if he owned the room which he had never entered
betore. Heads turned to watch him, as if he pulled them on strings
in his wake.

Approaching Lillian once more, Rearden said without anger, the
contempt becoming amusement in his voice, “T didn’t know you
knew that one.”

‘Tve met him at a few parties.”

“Is he one of your friends, too?'*

“Certainly not!” The sharp resentment was genuine.

“Then why did you invite him?”

“Well, you can't give a party — not a party that counts — while he’s
in this country, without inviting him. It’s a nuisance it he comes, and
a social black mark if he doesn’t.”

Rearden laughed. She was off guard; she did not usually admit
things of this kind, “Look,” he said wearily, “I don’t want to spoil
your party. But keep that man away from me. Don’t come around
with introductions. I don’t want to meet him. I don’t know how
you’ll work that, but you’re an expert hostess, so work it.”

Dagny stood still when she saw Francisco approaching. He bowed
to her as he passed by. He did not stop, but she knew that he had
stopped the moment in his mind. She saw him smile faintly in delib-
etate emphasis of what he understood and did not choose to ac-
knowledge. She turned away. She hoped to avoid him for the rest
of the evening.

Balph Eubank had joined the group around Dr. Pritchett, and was
saying, sullenly, “. . . no, you cannot expect people to understand
the higher reaches of philosophy. Culture should be taken out of the
hands of the dollar-chasers. We need a national subsidy for literature.
It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art
works have to be sold like soap.”

“You mean, your complaint is that they don't sell like soap?”
asked Francisco d’Anconia.

1'hey had not noticed him apptoach; the conversation stopped, as
if slashed off; most of them had never met him, but they all recog-
nized him at once.

“I meant — ” Balph Eubank started angrily and closed his mouth;
he saw the eager interest on the faces of his audience, but it was
not interest in philosophy any longer.

“Why, hello. Professor!” said Francisco, bowing to Dr. Pritchett

There was no pleasure in Dr, Pritchett’s face when be answered
the greeting and performed a few introductions.

135

“We were just discussing a most interesting subject,” said the ear-
nest matron* “Dr. Pritchett was telling us that nothing is anything.”

“He should, undoubtedly, know more than anyone else about
that,” Francisco answered gravely.

“I wouldn’t have supposed that you knew Dr. Pritchett so well,
Sefior d’Anconia,” she said, and wondered why the professor looked
displeased by her remark.

“I am an alumnus of the great school that employs Dr. Pritchett
at present, the Patrick Henry University. But l studied under one of
his predecessors — Hugh Akston.”

“Hugh Akston!” the attractive young woman gasped. “But you
couldn’t have, Sefior d’Anconta! You're not old enough. 1 thought
he was one of those great names of . . . of the last century.”

“Perhaps in spirit, madame. Not in fact.”

“But I thought he died years ago.”

“Why, no. He’s still alive.”

“Then why don’t we ever hear about him anymore?”

“He retired, nine years ago.”

“Isn’t it odd? When a politician or a movie star retires, we read
front page stories about it. But when a philosopher retires, people
do not even notice it.”

“They do, eventually.”

A young man said, astonished. “1 thought Hugh Akston was one
of those classics that nobody studied any more, except m histories
of philosophy. I read an article recently which referred to him as the
last of the great advocates of reason.”

“Just what did Hugh Akston teach?” asked the earnest matron.

Francisco answered, “He taught that everything is something.”

“Your loyalty to your teacher is laudable, Sefior d’Anconia.” said
Dr. Pritchett dryly. “May we take it that you are an example of the
practical results of his teaching?”

“I am.” ,

James Taggart had approached the group and was waiting to be
noticed.

“Hello, Francisco.”

“Good evening, James.”

“What a wonderful coincidence, seeing you here! I’ve been very
anxious to speak to you.”

“Thai’s new. You haven’t always been.”

“Now you’re joking, just like in the old days,” Taggart was moving
slowly, as if casually, away from the group, hoping to draw Francisco
after him. “You know that there’s not a person in this room who
wouldn’t love to talk to you.”

“Really? I’d he inclined to suspect the opposite.” Fr$ncisco had
followed obediently, but stopped within hearing distance of the
others.

“I have tried in every possible way to get in touch will you,” said
Taggart, “but . . . but circumstances didn’t permit me t4 succeed.”

“Are you trying to hide from me the fact that I refused to see
you?”

“Well . . . that is ... I mean, why did you refuse?”

136

“I couldn’t imagine what you wanted to speak to me about.”

‘ The San Sebastian Mines, of course!” Taggart’s voice rose a little.

“Why, what about them?”

“But . . . Now, look, Francisco, this is serious. It’s a disaster, an
unprecedented disaster — and nobody can make any sense out of it.

1 don’t know what to think. I don’t understand it at all. I have a
right to know.”

“A right? Aren’t you being old-fashioned, James? But what is it
you want to know?”

“Well, first of all, that nationalization — what are you going to do
about it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?!”

“But surely you don’t want me to do anything about it. My mines
and your railroad were seized by the will of the people. You wouldn’t
want me to oppose the will ot the people, would you?”

“Francisco, this is not a laughing matter!”

“I never thought it was.”

“I’m entitled to an explanation! You owe your stockholders an
account of the whole disgraceful affair! Why did you pick a worthless
mine? Why did you waste ail those millions? What sort ot rotten
swindle was it?”

Francisco stood looking at him in polite astonishment. “Why,
James,” he said, “l thought you would approve of it.”

“Approve?!”

“I thought you would consider the San Sebastian Mines as the
practical realization of an ideal of the highest moral order. Remem-
bering that you and I have disagreed so often in the past, I thought
you would be gratified to see me acting in accordance with your
principles.”

“What are you talking about?”

Francisco shook his head regretfully. “I don't know why you
should call my behavior rotten. 1 thought you would recognize it as
an honest effort to practice what the whole world is preaching.
Doesn’t everyone believe that it is evil to be selfish? I was totally
sellless in regard to the San Sebastian project. Isn’t it evil to pursue
a personal interest? I had no personal interest in it whatever. Isn’t it
evil to work tor profit? 1 did not work for profit — I took a loss. Doesn’t
everyone agree that the purpose and justification of an industrial
enterprise are not production, but the livelihood of its employees?
The San Sebastian Mines were the most eminently successful venture
in industrial history: they produced no copper, but they provided a
livelihood for thousands of men who could not have achieved in a
lifetime, the equivalent of what they got for one day’s work, which
they could not do. Isn’t it generally agreed that an owner is a parasite
and an exploiter, that it is the employees who do all the work and
make the product possible? 1 did not exploit anyone. I did not bur-
den the San Sebastian Mines with my useless presence; l left them
in the hands of the men who count I did not pass judgment on the
value of that property. I turned it over to a mining specialist.
He was not a very good specialist, but hd needed the job very

137

badly. Isn't it generally conceded that when yon hire a man for a
job, it is his need that counts, not his ability? Doesn’t everyone
believe that in order to get the goods, ail you have to do is need
them? I have carried out every moral precept of our age. 1 expected
gratitude and a citation of honor. I do not understand why I am
being damned,”

In the silence of those who had listened, the sole comment was
the shrill, sudden giggle of Betty Pope' she had understood nothing,
but she saw the look of helpless fury on James Taggart’s face.

People were looking at Taggart, expecting an answer. They were
indifferent to the issue, they were merely amused by the spectacle
of someone’s embarrassment. Taggart achieved a patronizing smile.

“You don’t expect me to take this seriously?” he asked.

“There was a time,” Francisco answered, “when 1 did not believe
that anyone could take it seriously. I was wrong.”

“This is outrageous!” Taggart’s voice started to rise. “It's perfectly
outrageous to treat your public responsibilities with such thoughtless
levity!” He turned to hurry away.

Francisco shrugged, spreading his hands. “You sec? I didn't think
you wanted to speak to me.”

Reardcn stood alone, far at the other end of the room Philip
noticed him, approached and waved to Lillian, calling her over.

“Lillian, I don’t think that Henry is having a good time,” he said,
smiling; one could not tell whether the mockery ot his smile was
directed at Lillian or at Rearden. “Can’t we do something about it?”

“Oh, nonsense!” said Rearden

“1 wish I knew what to do about it, Philip,” said Lillian. “I've
always wished Henry would learn to relax. He’s so grimly serious
about everything. He’s such a rigid Puritan. I’ve always wanted to see
him drunk, just once, Bui I’ve given up. What would you suggest?”

“Oh. I don't know! But he shouldn’t be standing around all by
himself.” #

“Drop it.” said Rearden. While thinking dimly that he did not
want to hurl their feelings, he could not prevent himself from adding,
“You don’t know how hard I’ve tried to be left standing all by
myself.”

“There — you see?” Lillian smiled at Philip. * To enjoy life and
people is not so simple as pouring a ton of steel. Intellectual pursuits
are not learned in the market place.”

Philip chuckled. “It’s not intellectual pursuits I’m worried about.
How sure are you about that Puritan stuff, Lillian? (f I were you, 1
wouldn’t leave him free to look around. There are too many beauti-
ful women here tonight.”

“Henry entertaining thoughts of infidelity? You flatterihim, Philip.
You overestimate his courage.” She smiled at Keardeii coldly, for
a brief, stressed moment, then moved away.

Rearden looked at his brother. “What in hell dc< you think
you're doing?”

“Oh, stop playing the Puritan! Can’t you take a joke?”

Moving aimlessly through the crowd, Dagny wondered why she
had accepted the invitation to this party. The answer astonished her:

138

it was because she had wanted to see Hank Rearden. Watching him
in the crowd* she realized the contrast for the first time. The faces
of the others looked like aggregates of interchangeable features,
every face oozing to blend into the anonymity of resembling all, and
all looking as if they were melting. Rearden’s face, with the sharp
planes, the pale blue eyes, the ash-blond hair, had the firmness of
ice; the uncompromising clarity of its lines made it look, among the
others, as if he were moving through a fog, hit by a ray of light.

Her eyes kept returning to him involuntarily. She never caught
him glancing in her direction. She could not believe that he was
avoiding her intentionally; there could be no possible reason for it;
yet she felt certain that he was. She wanted to approach him and
convince herself that she was mistaken. Something stopped her; she
could not understand her own reluctance.

Rearden bore patiently a conversation with his mother and two
ladies whom she wished him to entertain with stones of his youth
and his struggle. He complied, telling himself that she was proud of
him in her own way, But he felt as if something in her manner kept
suggesting that she had nursed him through his struggle and that she
was the source of his success. He was glad when she let him go.
Then he escaped once more to the recess of the window.

He stood there for a while, leaning on a sense of privacy as if it
were a physical support

‘’Mr. Rearden," said a strangely quiet voice beside him, ’permit
me to introduce myself. My name is d'Anconia.”

Rearden turned, startled; d'Aneonia's manner and voice had a
quality he had seldom encountered before: a lone of authentic
respect

‘How do you do," he answered. His voice was brusque and dry;
but he had answered.

“1 have observed that Mrs. Rearden has been trying to avoid the
necessity of presenting me to you. and 1 can guess the reason. Would
you prefer that I leave your house 7 "

7 he action of naming an issue instead of evading it. was so unlike
the usual behavior of all the men he knew, it was such a sudden,
st ailling relief, that Rearden remained silent for a moment, studying
d'Anconia’s face. Francisco had said it very simply, neither as a re-
proach nor a plea, but in a manner which, strangely, acknowledged
Reardon’s dignity and his own.

“No," said Rearden. “whatever else you guessed, i did not say
that.”

“ t hank you. In that case, you will allow me to speak to you.”

“Why should you wish to speak to me?”

“My motives cannot interest you at present.”

“Mine is not the sort of conversation that could interest you at
all.”

“You are mistaken about one of us, Mr. Rearden, or both. I came
to this party solely in order to meet you,”

There had been a taint tone of amusement in Rearden's voice;
now it hardened into a hint of contempt. “You started by playing it
straight. Stick to it.”

139

“I am.”

”What did you want to meet me for? In order to make me lose
money?”

Francisco looked straight at him. “Yes — eventually.”

“What is it, this time? A gold mine?”

Francisco shook his head slowly; the conscious deliberation of the
movement gave it an air that was almost sadness. “No,” he said, “I
don’t want to sell you anything. As a matter of fact, I did not attempt
to sell the copper mine to James Taggart, either. He came to me for
it. You won’t.”

Rearden chuckled. “If you understand that much, we have at least
a sensible basis for conversation. Proceed on that. If you don’t have
some fancy investment in mind, what did you want to meet me for?”

“In order to become acquainted with you.”

“That's not an answer. It’s just another way of saying the same
thing.”

“Not quite, Mr. Rearden.”

“Unless you mean — in order to gain my confidence?”

“No. I don’t like people who speak or think in terms of gaining
anybody’s confidence. If one’s actions are honest, one does not need
the predated confidence of others, only their rational perception. The
person who craves a moral blank check of that kind, has dishonest
intentions, whether he admits it to himself or not."

Rearden’s startled glance at him was like the involuntary thrust
of a hand grasping for support in a desperate need. The glance be-
trayed how f much he wanted to find the soit of man he thought he
was seeing. Then Rearden lowered his e>es; almost closing them,
slowly, shutting out the vision and the need. His face was hard, it
had an expression of severity, an inner seventy directed at himself;
it looked austere and lonely.

“All right," he said tonelessly. “What do you want, if it's not
my confidence?”

“1 want'to learn to understand you.”

“What for?”

“For a reason of my own which need not concern you at present.”

“What do you want to understand about me?”

Francisco looked silently out at the darkness. The lire of the mills
was dying down. There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge
of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by
the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping
through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but
looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible.

“It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that
plain,” said Francisco d’Anconia. “This is when one should appreci-
ate the meaning of being a man.”

Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer
to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice, “Funny . .

“What?”

“You told me what I was thinking just a while ago .

“You were?” ■

“. . . only I didn’t have the words for it.”

140

“Shall I tell you the rest of the words?”

“Go ahead.”

“You stood here and watched the storm with the greatest pride
one can ever feel— because you are able to have summer flowers
and half- naked women in your house on a night like this, in demon-
stration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you,
most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of
that wind in the middle of some such plain.”

“How did you know that?”

In time with his question, Rearden realized that it was not his
thoughts this man had named, but his most hidden, most personal
emotion; and that he, who would never confess his emotions to any-
one, had confessed it in his question. He saw the faintest flicker in
Francisco’s eyes, as of a smile or a check mark.

“What would vou know about a pride of that kind?” Rearden
asked sharply, as if the contempt of the second question could erase
the confidence of the first.

“That is what 1 felt once, when I was young.”

Rearden looked at him. There was neither mockery nor self-pity
in Francisco’s face; the fine, sculptured planes and the dear, blue
eyes held a quiet composure, the face was open, offered to any
blow, unflinching.

“Why do you want to talk about it?” Rearden asked, prompted
by a moment’s reluctant compassion.

“Let us say — by way of gratitude, Mr. Rearden.”

“Gratitude to me?”

“If you will accept it.”

Rearden’s voice hardened. “I haven’t asked for gratitude. 1 don't
need it.”

“1 have not said you needed it. But of all those whom you are
saving Irom the storm tonight, l am the only one who will offer it.”

After a moment’s silence, Rearden asked, his voice low with a
sound which was almost a threat. “What are you trying to do?”

“1 am calling your attention to the nature of those for whom you
are working.”

“It would take a man who’s never done an honest day’s work in
his life, to think or say that.” The contempt in Rearden’s voice had
a note of relief; he had been disarmed by a doubt of his judgment
on the character of his adversary; now he felt certain once more.
“You wouldn’t understand it if l told you that the man who works,
works for himself, even if he does carry the whole wretched bunch
of you along. Now ill guess what you’re thinking: go ahead, say that
it’s evil, that I’m selfish, conceited, heartless, cruel. 1 am. I don’t
want any part of that tripe about working for others. I'm not.”

For the first time, he saw the look of a personal reaction iir Fran-
cisco’s eyes, the look of something eager and young. “The only thing
that’s wrong in what you said,” Francisco answered, “is that you
permit anyone to call it evil.” In Rearden’s pause of incredulous
silence, he pointed at the crowd in the drawing room. “Why are you
willing to carry them?”

“Because they’re a bunch of miserable children who struggle to

141

remain alive, desperately and very badly, while I — I don't even notice
the burden."

"Why don’t you tell them that? 1 '

"What?"

"That you’re working for your own sake, not theirs."

"They know it."

"Oh yes, they know it. Every single one of them here knows it.
But they don’t think you do. And the aim of all their efforts is to
keep you from knowing it."

"Why should I care what they think?”

"Because it’s — a battle in which one must make one’s stand clear.”

"A battle? What battle? 1 hold the whip hand. I don’t light the
disarmed.”

"Are they? They have a weapon against you. It's their only
weapon, but it's a terrible one Ask yourself what it is, some time.”

"Where do you see any evidence of it?”

"in the unforgivable fact that you’re as unhappy as you are.”

Kearden could accept any form of reproach, abuse, damnation
anyone chose to throw at him: the only human reaction which he
would not accept was pity. The slab of a coldly rebellious anger
brought him back to the full context of the moment He spoke,
fighting not to acknowledge the nature of the emotion rising within
him. "What sort of effrontery are you indulging m? What’s your
motive?”

“Let us say -to give you the words you need, for the time when
you’ll need them.”

“Why should you want to speak to me on such a subject?"

‘In the hope that you will remember it.”

What he felt, thought Rearden, was anger at the incomprehensible
fact that he had allowed himself to enjoy this conversation. He fell
a dim sense of betrayal, the hint of an unknown danger. “Do you
expect me to forget what you are?*' he asked, knowing that this was
what he had forgotten,

“1 do not expect you to think of me at all.”

Under his anger, the emotion which Rearden would not acknowl-
edge remained unstated and unlhought; he knew it only as a hint of
pain. Had he faced it, he would have known that he still heard
Francisco’s voice saying, “1 am the only one who will offer it ... if
you will accept it. . . .” He heard the words and the strangely solemn
inflection of the quiet voice and an inexplicable answer ol his own,
something within him that wanted to cry yes. to accept, to tell this
man that he accepted, that he needed it — though there was no name
for what he needed, it was not gratitude, and he knew that it was
not gratitude this man had meant.

Aloud, he said, “I didn’t seek to talk to you. But you’ve asked
for it and you’re going to hear it. To me. there’s only;’ one form of
human depravity — the man without a purpose."

“That is true."

"I can forgive all those others, they’re not vicious, they’re merely
helpless. But you— you’re the kind who can’t be forgiven."

"It is against the sin of forgiveness that I wanted to f warn you.”

142

“You had the greatest chance in life. What have you done with
it? If you have the mind to understand all the things you said, how
can you speak to me at ail? How can you face anyone after the sort
of irresponsible destruction you've perpetrated in that Mexican
business? 1 ’

“It is your right to condemn me for it, if you wish/ 1

Dagny stood by the corner of the window recess, listening. They
did not notice her. She had seen them together and she had ap-
proached, drawn by an impulse she could not explain or resist; it
seemed crucially important that she know what these two men said
to each other.

She had heard their last few sentences. She had never thought it
possible that she would see Francisco taking a beating. He could
smash any adversary in any form of encounter. Yet he stood, offering
no defense. She knew that it was not indifference; she knew his face
well enough to see the effort his calm cost him — she saw the faint
line of a muscle pulled tight across his cheek.

“Of all those who live by the ability of others/’ said Rearden,
“you’re the one real parasite/ 1

“I have given you grounds to think so/’

“Then what right have you to talk about the meaning of being a
man? You’re the one who has betrayed it.”

“1 am sorry if 1 have offended you by what you may rightly con-
sider as a presumption/ 1

Francisco bowed and turned to go. Rearden said involuntarily, not
knowing that the question negated his anger, that it was a plea to
stop this man and hold him, “What did you want to learn to under-
stand about me?”

Francisco turned. The expression of his face had not changed; it
was still a look of gravely courteous respect. “I have learned it/’
he answered.

Rearden stood watching him as he walked off into the crowd. The
figures of a butler, with a crystal dish, and of Dr. Pritchett, stooping
to choose another canape, hid Francisco from sight. Rearden glanced
out at the darkness; nothing could be seen there but the wind.

Dagny stepped forward, when he came out of the recess; she
smiled, openly inviting conversation. He stopped. It seemed to her
that he had stopped reluctantly. She spoke hastily, to break the si-
lence. “Hank, why do you have so many intellectuals of the looter
persuasion here? I wouldn’t have them in my house.”

This was not what she had wanted to say to him. But she did not
know what she wanted to say; never before had she felt herself left
wordless in his presence.

She saw his eyes narrowing, like a d<x>r being closed. “I see no
reason why one should not invite them to a party,” he answered
coldly.

’ “Oh, 1 didn’t mean to criticize your choice of guests. But . . . Well,
I’ve been trying not to leam which one of them is Bertram Scudder.
If I‘ do, I’U slap his face/ 1 She tried to sound casual. “I don’t want
to create a scene, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to control myself. I

143

couldn't believe it when somebody told me that Mrs. Rearden had
invited him.”

*7 invited him.”

“But . , Then her voice dropped. “Why?' 5

“I don't attach any importance to occasions of this kind.”

“Tm sorry, Hank. I didn't know you were so tolerant. I’m not.'*

He said nothing.

“I know you don't like parties. Neither do l. But sometimes l
wonder . . . perhaps we’re the only ones who were meant to be able
to enjoy them.”

“I am afraid I have no talent for it.”

“Not for this. But do you think any of these people are enjoying
it? They’re just straining to be more senseless and aimless than usual.
To be light and unimportant . . . You know, I think that only if one
feels immensely important can one feel truly light,”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“It’s just a thought that disturbs me once in a while. ... I thought
it about my first ball. ... I keep thinking that parties are intended
to be celebrations, and celebrations should be only for those who
have something to celebrate.”

“I have never thought of it.”

She could not adapt her words to the rigid formality of his manner;
she could not quite believe it. They had always been at ease together,
in his oflice. Now he was like a man in a strait jacket.

“Hank, look at it. If you didn't know any of these people, wouldn’t
it seem beautiful? The lights and the clothes and all the imagination
that went to make it possible . She was looking at the room.
She did not notice that he had not followed her glance. He was
looking down at the shadows on her naked shoulder, the soft, blue
shadows made by the light that fell through the strands of her hair.
“Why have we left it all to fools? It should have been ours.”

“In what manner?”

“I don’t know . . . I’ve always expected parties to be exciting and
brilliant, like some rare drink.” She laughed; there was a note of
sadness in it, “But I don't drink, either. That’s just another symbol
that doesn’t mean what it was intended to mean.” He was silent.
She added, “Perhaps there's something that we have missed.”

“I am not aware of it.”

In a flash of sudden, desolate emptiness, she was glad that he had
not understood or responded, feeling dimly that she had revealed
too much, yet not knowing what she had revealed. She shrugged,
the movement running through the curve of her shoulder like a faint
convulsion. “It’s just an old illusion of mine,” she said indifferently.
“Just a mood that comes once every year or two, Let me see the
latest steel price index and I’ll forget all about it.”

She did not know that his eyes were following her, as $io walked
away from him.

She moved slowly through the room, looking at no o nip. She no-
ticed a small group huddled by the unlighted fireplace. ;The room
was not coki, but they sat as if they drew comfort from the thought
of a non-existent fire.

144

“I do not know why, but I am growing to be afraid of the dark.
No, not now, only when I am alone. What frightens me is night
Night as such.”

The speaker was an elderly spinster with an air of breeding and
hopelessness. The three women and two men of the group were well
dressed, the skin of their faces was smoothly well tended, but they
had a manner of anxious caution that kept their voices one tone
lower than normal and blurred the differences of (heir ages, giving
them all the same gray look of being spent. It was the look one saw
in groups of respectable people everywhere. Dagny stopped and
listened.

“But my dear,” one of them asked, “why should it frighten you?”

“1 don’t know.” said the spinster. ”1 am not afraid of prowlers or
robberies or anything of the sort. But 1 stay awake all night. I fall
asleep only when I see the sky turning pale. It is very odd. Every
evening, when it grows dark, 1 get the feeling that this time it is
final, that daylight will not return.”

“My cousin who lives on the coast of Maine wrote me the same
thing,” said one of the women.

“Last night,” said the spinster, “I stayed awake because of the
shooting. There were guns going off all night, way out at sea. There
were no flashes. There was nothing. Just those detonations, at long
intcivals. somewhere in the fog over the Atlantic.”

“I read something about it m the paper this morning. Coast Guard
target practice.”

“Why, no.” the spinster said indifferently. “Everybody down on
the shore knows what it was. U was Ragnar Danneskjold. It was the
Coast Guard trying to catch him.”

“Ragnar Danneskjdld in Delaware Bay?” a woman gasped.

“Oh, yes. They say it is not the first time.”

“Did they catch him?”

“No.”

“Nobody can catch him,” said one of the men,

“The People’s State of Norway has offered a mi Uion-dollar reward
for his head.”

“Thafs an awful lot of money to pay for a pirate’s head.”

“But how are we going to have any order or security or planning
in the world, with a pirate running loose all over the seven seas?”

“Do you know what it was that he seized last night?” said the
spinster. “The big ship with the relief supplies we were sending to
the People’s State of France.”

“How does he dispose of the goods he seizes?”

“Ah, that— nobody knows.”

“I met a sailor once, from a ship he'd attacked, who’d seen him
in person. He said that Ragnar Danneskjdld has the purest gold hair
and the most frightening face on earth, a face with no sign of any
feeling. If there ever was a man bom without a heart, he’s it — the
sailor said.”

“A nephew of mine saw Ragnar DanneskjttkTs ship one night, off
the coast of Scotland. He wrote me that he couldn’t believe his

145

eyes. It was a belter ship than any in the navy of the People’s State
of England.’'

“They say he hides in one of those Norwegian fjords where neither
God nor man will ever Find him. That’s where the Vikings used to
hide in the Middle Ages.”

’‘There’s a reward on his head offered by the People’s State of
Portugal, too. And by the People’s State of Turkey.”

“They say it's a national scandal in Norway. He comes from one
of their best families. The family lost its money generations ago, but
the name is of the noblest. The ruins of their castle are still in exis-
tence. His father is a bishop. His father has disowned him and ex-
communicated him. But it had no effect.”

“Did you know that Ragnar DanneskjOld went to school in this
country? Sure. The Patrick Henry University.”

“Not realty?”

“Oh yes. You can took it up.”

“What bothers me is . . . You know, 1 don’t like it. I don’t like it
that he’s now appearing right here, in our own waters. 1 thought
things like that could happen only in the wastelands. Only in Europe.
But a big-scale outlaw of that kind operating in Delaware m our day
and age!”

“He’s been seen off Nantucket, too. And at Bar Harbor. The
newspapers have been asked not to write about it.”

“Why?”

“They don’t want people to know that the navy can’t cope with
him.”

“i don’t like it. It feels funny It's like something out of the
Dark Ages.”

Dagny glanced up. She saw Francisco d'Anconia standing a few
steps away. He was looking at her with a kind of stressed curiosity;
his eyes were mocking.

“It's a strange world we’re living in,” said the spinster, her voice
low.

“I read an article,” said one of the women foneltwsly. ‘it said that
times of trouble aie good for us. It is good that people are growing
poorer. To accept privations is a moral virtue.”

“I suppose so,” said another, without conviction.

“We must not worry. 1 heard a speech that said it is useless to
worry or to blame anyone. Nobody can help what he does, that is
the way things made him. There is nothing we can do about anything.
We must learn to bear it.”

“What’s the use anyway? What is man’s fate? Hasn’t it always
been to hope, but never to achieve? The wise man is the one who
does not attempt to hope,”

“That is the right attitude to take.”

“1 don’t know ... I don't know what is right any mor^ . . . How
can we ever know?”

“Oh well, who is John Galt?”

Dagny turned brusquely and started away from them. One of the
women followed her.

146

“But 1 do know it,” said the woman, in the soft, mysterious tone
of sharing a secret.

“You know what?”

“1 know who is John Galt.”

“Who?” Dagny asked tensely, stopping.

“I know a man who knew John GaJt in person. This man is an
old friend of a great-aunt of mine. He was there and he saw it
happen. Do you know the legend of Atlantis, Miss Taggart?”

“What?”

“Atlantis.”

“Why . . . vaguely.”

“The isles of the Blessed. That is what the Greeks called it, thou-
sands of years ago. They said Atlantis was a place where hero-spirits
lived in a happiness unknown to the rest of the earth. A place which
only the spirits of heroes could enter, and they reached it without
dying, because they carried the secret of life within them. Atlantis
was lost to mankind, even then. But the Greeks knew that it had
existed. They tried to find it. Some of them said it was underground,
hidden in the heart of the earth. But most of them said it was an
island. A radiant island in the Western Ocean. Perhaps what they
were thinking of was America. They never found it. For centuries
afterward, men said it was only a legend. They did not believe it,
but they never stopped looking for it. because they knew that that
was what they had to find.”

“Well, what about John Galt?”

“He found it.”

Dagny ’s interest was gone “Who was he?”

“John Galt was a millionaire, a man of inestimable wealth. He
was sailing his yacht one night, in mid-Atlantic, fighting the worst
storm ever wt caked upon the world, when he found it. He saw it in
the depth, where it had sunk to escape the reach of men. He saw
the toweis of Atlantis shining on the bottom of the ocean. It was a
sight of such kind that when one had seen it. one could no longer
wish to look at the rest of the earth. John Galt sank his ship and
went down with his entire crew. They all chose to do it. My friend
was the only one who survived.”

“How mtciesting.”

“My friend saw it with his own eyes.” said the woman, offended.
“It happened many years ago. But John Galt’s family hushed up
the story.”

“And what happened to his fortune? 1 don’t recall ever hearing
of a Galt fortune.”

“It went down with him.” She added belligerently, “You don’t
have to believe it.”

“Miss Taggart doesn't,” said Francisco d'Aticoiua. “I do.”

I hey turned. He had followed them and he stood looking at them
with the insolence of exaggerated earnestness.

“Have you ever had faith in anything. Sefior d'Anconia?” the
woman asked angrily,

“No, madame?’

147

He chuckled at her brusque departure. Dagny asked coldly,
“What’s the joke?”

“The joke’s on that fool woman. She doesn't know that she was
telling you the truth.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“No.”

“Then what do you find so amusing?”

“Oh, a great many things here. Don’t you?”

“No,”

“Well, that's one of the things 1 find amusing.”

“Francisco, will you leave me alone?”

“But I have. Didn't you notice that you were first to speak to
me tonight?”

“Why do you keep watching me?”

“Curiosity.”

“About what?”

“Your reaction to the things which you don’t find amusing.”

“Why should you care about my reaction to anything?”

“That is my own way of having a good time, which, incidentally,
you are not having, are you, Dagny? Besides, you’re the only woman
worth watching here.”

She stood defiantly still, because the way he looked at her de-
manded an angry escape. She stood as she always did. straight and
taut, her head lifted impatiently. It was the unfemmine pose of an
executive. But her naked shoulder betrayed the fragility of the hotly
under the black dress, and the pose made her most truly a woman.
The proud strength became a challenge to someone's superior
strength, and the fragility a reminder that the challenge could be
broken. She was not conscious of it. She had met no one able to
see it.

He said, looking down at her body. “Dagny, what a magnificent
waste!”

She had to turn and escape. She felt herself blushing, for the first
time in yeats: blushing because she knew suddenly that the sentence
named what she had felt all evening.

She ran, trying not to think. The music stopped her. It was a
sudden blast from the radio. She noticed Mort Liddy, who had
turned it on, waving his arms to a group of friends, yelling. “That’s
it! That's it! I want you to hear it!”

The great burst of sound was the opening chords of Halley’s
Fourth Concerto. It rose in tortured tiiumph, speaking its denial of
pain, its hymn to a distant vision. Then the notes broke. It was as if
a handful of mud and pebbles had been flung at the music, and what
followed was the sound o t the rolling and the dripping. It was Hal-
ley’s Concerto swung into a popular tune. It was Haller’s melody
torn apart, its holes stuffed with hiccoughs. The great statement of
joy had become the giggling of a barroom. Yet it was st{ll the rem-
nant of Halley’s melody that gave it form; it was the r^iclody that
supported it like a spinal cord.

“Pretty good?” Mort Liddy was smiling at his friendi boastfully
and nervously. “Pretty good, eh? Best movie score of the year. Got

148

me a prize. Got me a long-term contract. Yeah, this was my score
for Heaven's in Your Backyard L”

Dagny stood, staring at the room, as if one sense could replace
another, as if sight could wipe out sound. She moved her head in a
slow circle, trying to find an anchor somewhere. She saw Francisco
leaning against a column, his arms crossed; he was looking straight
at her; he was laughing.

Don't shake like this, she thought. Get out of here. This was the
approach of an anger she could not control. She thought: Say noth-
ing. Walk steadily. Get out.

She had started walking, cautiously, very slowly. She heard Lil-
lian’s words and stopped. Lillian had said it many times this evening,
in answer to the same question, but it was the first time that Dagny
heard it.

'This?’* Lillian was saying, extending her arm with the metal
bracelet for the inspection of two smartly groomed women. “Why,
no, it's not from a hardware store, it’s a very special gift from my
husband. Oh, yes, of course it’s hideous. But don't you see? It’s
supposed to be priceless. Of course. I’d exchange it for a common
diamond bracelet any time, but somehow nobody will offer me one
for it, even though it is so very, very valuable. Why? My dear, it’s
the first thing ever made of Rearden Metal."

Dagny did not see the room. She did not hear the music. She felt
the pressure of dead stillness against her eardrums. She did not know
the moment that preceded, or the moments that were to follow. She
did not know those involved, neither herself, nor Lillian, nor Rear-
den, nor the meaning of her own action. It was a single instant,
blasted out of context. She had heard. She was looking at the brace-
let of green-blue metal.

She felt the movement of something being torn off her wrist, and
she heard her own voice saying in I he great stillness, very calmly, a
voice cold as a skeleton, naked of emotion, “If you are not the
coward that I think you are, you will exchange it.”

On the palm of her hand, she was extending her diamond bracelet
to Lillian.

“You're not serious. Miss Taggart?” said a woman's voice.

It was not Lillian's voice. Lillian's eyes were looking straight at
her. She saw them. Lillian knew that she was serious.

“Give me that bracelet,” said Dagny, lifting her palm higher, the
diamond band glittering across it.

“This is horrible!” cried some woman. It was strange that the cry
stood out so sharply. Then Dagny realized that there were people
standing around them and that they ail stood in silence. She was
hearing sounds now, even the music: it was Halley's mangled Con-
certo, somewhere far away.

She saw Rearden’s face. It looked as if something within him were
mangled, like the music; she did not know by what. He was watch-
ing them.

Lillian’s mouth moved into an upturned crescent. It resembled a
smile. She snapped the metal bracelet open, dropped it on Dagny ’s
palm and took the diamond band.

149

“Thank you. Miss Taggart,*’ she said.

Dagny ’$ fingers closed about the metal. She felt that; she felt noth-
ing else.

Lillian turned, because Rearden had approached her. He took the
diamond bracelet Irom her hand. He clasped it on her wrist, raised
her hand to his lips and kissed it.

He did not look at Dagny.

Lillian laughed, gaily, easily, attractively, bringing the room back
to its normal mood

“You may have it back. Miss Taggart, when you change your
mind," she said.

Dagny had turned away She felt calm and free. The pressure was
gone. The need to get out had vanished.

She clasped the metal bracelet on her wrist. She liked the feel of
the weight against her skin. Inexplicably, she felt a touch of feminine
vanity, the kind she had never experienced before: the desire to be
seen wearing this particular ornament.

From a distance, she heard snatches of indignant voices: “The
most offensive gesture I’ve ever seen. . . It was vicious. . . I’m
glad Lillian took her up on it. . . . Serves her right, it she feels like
throwing a few thousand dollars away. .

For the rest of the evening. Rearden remained by the side of his
wife. He shared her conversations, lie laughed with her friends, he
was suddenly the devoted, attentive, admiring husband.

He was crossing the room, carrying a tray of drmks requested by
someone in Lillian’s group — an unbecoming act oi informality which
nobody had ever seen him perform- when Dagny approached him.
She stopped and looked up at him, as it they were alone in his office
She stood like an executive, her head lifted. He looked down at her.
In the line of his glance, from the fingertips of her one hand to her
face, her body was naked but for his metal bracelet.

“I’m sorry. Hank,” she said, “but 1 had to do it.”

His eyes remained expressionless. Yet she was suddenly ceitain
that she knew what he felt: he wanted to slap her face.

“It was not necessary,” he answered coldly, and walked on.

* *

It was very late when Rearden entered his wife’s bedroom. She
was still awake. A lamp burned on her bedside table.

She lay in bed, propped up on pillows of pale green linen. Her
bedjacket was pale green satin, worn with the untouched perfection
of a window model; its lustrous folds looked as if the crinkle of tissue
paper still lingered among them. The light, shaded to a tone of apple
blossoms, fell on a table that held a book, a glass of fruit juice, and
toilet accessories of silver glittering like instruments in a surgeon’s
case. Her arms had a tinge ot porcelain. There was a touch of pale
pink lipstick on her mouth. She showed no sign of exhaustion after
the party — no sign ot life to be exhausted. The place w$s a decora-
tor’s display of a lady groomed for sleep, not to be disturbed.

He still wore his dress clothes; his tie was loose, and! a strand of
hair hung over his face. She glanced at him without astonishment,
as if she knew what the last hour in his room had donef to him.

150

He looked at her silently. He had not entered her room for a long
lime. He stood* wishing he had not entered it now.

“Isn't it customary to talk, Henry?'”

“If you wish.”

“I wish you’d send one of your brilliant experts from the mills to
take a look at our furnace. Do you know that it went out during the
party and Simons had a terrible time getting it started again? . , .
Mrs. Weston says that our best achievement is our cook ---she loved
the hors d'oeuvres. . . . Balph Hubank said a very funny thing about
you, he said you’re a crusader with a factory’s chimney smoke for a
plume. . . . I’m glad you don’t like Francisco d’Anconia. 1 can’t
stand him.”

He did not care to explain his presence, or to disguise defeat, or
to admit it by leaving. Suddenly, it did not matter to him what she
guessed or felt. He walked to the window and stood, looking out.

Why had she married him? —he thought It was a question he had
not asked himself on their wedding day. eight years ago. Since then,
in tortured loneliness, he had asked it many times. He had found
no answer.

It was not for position, he thought, or tor money. She came from
an old family that had both. Her family’s name was not among the
most distinguished and their fortune was modest, but both were suf-
ficient to let her be included in the top circles of New York’s society,
where he had met her. Nine years ago. he had appeared in New
York like an explosion, m the glare of the success of Reaiden Steel,
a success that had been thought impossible by the city’s experts. It
was his indifference that made him spectacular. He did not know
that he was expected to attempt to buy his way into society and that
they anticipated the pleasure of rejecting him. He had no time to
notice their disappointment.

He attended, reluctantly, a few social occasions to which he was
invited by men who sought his favor. He did not know, but they
knew, that his courteous politeness was condescension toward the
people who had expected to snub him, the people who had said that
the age of achievement was past.

It was Lillian’s austerity that attracted him — the conflict between
her austerity and her behavior. He had never liked anyone or ex-
pected to be liked. He found himself held by the spectacle of a
woman who was obviously pursuing him but with obvious reluctance,
as if against her own will, as if fighting a desire she resented. It was
she who planned that they should meet, then faced him coldly* as if
not caring that he knew it. She spoke little; she had an air of mystery
that seemed to tell him he would never break through her proud
detachment, and an air of amusement, mocking her own desire
and his.

He had not known many women. He had moved toward his goal,
sweeping aside everything that did not pertain to it in the world and
in himself. His dedication to his work was like one of the fires he
dealt with, a fire that burned every lesser element, every impurity
out of the white stream of a single metal. He was incapable of half-
way concerns. But there were times when he felt a sudden access of

151

desire, so violent that it could not be given to a casual encounter.
He had surrendered to it, on a few rare occasions through the years,
with women he had thought he liked. He had been left feeling an
angry emptiness — because he had sought an act of triumph, though
he had not known of what nature, but the response he received was
only a woman's acceptance of a casual pleasure, and he knew too
clearly that what he had won had no meaning. He was left, not with
a sense of attainment, but with a sense of his own degradation. He
grew to hate his desire. He fought it. He came to believe the doctrine
that this desire was wholly physical, a desire, not of consciousness,
but of matter, and he rebelled against the thought that his llesh could
be free to choose and that its choice was impervious to the will of
his mind. He had spent his life in mines and mills, shaping matter
to his wishes by the power of his brain — and he found it intolerable
that he should be unable to control the matter of his own body. He
fought it. He had won his every battle against inanimate nature; but
this was a battle he lost.

It was the difficulty of the conquest that made him want Lillian.
She seemed to be a woman who expected and deserved a pedestal;
this made him want to drag her down to his bed. To drag her down,
were the words in his mind; they gave him a dark pleasure, the sense
of a victory worth winning.

He could not understand why — he thought it was an obscene con-
flict, the sign of some secret depravity within him — why he felt, at
the same time, a profound pride at the thought of granting to a
woman the title of his wife. The feeling was solemn and shining; it
was almost as if he felt that he wished to honor a woman by the act
of possessing her. Lillian seemed to fit the image he had not known
he held, had not known he wished to find; he saw the grace, the
pride, the purity; the rest was in himself; he did not know that he
was looking at a reflection.

He remembered the day when Lillian carne from New York to his
office, of her own sudden choice, and asked him to take her through
his mills. He heard a soft, low, breathless tone— the tone of admira-
tion — growing in her voice, as she questioned him about his work
and looked at the place around her. He looked at her graceful figure
moving against the bursts of furnace flame, and at the light swift
steps of her high heels stumbling through drifts of slag, as she walked
resolutely by his side. The look in her eyes, when she watched a
heat of steel being poured, was like his own feeling for it made
visible to him. When her eyes moved up to his face, he saw the same
look, but intensified to a degree that seemed to make her helpless
and silent. It was at dinner, that evening, that he asked her to
marry him.

It took him some time after his marriage before he admitted to
himself that this was torture. He still remembered the flight when
he admitted it, when he told himself — the veins of his i^rists pulled
tight as he stood by the bed, looking down at Lillian — that he de-
served the torture and that he would endure it. Lillian was not look-
ing at him; she was adjusting her hair. “May I go to sleep now?"
she asked.

152

She had never objected; she had never refused him anything; she
submitted whenever he wished. She submitted in the manner of com-
plying with the rule that it was, at times, her duty to become an
inanimate object turned over to her husband’s use.

She did not censure him. She made it clear that she took it for
granted that men had degrading instincts which constituted the se-
cret, ugly part of marriage. She was condescendingly tolerant She
smiled, in amused distaste, at the intensity of what he experienced.
"Its the most undignified pastime I know of,” she said to him once,
“but 1 have never entertained the illusion that men are superior
to animals.”

His desire for her had died in the first week of their marriage.
What remained was only a need which he was unable to destroy.
He had never entered a whorehouse; he thought, at times, that the
self-loathing he would experience there could be no worse than what
he felt when he was driven to enter his wife’s bedroom.

He would often find her reading a book. She would put it aside,
with a white ribbon to mark the pages. When he lay exhausted, his
eyes closed, still breathing in gasps, she would turn on the light, pick
up the book and continue her reading.

He told himself that he deserved the torture, because he had
wished never to touch her again and was unable to maintain his
decision. He despised himself for that. Vie despised a need which
now held no shred of joy or meaning, which had become the mere
need of a woman's body, an anonymous body that belonged to a
woman whom he had to forget while he held it. He became con-
vinced that the need was depravity.

He did not condemn Lillian. He felt a dreary, indifferent respect
tor her His hatred of his own desire had made him accept the doc-
trine that women were pure and that a pure woman was one incapa-
ble of physical pleasure.

Through the quiet agony of the years of his marriage, there had
been one thought which he would not permit himself to consider:
the thought of infidelity. He had given his word. He intended to
keep it. It was not loyalty to Lillian: it was not the person of Uilian
that he wished to protect from dishonor — but the person of his wife.

Vie thought of that now. standing at the window. He had not
wanted to enter her room. He had fought against it. He had fought,
more fiercely, against knowing the particular reason why he would
not be able to withstand it tonight. Then, seeing her, he had known
suddenly that he would not touch her. The reason which had driven
him here tonight was the reason which made it impossible tor him.

He stood still, feeling free of desire, feeling the bleak relief of
indifference to his body, to this room, even to his presence here. He
had turned away from her, not to see her lacquered chastity. What
he thought he should feel was respect; what he felt was revulsion.

. . but Dr. Pritchett said that our culture is dying because our
universities have to depend on the alms of the meat packers, the
steel puddlers and the purveyors of breakfast cereals.”

Why had she married him? — he thought. That bright, crisp voice
was not talking at random. She knew why he had come here. She

153

knew what it would do to him to see her pick up a silver buffer and
go on talking gaily, polishing her fingernails. She was talking about
the party. But she did not mention Bertram Scudder — or Dagny
Taggart.

What had she sought in marrying him? He felt the presence of
some cold, driving purpose within her' — but found nothing to con-
demn, She had never tried to use him. She made no demands on him.

She found no satisfaction in the prestige of industrial power— she
spurned it— she preferred her own circle of friends. She was not
after money — she spent little — she was indifferent to the kind of
extravagance he could have afforded. He had no right to accuse her,
he thought, or ever to break the bond. She was a woman of honor
in their marriage. She wanted nothing material from him.

He turned and looked at her wearily.

“Next time you give a party." he said, “stick to your own crowd.
Don’t invite what you think are my friends. I don’t care to meet
them socially."

She laughed, startled and pleased. “I don't blame you, darling,"
she said.

He walked out, adding nothing else.

What did she want from him? — he thought. What was she after?
In the universe as he knew U. there was no answer.

Chapter VII THE EXPLOITERS AND THE EXPLOITED

The rails rose through the rocks to the oil derricks and the oil der-
ricks rose to the sky. Dagny stood on the bridge, looking up at the
crest of the hill where the sun hit a spot of metal on the top of the
highest rigging. It looked like a white torch lighted over the snow
on the ridges of Wyatt Oil.

By spring, she thought, the track would meet the line growing
toward it from Cheyenne: She let her eyes follow the green-blue
rails that started from the derricks, came down, went across the
bridge and past her. She turned her head to follow them through
the miles of dear air, as they went on in great curves hung on the
sides of the mountains, far to the end of the new track, where a
locomotive crane, like an arm of naked bones and nerves, moved
tensely against the sky.

A tractor went past her, loaded with green -blue bolts. The sound
of drills came as a steady shudder from far below, where men swung
on metal cables, cutting the straight stone drop of the canyon wall
to reinforce the abutments of the bridge. Down the track, she could
see men working, their arms stiff with the tension of their muscles
as they gripped the handles of electric tie tampers.

“Muscles. Miss Taggart," Ben Nealy, the contractor, ha$J said to
her, “muscles— that’s ail it takes to build anything in the 4orId."

No contractor equal to McNamara seemed to exist anywhere. She
had taken the best she could find. No engineer on the Taggart staff
could be trusted to supervise the job; all of them were l skeptical
about the new metal. “Frankly, Miss T aggart," her chiefs engineer

154

had said, "since it is an experiment that nobody has ever attempted
before, I do not think it's fair that it should be my responsibility/’
“lt*s mine,” she had answered. He was a man in his forties, who
still preserved the breezy manner of the college from which he had
graduated. Once, Taggart Transcontinental had had a chief engineer,
a silent, gray-haired, self-educated man, who could not be matched
on any railroad. He had resigned, five years ago.

She glanced down over the bridge. She was standing on a slender
beam of steel above a gorge that had cracked the mountains to a
depth of filteen hundred feet. Far at the bottom, she could distin-
guish the dim outlines of a dry river bed, of piled boulders, of trees
contorted by centuries. She wondered whether boulders, tree trunks
and muscles could ever bridge that canyon. She wondered why she
found herself thinking suddenly that cave-dwellers had lived naked
on the bottom of that canyon for ages.

She looked up at the Wyatt oil fields. The track broke into sidings
among the wells. She saw the small disks of switches dotted against
(he snow. They were metal switches, of the kind that were scattered
in thousands, unnoticed, throughout the country' — but these were
sparkling in the sun and the sparks were greenish-blue. What they
meant to her was hour upon hour of speaking quietly, evenly, pa-
tiently, trying to hit the centerless target that w f as the person of Mr.
Mowen, president of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company,
Inc , of Connecticut. “Rut, Miss Taggart, my dear Miss Taggart! My
company has served your company for generations, why, your grand-
father was the first customer of my grandfather, so you cannot doubt
oui eagerness to do anything you ask, but — did you say switches
made of Rearden Metal?”

“Yes.”

“But, Miss Taggart! Consider what it would mean, having to work
with that metal. Do you know that the sluft won’t melt under less
than four thousand. degrees? . .Great? Well, maybe that’s great for
motor manufacturers, but what I'm thinking of is that it means a
new type of furnace, a new process entirely, men to l>e trained,
schedules upset, work rules shot, everything balled up and then God
only knows whether it will come out right or not! . . . How do you
know. Miss Taggart? How can you know, when it's never been done
before? . . Weil, 1 can’t say that that metal is good and i can’t say
that it isn’t. , . . Well, no, 1 can’t tell whether it’s a product of genius,
as you say, or just another fraud as a great many people are saying,
Miss Taggart, a great many. . . . Well, no, 1 can’t say that it does
matter one way or the other, because who am I to take a chance on
a job of this kind?”

She had doubled the price of her order. Rearden had sent two
metallurgists to train Mowen's men, to teach, to show, to explain
every step of the process, and had paid the salaries of Mowen's men
while they were being trained.

She looked at the spikes in the rail at her feet. They meant the
night when she had heard that Summit Casting of Illinois, the only
company willing to make spikes of Rearden Metal, had gone bank-
rupt, with half of her order undelivered. She had flown to Chicago,

155

that tiight, she had got three lawyers, a judge and a state legislator
out of bed, she had bribed two of them and threatened the others,
she had obtained a paper that was an emergency permit of a legality
no one would ever be able to untangle, she had had the padlocked
doors of the Summit Casting plant unlocked and a random, half-
dressed crew working at the smelters before the windows had turned
gray with daylight. The crews had remained at work, under a Taggart
engineer and a Rearden metallurgist. The rebuilding of the Rio
Norte Line was not held up.

She listened to the sound of the drills. The work had been held
up once, when the drilling for the bridge abutments was stopped. “I
couldn't help it, Miss Taggart,” Ben Nealy had said, offended. “You
know how fast drill heads wear out. 1 had them on order, but Incor-
porated Tool ran into a little trouble, they couldn’t help it either.
Associated Steel was delayed in delivering the steel to them, so
there’s nothing we can do but wait. It’s no use getting upset. Miss
Taggart. Fm doing my best.”

“Fve hired you to do a job, not to do your best— -whatever that is.”

“That’s a funny thing to say. That's an unpopular attitude. Miss
Taggart, mighty unpopular.”

“Forget Incorporated Tool. Forget the steel. Order the drill heads
made of Rearden Metal.”

“Not me. I’ve had enough trouble with the damn stuff in that rail
of yours. Fm not going to mess up my own equipment.”

“A drill head of Rearden Metal will outlast three of steel.”

“Maybe.”

“I said order them made.”

“Who’s going to pay for it?”

“I am.”

“Who’s going to find somebody to make them?”

She had telephoned Rearden. He had found an abandoned tool
plant, long since out of business. Within an hour, he had purchased
it from the relatives of its last owner. Within a day, the plant had
been reopened. Within a week, drill heads of Rearden Metal had
been delivered to the bridge in Colorado.

She looked at the bridge. It represented a problem badly solved,
but she had had to accept it. The bridge, twelve hundred feet of
steel across the black gap, was built in the days of Nat Taggart’s
son. It was long past the stage of safety; it had been patched with
stringers of steel, then of iron, then of wood; it was barely worth the
patching. She had thought of a new bridge of Rearden Metal. She
had asked her chief engineer to submit a design and an estimate of
the cost. The design he had submitted was the scheme of a steel
bridge badly scaled down to the greater strength of the new metal;
the cost made the project impossible to consider.

“I beg your pardon. Miss Taggart,” he had said, offended. “I don’t
know what you mean when you say that I haven’t made Lse of the
metal. This design is an adaptation of the best bridges 4n record.
What else did you expect?”

“A new method of construction.”

“What do you mean, a new method? ’

156

“I mean that when men got structural steel, they did not use it to
build steel copies of wooden bridges.” She had added wearily, “Get
me an estimate on what well need to make our old bridge last for
another five years.”

“Yes, Miss Taggart,” he had said cheerfully. “If we reinforce it
with steel-*”

“Well reinforce it with Rcarden Metal.”

“Yes, Miss Taggart,” he had said coldly.

She looked at the snow-covered mountains. Her job had seemed
hard at times, in New York. She had stopped for blank moments in
the middle of her office, paralyzed by despair at the rigidity of time
which she could not stretch any further — on a day when urgent ap-
pointments had succeeded one another, when she had discussed worn
Diesels, rotting freight cars, failing signal systems, falling revenues,
while thinking of the latest emergency on the Rio Norte construction;
when she had talked, with the vision of two streaks of green-blue
metal cutting across her mind: when she had interrupted the discus-
sions, realizing suddenly why a certain news item had disturbed her.
and seized the telephone receiver to call long-distance, to call her
contractor, to say, “Where do you gel the food from, for your
men? ... I thought so. Well, Barton and Jones of Denver went
bankrupt yesterday. Bettei find another supplier at once, if you don’t
want to have a famine on your hands.” She had been building the
line from her desk in New York. It had seemed hard. But now she
was looking at the track. It was growing. It would be done on time.

She heard sharp, hurried footsteps and turned. A man was coming
up the track He was tall and young, his head of black hair was
hatless in the cold wind, he wore a workman's leather jacket, but he
did not look like a workman, there was (cm imperious an assurance
in the way he walked. She could not recognize the face until he came
closer. It was Ellis Wyatt. She had not seen him since that one
interview in her office.

He approached, stopped, looked at her and smiled

“Hello, Dagny,” he said.

In a single shock of emotion, she knew everything the two words
were intended to tell her. It was forgiveness, understanding, acknowl-
edgment, It was a salute.

She laughed, like a child, in happiness that things should be as
right as that.

“Hello.” she said, extending her hand,

His hand held hers an instant longer than a greeting required. It
was their signature under a score settled and understood.

‘ Tell Nealy to put up new snow fences for a mile and a half on
Granada Pass,” he said. “The old ones are rotted. They won’t stand
through another storm. Send him a rotary plow. What he’s got is a
piece of junk that wouldn’t sweep a back yard. The big snows are
coming any day now.”

She considered him for a moment. “How often have you been
doing this?” she asked.

.“What?”

“Coming to watch the work.”

157

“Every now and then. When I have time. Why?"

‘"Were you here the night when they had the rock slide?”

“Yes.”

“I was surprised how quickly and well they cleared the track, when
I got the reports about it. It made me think that Nealy was a belter
man than I had thought.”

u He isn't.”

“Was it you who organized the system of moving his day’s supplies
down to the line?”

“Sure. His men used to spend half their time hunting for things.
Tell him to watch his water tanks. They’ll free/e on him one of these
nights. See if you can get him a new ditcher. I don’t like the looks
of the one he’s got. Check on his wiring system.”

She looked at him for a moment. “Thanks, Ellis.” she said.

He smiled and walked on. She watched him as he walked across
the bridge, as he started up the long rise toward his derricks.

“He thinks he owns the place, doesn’t he?”

She turned, startled. Ben Nealy had approached her: his thumb
was pointing at Ellis Wyatt.

“What place?”

“The railroad. Miss Taggart. Your railroad. Or the whole world
maybe. That's what he thinks.”

Ben Nealy was a bulky man with a soft, sullen face. His eyes were
stubborn and blank. In the bluish light of the snow, his skin had the
tinge of butter.

“What does he keep hanging around here lor?” he said. “As if
nobody knew their business hut him I he snooty show-oft. Who does
he think he is?”

“God damn you.” said Dagny evenly, not raising her voice.

Nealy could' never know what had made her say it. But some part
of him, in some way of his own, knew it: the shocking thing to her
was that he was not shocked. He said nothing.

“Let's go, to your quarters,” she said wearily, pointing to an old
railway coach on a spur in the distance. “Have somebody there to
take notes.”

“Now about those crossties. Miss Taggart.” he said hastily as they
started. “Mr Coleman of your office okayed them. He didn't say
anything about too much bark. I don’t see why you think they’re — ”

“1 said you’re going to replace them.”

When she came out of the coach, exhausted by two hours of effort
to be patient, to instruct, to explain —she saw an automobile parked
on the torn dirt road below, a black two-seater, sparkling and new.
A new car was an astonishing sight anywhere; one did not see
them often.

She glanced around and gasped at the sight of the tall figure stand-
ing at the foot of the bridge. It was Hank Rcarden; stye had not
expected to find him in Colorado. He seemed absorbed calcula-
tions, pencil and notebook in hand. His clothes attracted! attention,
like his car and for the same reason; he wore a simple ftrenchcoat
and a hat with a slanting brim, but they were of such gtibd quality,
so flagrantly expensive that they appeared ostentatious jkmong the

158

seedy garments of the crowds everywhere, the more ostentatious
because worn so naturally.

She noticed suddenly that she was running toward him; she had
lost all trace of exhaustion, 'Fhen she remembered that she had not
seen him since the party. She stopped.

He saw her, he waved to her in a gesture of pleased, astonished
greeting, and he walked forward to meet her. He was smiling.

■'Hello, ” he said. "Your first trip to the job?”

“My fifth, in three months.”

"I didn’t know you were here. Nobody told me.”

"I thought you’d break down some day.”

“Break down?”

"Enough to come and see this, There’s your Metal. How do you
like it?”

He glanced around. ‘If you ever decide to quit the railroad busi-
ness, let me know.”

“You’d give me a job?”

“Any time.”

She looked at him for a moment. “You’re only half-kidding. Hank.

I think you’d like it having me ask you for a job. Having me for an
employee instead of a customer. Giving me orders to obey.”

"Yes. I would.”

She said, her face hard, "Don’t quit the steel business, f won’t
promise you a job on the raihoad.”

He laughed. “Don’t trv it.”

“What?”

“To win any battle when l set the terms.”

She did not answer. She was struck by what the words made her
feel; it was not an emotion, but a physical sensation of pleasure,
which she could not name or understand.

“Incidentally,” he said, “this is not my first trip. 1 was here
yesterday.”

“You were? Why?”

“Oh, I came to Colorado on some business of my own, so 1
thought I’d lake a look at this.”

"What arc you after?”

“Why do you assume that I'm after anything?”

“You wouldn’t waste time coming here just to look. Not twice.”
He laughed. "True.” He pointed at the bridge. "I’m after that.”

“What about it?”

"It's ready for the scrap heap."

“Do you suppose that I don’t know it?”

“I saw the specifications of your order for Rearden Metal members
for that bridge. You’re wasting your money. The difference between
what you're planning to spend on a makeshift that will last a couple
of years, and the cost of a new Rearden Metal bridge, is compara-
tively so little that I don’t see why you want to bother preserving
this museum piece.”

"I’ve thought of a new Rearden Metal bridge. I’ve had my engi-
neers give me an estimate.”

"What did they tell you?”

159

“Two million dollars. 1 ’

"‘Good God!”

“What would you say?”

“Eight hundred thousand.”

She looked at him. She knew that he never spoke idly. She asked,
trying to sound calm, “How?”

“Like this.”

He showed her his notebook. She saw the disjoined notations he
had made, a great many figures, a few rough sketches. She under-
stood his scheme before he had finished explaining it. She did not
notice that they had sat down, that they were sitting on a pile of
frozen lumber, that her legs were pressed to the rough planks and
she could feel the cold through her thin stockings. They were bent
together over a few scraps of paper which could make it possible
for thousands of tons of freight to cross a cut of empty space. His
voice sounded sharp and clear, while he explained thrusts, pulls,
loads, wind pressures. The bridge was to be a single twelve-hundred-
foot -truss span. He had devised a new type of truss. It had never
been made before and could not be made except with members that
had the strength and the lightness ot Kearden Metal.

“Hank,” she asked, “did you invent this in two days?”

“Hell. no. 1 ‘invented’ it long before I had Reardon Metal. 1 fig-
ured it out while making steel for bridges. I wanted a metal with
which one would be able to do this, among other things. 1 came here
just to see your particular problem for myself.”

He chuckled, when he saw the slow movement of her hand across
her eyes and the line of bitterness in the set of her mouth, as if she
were trying to wipe out the things against which she had fought such
an exhausting, .cheerless battle.

“This is only a rough scheme,” he said, “but i believe you see
what can be done?”

“I can’t tell you all that 1 see, Hank.”

“Don’t bother. I know it.”

“You’re saving Taggart Transcontinental for the second time.”

“You used to be a better psychologist than that.”

“What do you mean'*”

“Why should 1 give a damn about saving Taggart Transcontinen-
tal? Don’t you know that 1 want to have a bridge of Rearden Metal
to show the country?”

“Yes, Hank. 1 know it.”

“There are too many people yelping that rails of Rearden Metal
are unsafe. So I thought I’d give them something real to yelp about.
Let them see a bridge of Rearden Metal.”

She looked at him and laughed aloud in simple delight.

“Now what’s that?” he asked.

“Hank, I don’t know anyone, not anyone in the world, wfio’d think
of such an answer to people, in such circumstances — except you.”

“What about you? Would you want to make the answd with me
and face the same screaming?”

“You knew 1 would ”

“Yes. I knew it.”

160

He glanced at her, his eyes narrowed; he did not laugh as she had,
hut the glance was an equivalent.

She remembered suddenly their last meeting, at the party* The
memory seemed incredible. Their ease with each other — the strange,
light-headed feeling, which included the knowledge that it was the
only sense of ease cither of them found anywhere --made the thought
of hostility impossible. Yet she knew that the party had taken place;
ho acted as if it had not.

They walked to the edge of the canyon. Together, they looked at
the dark drop, at the rise of rock beyond it, at the sun high on the
derricks of Wyatt Oil. She stood, her feet apart on the frozen stones,
braced firmly against the wind. She could feel, without touching it,
the line of his chest behind her shoulder. The wind beat her coat
against his legs.

“Hank, do you think we can build it in time? There arc only six
months left.”

“Sure. It will take less time and labor than any other type of
bridge. Let me have my engineers work out the basic scheme and
submit it to you. No obligation on your part. Just lake a look at it
and see for yourself whether you*!! be able to afford it. You will.
Then you can let your college boys work out the details.”

“What about the Metal?”

“[’11 get the Metal rolled if l have to throw every other order out
of the mills.”

“You’ll get it rolled on so short a notice?”

“Have 1 ever held you up on an order?”

“No. But the way things are going nowadays, you might not be
able to help it.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to — Orren Boyle?”

She laughed. “All right. Let me have the drawings as soon as
possible. I’ll take a look and let you know within forty-eight hours.
As to my college boys, they- -” She stopped, frowning. “Hank, why
is it so hard to lind good men for any job nowadays?”

“I don't know . . .”

He looked at the lines of the mountains cut across the sky. A thin
jet of smoke was rising from a distant valley.

“Have you seen the new towns of Colorado and the factories?”
he asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s great, isn’t it? — to see the kind of men they’ve gathered here
fiom every corner of the country. All of them young, all of them
starting on a shoestring and moving mountains.”

“What mountain have you decided to move?”

“Why?”

“What are you doing in Colorado?”

He smiled. “Looking at a mining property.”

“What sort?”

“Copper.”

“Good God, don't you have enough to do?”

“1 know it’s a complicated job. But the supply of copper is becom-
ing completely unreliable. There doesn't seem to be a single first-

161

rate company left in the business in this country — and I don’t want
to deal with d’Anconia Copper. 1 don't trust that playboy.”

“I don’t blame you.” she said, looking away .

“So if there’s no competent person left to do it. I’ll have to mine
my own copper, as 1 mine my own iron ore. 1 can’t take any chances
on being held up by all those failures and shortages. 1 need a great
deal of copper for Rearden Metal/’

“Have you bought the mine?”

“Not yet. There are a few problems to solve. Getting the men,
the equipment, the transportation.”

“Oh , . . !” She chuckled. ’’Going to speak to me about building
a branch line?”

“Might. There’s no limit to what’s possible in this state. Do you
know that they have every kind of natural resource here, waiting,
untouched? And the way their factories are growing! 1 feci ten years
younger when 1 come here.”

“I don't.” She was looking cast, past the mountains. “1 think of
the contrast, all over the rest of the Taggart system. There’s less to
carry, less tonnage produced each year. It's as if . . . Hank, what’s
wrong with the country?”

“1 don’t know.”

“1 keep thinking of what they told us in school about the sun losing
energy, growing colder each year. I remember wondering, then, what
it would be like in the last days of the world. I think it would be . . .
like this. Growing colder and things stopping.”

“I never believed that story. I thought bv the time the sun was
exhausted, men would find a substitute ”

“You did? Funny. I thought that, loo.”

He pointed at the column of smoke. ‘There’s your new sunrise.
It's going to feed the rest.”

“If it's not stopped.”

“Do you think it can be stopped?”

She looked at the rail under her feet. “No,” she said.

He smiled. He looked down at the rail, then let his eyes move
along the track, up the sides of the mountains, to the distant crane.
She saw two things, as if, for a moment, the two stood alone in her
field of vision: the lines of his profile and the green-blue cord coiling
through space.

“We’ve done it, haven’t we?” he said.

In payment for every effort, for every sleepless night, for every
silent thrust against despair, this moment was all she wanted. “Yes.
We have.”

She looked away, noticed an old crane on a siding, and thought
that its cables were worn and would need replacing. Thi$ was the
great clarity of being beyond emotion, after the reward pi having
felt everything one could feel. Their achievement, she thought, and
one moment of acknowledging it, of possessing it together — what
greater intimacy could one share? Now she was free for thfc simplest,
most commonplace concerns of the moment, because nothing could
be meaningless within her sight.

She wondered what made her certain that he felt as did- He

162

turned abruptly and started toward his car. She followed. They did
not look at each other.

“Em due to leave for the East in an hour,” he said.

She pointed at the car. “Where did you get that?”

“Here. It's a Hammond, Hammond of Colorado — they’re the only
people who’re still making a good car. I just bought it, on this trip.”

“Wonderful job.”

“Yes, isn't it?”

“Going to drive it back to New York?”

“No, I’m having it shipped, 1 flew my plane down here.”

“Oh, you did? 1 drove down from Cheyenne — 1 had to see the
line “but I’m anxious to get home as last as possible. Would you
take me along? ('an 1 fly back with you?”

He did not answer at once. .She noticed the empty moment of a
pause. “I’m sorry,” he said; she wondered whether she imagined the
note of abruptness in his voice. “Tm nol flying back to New York.
I’m going to Minnesota.”

“Oh well, then i’ll try to get on an air liner, if I can find one
today.”

She watched his car vanish down the winding road. She drove to
the airport an houi later. The place was a small field at the bottom
of a break in the desolate chain of mountains. There were patches
of snow on the hatd, pitted earth The pole of a beacon stood at
one side, trailing wires to the ground; the other poles had been
knocked down by a storm.

A lonely attendant came to meet her. “No, Miss Taggart.” he
sanl regretfully, “no planes till day after tomorrow. There’s only one
transcontinental liner every two days, you know, and the one that
w'as due today has been grounded, down in Arizona. Engine trouble,
as usual.” lie added. “It’s a pity you didn't get here a bit sooner*
Mr. Reardon took off for New York, in his private plane, just a little
while ago.”

“He wasn't flying to Nonv York, was he?”

“Why. yes. He said so ”

“Are you sure?”

“He said he had an appointment there tonight.”

She looked at the sky to the east, blankly, without moving. She
had no due to any reason, nothing to give her a foothold, nothing
with which to weigh this or light it or understand.

* *

“Damn these streets!” said James Taggart. “We’re going to be
late.”

Dagny glanced ahead, past the back of the chauffeur. Through the
circle made by a windshield wiper on the sleet ^streaked glass, she
saw black, worn, glistening car tops strung in a motionless line. Far
ahead, the smear of a red lantern, low over the ground, marked a
street excavation.

“There’s something wrong on every other street,” said Taggart
irritably. “Why doesn’t somebody fix them?”

She leaned back against the seat* tightening the collar of her wrap.
She felt exhausted at the end of a day she had started at her desk,

m

in her office^ at seven am; a day she had broken off, uncompleted,
to rush home and dress, because she had promised Jim to speak at
the dinner of the New York Business Council, “They want us to
give them a talk about Rearden Metal,” he had said. “You can do
it so much better than 1. It's very important that we present a good
case. There’s such a controversy about Rearden Metal.”

Sitting beside him in his car, she regretted that she had agreed.
She looked at the streets of New York and thought of the race
between metal and time, between the rails of the Rio Norte Line
and the passing days. She felt as if her nerves were being pulled
tight by the stillness of the car, by the guilt of wasting an evening
when she could not afford to waste an hour.

“With all those attacks on Rearden that one hears everywhere,”
said Taggart, “he might need a few friends,”

She glanced at him incredulously “You mean you want to stand
by him?”

He did not answer at once; he asked, his voice bleak. “That report
of the special committee of the National Council of Metal Indus-
tries — what do you think of it?”

“You know what I think of it.”

“They said Rearden Metal is a threat to public safety. They said
its chemical composition is unsound, it's brittle, it's decomposing
molecularly, and it will crack suddenly, without warning . . .” He
stopped, as if begging for an answer. .She did not answer. He asked
anxiously, “You haven’t changed your mind about it. have you?”

“About what?”

“About that metal.”

“No, Jim. I have not changed my mind ”

“They’re experts, though ... the men on that committee ... Top
experts . . . Chief metallurgists for the biggest corporations, with a
string of degrees from universities all river the country. . - He said
it unhappily, as if he were begging her to make him doubt these
men and their verdict.

She watched him. puzzled; this was not like him.

The car jerked forward. It moved slow ly through a gap m a plank
barrier, past the hole of a broken water main. She saw the new
pipe stacked by the excavation; the pipe bore a trademark; Stockton
Foundry, Colorado. She looked away; she wished she were not re-
minded of Colorado.

“I can’t understand it . . said Taggart miserably. “The top ex-
perts of the National Council of Metal Industries . . .”

“Who’s the president of the National Council of Metal Industries,
Jim? Orren Boyle, isn’t it?”

Taggart did not turn to her, but his jaw snapped ope£. “If that
fat slob thinks he can — ” he started, but stopped and did (not finish.

She looked up at a street lamp on the corner. It was pi globe of
glass filled with light. It hung, secure from storm, lighting boarded
windows and cracked sidewalks, as their only guardian. t the end
of the street, across the river, against the glow of a factory, she saw
the thin tracing of a power station. A truck went by, hiding her view.
It was the kind of truck that fed the power station — a tank truck,

164

its bright new paint impervious to sleet, green with white letters;
Wyatt Oil Colorado.

u Dagny, have you heard about that discussion at the structural
steel workers’ union meeting in Detroit?”

“No. What discussion?”

“It was in all the newspapers, lliey debated whether their mem-
bers should or should not be permitted to work with Rearden Metal.
They didn’t reach a decision, but that was enough for the contractor
who was going to take a chance on Rearden Metal. He cancelled
his order, but fast! . . . What if . . . what if everybody decides
against it?”

“Let them.”

A dot of light was rising in a straight hne to the top of an invisible
tower. It was the elevator of a great hotel. The car went past the
building’s alley. Men were moving a heavy, crated piece of equip-
ment from a truck into the basement She saw the name on the
crate: Nielsen Motors. Colorado.

“I don’t like that resolution passed by the convention ot the grade
school teachers of New Mexico.” said Taggart.

“What resolution?”

“They resolved that it was their opinion that children should not
be permitted to ride on the new Rio Norte Line of Taggart Transcon-
tinental when it’s completed, because it is unsafe . They said it
specifically, the new line of faggan Vuwsconunvntal It was m all
iho newspapers. It’s terrible publicity tor us. . . Dagny, what do
vou think we should do to answer them 9 ”

“Run the first train on the new Rio Norte I inc."

He lemamed silent for a long time He looked strangely dejected.
She could not understand it: he did not gloat, he did not use the
opinions of his favorite authorities against her. he seemed to be
pleading for reassurance.

A car flashed past them; she had a moment's glimpse of power —
a smooth, confident motion and a shining body. She knew the make
of the car: Hammond, Colorado

“Dagny. are we . . . are we going to have that line built . . .
on time?”

It was strange to hear a note of plain emotion in his voice, the
uncomplicated sound of animal fear.

“God help this city, if we don’t!” she answered.

The car turned a cornei . Above the black roofs of the city, she
saw' the page of the calendar, hit by the white glare of a spotlight.
It said: January

“Dan Conway is a bastard!”

The words broke out suddenly, as if he could not hold them any
longer.

She looked at him, bewildered “Why?"

"He refused to sell us the Colorado track of the Phoenix*
Durango."

“You didn’t — ” She had to stop. She started again, keeping her
voice flat in order not to scream. “You haven’t approached him
about it?”

165

‘'Of course I have!”

"You didn’t expect him . . , to sell it ... to yauT*

“Why not?” His hysterically belligerent manner was back. ”1 of-
fered him more than anybody else did. We wouldn’t have had the
expense of tearing it up and caning it off, we could have used it as
is. And it would have been wonderful publicity for us — that we re
giving up the Rearden Metal track in deference to public opinion,
ft would have been worth every penny of it in good will! But the
son of a bitch refused. He's actually declared that not a foot of rail
would be sold to Taggart Transcontinental. He’s selling it piecemeal
to any stray comer, to one-horse railroads in Arkansas or North
Dakota, selling it at a loss, way under what l offered him. the bas-
tard! Doesn’t even want to take a profit! And you should see those
vultures flocking to him! They know they'd never have a chance to
get rail anywhere else!”

She sat. her head bowed. She could not bear to look at him.

‘i think it’s contrary to the intent ol the Anti-dog-cat’ dog Rule,”
he said angrily. “J think it was the intent and purpose of the National
Alliance of Railroads to protect the essential systems, not the jerk-
waters of North Dakota. But 1 can't get the Alliance to vote on it
now, because they're all down there, outbidding one anothei tor
that rail!”

She said slowly, as if she wished it were possible to wear gloves
to handle the words. ”1 see why you want me to defend Rearden
Metal.”

“I don't know what you’re—”

“Shut up. Jim,” she said quietly.

He remained silent for a moment Then he drew his head back
and drawled defiantly, “You'd better do a good job of defending
Rearden Metal, because Bertram Scudder can gel pietty sarcastic.”

“Bertram Scudder ’”

“He's going to be one of the speakers tonight *'

“One of the . . . You didn't tel! me there were to be other
speakers.”

“Well . . . 1 . . What difference does that make? You're not
afraid of him. are you*’”

“The New York Biisinvss Council . . . and you invite Bertram
Scudder?”

“Why not? Don’t you think it’s smart? He doesn’t have any hard
feelings toward businessmen, not really. He's accepted the invitation.
We want to be broad-minded and hear all sides and maybe win him
over. . . . Well, what are you staring at? You'll be able to beat him.
won’t you?”

”... to beat him?”

“On the air. U’s going to be a radio broadcast. You’ief going to
debate with him the question: ‘Is Rearden Metal a lethijtt product
of greed?’ ”

She leaned forward. She pulled open the glass partitfm of the
front .scat, ordering, “Stop the car!”

She did not hear what Taggart was saying. She noticed dimly that
his voice rose to screams: “They’re waiting! . . . Five hundired people

166

at the dinner, and a national hook-up! . . , You can't do this to me!”
He seized her arm, screaming, “But why?”

“You goddamn fool, do you think I consider their question
debatable?”

The car stopped, she leaped out and ran.

The first thing she noticed after a while, was her slippers. She was
walking slowly, normally, and it was strange to feel iced stone under
the thin soles of black satin sandals. She pushed her hair back, off
her forehead, and felt drops of sleet melting on her palm.

She was quiet now; the blinding anger was gone; she felt nothing
but a gray weariness. Her head ached a little, she realized that
she was hungry and remembered that she was to have had dinner
at the Business Council. She walked on. She did not want to eat.
She thought she would get a cup of coffee somewhere, then take a
cab home.

She glanced around her. There were no cabs in sight. She did not
know the neighborhood. It did not seem to be a good one. She saw
an empty stretch of space across the street, an abandoned park encir-
cled by a jagged line that began as distant skyscrapers and came
down to factory chimneys; she saw a few lights in the windows of
dilapidated houses, a few small, grimy shops closed for the night,
and the fog of the East River two blocks away.

She started back toward the center of the city. The black shape
of a rum rose before her. It had been an office building, long ago;
she saw the sky through the naked steel skeleton and the angular
remnants ol the bricks that had crumbled. In the shadow of the ruin,
like a blade of grass fighting to live at the roots ol a dead giant,
there stood a small diner. Its windows were a bright band of glass
and light. She went in

There was a clean counter inside, with a shining strip of chromium
at the edges. There was a bnght metal boiler and the odor of coffee.
A few derelicts sat at the counter, a husky, elderly man slotKl behind
it, the sleeves of his clean white shin rolled at the elbows. The warm
air made her realize, in simple gratitude, that she had been cold.
She pulled her black velvet cape tight about her and sat down at
the counter.

“A cup of coffee, please,” she said.

The men looked at her without curiosity. They did not seem aston-
ished to see a woman in evening clothes enter a slum diner; nothing
astonished anyone, these days. Flic owner turned impassively to fill
her older; there was, in his stolid indifference, the kind of merci-
fulness that asks no questions.

She could not tell whether the four at the counter were beggars
or working men; neither clothes nor manner showed the difference,
these days. The owner placed a mug of coffee before her. She dosed
both hands about it, finding enjoyment in its warmth.

- She glanced around her and thought, in habitual professional cal-
culation, how wonderful it was that one amid buy so much for a
dime. Her eyes moved from the stainless steel cylinder of the coffee
boiler to the cast-iron griddle, to the glass shelves, to the enameled
sink, to the chromium blades of a mixer. The owner was making

167

toast: She found pleasure in watching the ingenuity of an opeit belt
that moved slowly, carrying slices of bread past glowing electric coils.
Then she saw the name stamped on the toaster: Marsh, Colorado.

Her head fell down on her arm on the counter.

“It’s no use, lady,’* said the old bum beside her.

She had to raise her head. She had to smile in amusement, at him
and at herself.

“It isn’t?” she asked.

“No. Forget it. You're only fooling yourself.”

“About what?”

“About anything being worth a damn. It’s dust, lady, all of it, dust
and blood. Don’t believe the dreams they pump you full of, and you
won't get hurt.”

“What dreams?”

“The stories they tell you when you’re young — about the human
spirit. There isn’t any human spirit. Man is just a low-grade animal,
without intellect, without soul, without virtues or moral values. An
animal with only two capacities: to eat and to reproduce.”

His gaunt face, with staring eyes and shrunken features that had
been delicate, still retained a trace of distinction. He looked like the
hulk of an evangelist or a professor of esthetics who had spent years
in contemplation in obscure museums. She wondered what had de-
stroyed him, what error on the way could bring a man to this.

“You go through life looking for beauty, for greatness, for some
sublime achievement,” he said. ‘And what do you find? A lot of
trick machinery for making upholstered cars -or inner-spring mat-
tresses.”

“What’s wrong with inner-spring mattresses?” said a man who
looked like a truck driver. ‘Don’t mind him, lady. He likes to hear
himself talk. He don’t mean no harm.”

“Man's only talent is an ignoble cunning for satisfying the needs
of his body,*’ said the old bum. “No intelligence is required for that.
Don’t believe the stories about man’s mind, his spirit, his ideals, his
sense of unlimited ambition.”

“1 don’t,” said a young boy who sat at the end of the counter. He
wore a coat ripped across one shoulder; his square-shaped mouth
seemed formed by the bitterness of a lifetime.

“Spirit?” said the old bum. “There’s no spirit involved in manufac-
turing or in sex. Yet these are man s only concerns. Matter — that’s
all men know or care about. As witness our great industries — the
only accomplishment of our alleged civilization — built by vulgar ma-
terialists with the aims, the interests and the moral sense of hogs. It
doesn’t take any morality to turn out a ten-ton truck on; an assem-
bly line.”

“What is morality?” she asked.

“Judgment to distinguish right and wrong, vision to $e4 the truth,
courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to
stand by the good at any price. But where docs one tin<I it?”

The young boy made a sound that was half-chuckle, * half-sneer:
“Who is John Galt?”

168

She drank the coffee, concerned with nothing but the pleasure of
feeling as if the hot liquid were reviving the aneries o( her body,

“I can tell you/ 7 said a small, shriveled tramp who wore a cap
pulled low over his eyes. “I know.”

Nobody heard him or paid any attention. The young boy was
watching Dagny with a kind of fierce, purposeless intensity,

•‘You're not afraid,” he said to her suddenly, without explanation,
a flat statement in a brusque, lifeless voice that had a note of wonder.

She looked at him, “No,” she said, 4 Tm not.”

“1 know who is John Gall,” said the tramp. “It’s a secret, but 1
know it.”

“Who?” she asked without interest.

“An explorer,” said the tramp. “The greatest explorer that ever
lived. The man who found the fountain of youth.”

“Give me another cup. Black,” said the old bum. pushing his cup
across the counter.

“John Galt spent years looking for it. He crossed oceans, and he
crossed deserts, and he went down into forgotten mines, miles under
the earth. But he found it on the top ot a mountain. It took him ten
years to climb that mountain. It broke every bone in his body, it
tore the skin oft his hands, it made him lose his home, his name, his
love. But he climbed it. He found the fountain of youth, which he
wanted to bring down to men. Only he never came back.”

“Why didn’t he?” she asked.

“Because he found that it couldn’t be brought down.”

* *

The man who sat in trout of Reurden’s desk had vague features
and a manner devoid of all emphasis, so that one could farm no
specific image of his face nor detect the driving motive of his person.
His only mark of distinction seemed to be a bulbous nose, a bit too
large for the rest of him: his manner was meek, but it conveyed a
preposterous hint, the hint of a threat deliberately kept furtive, yet
intended to be recognized. Reardon could not understand the pur-
pose of his visit. He was Dr. Pottei. who hold some undefined posi-
tion with the Slate Science Institute.

“What do you want?” Rearden asked for the third time.

“It is the social aspect that l am asking you to consider, Mr. Rear-
den,” the man said softly. “1 urge you to take note of the age we're
living in. Our economy is not ready for it.”

“For what?”

“Our economy is in a state of extremely precarious equilibrium,
Wc all have to pool our efforts to save it from collapse.”

“Well, what is it you want me to do?”

“These are the considerations which I was asked to call to your
attention, I am from the State Science Institute, Mr. Rearden/ 7

“You’ve said so before. But what did you wish to see me about?”

“The State Science Institute does not hold a favorable opinion of
Rearden Metal/ 7

“You've said that, too/ 7

“Isn't that a factor which you must take into consideration?"

“No/ 7

169

The light was growing dim in the broad windows of the office.
The days were short. Rearden saw the irregular shadow of the nose
on the man's cheek, and the pale eyes watching him; the glance was
vague, but its direction purposeful.

“The State Science Institute represents the best brains of the coun-
try, Mr. Rearden.’'

“So I’m told."

“Surety you do not want to pit your own judgment against theirs?”

*‘I do.”

The man looked at Rearden as if pleading for help, as if Rearden
had broken an unwritten code svhich demanded that he should have
understood long ago. Rearden offered no help.

“h this all you wanted to know ?” he asked.

“It's only a question of time, Mr. Rearden,” the man said placat-
ingly. “Just a temporary delay. Just to give our economy a chance
to get stabilized. If you’d only wait for a couple of years — ”

Rearden chuckled, gaily, contemptuously. “So that's what you’re
after? Want me to take Rearden Metal off the market? Why?”

“Only for a few years. Mr. Rearden. Only until — ”

“Look,” said Rearden. “Now I'll ask you a question: did your
scientists decide that Rearden Metal is not what I claim it is?”

“We have not committed ourselves as to that.”

“Did they decide it’s no good?”

“It is the social impact of a product that must be considered. Wc
are thinking in terms of the country as a whole, we are concerned
with the public welfare and the terrible crisis of the present moment,
which — ”

“Is Rearden Metal good or not?”

“If we view -the picture from the angle of the alarming growth of
unemployment; which at present — ”

“Is Rearden Metal good?”

“At a lime of desperate steel shortage, we cannot afford to permit
the expansion of a steel company which produces too much, because
it might throw out of business the companies which produce too
little, thus creating an unbalanced economy which — ”

“Are you going to answer my question?”

The man shrugged. “Questions of value are relative. If Rearden
Metal is not good, it's a physical danger to the public. If it is good
it’s a social danger.”

“If you have anything to say to me about the physical danger
of Rearden Metal, say it. Drop the rest of it. Fast. I don't speak
that language.”

“But surely questions of social welfare — ”

“Drop it.”

The man looked bewildered and lost, as if the grounti had been
cut from under his feet. In a moment, he asked helplessly, “But
what, then, is your chief concern?”

“The market.”

“How do you mean?”

“There’s a market for Rearden Metal and l intend fo take full
advantage of it.”

170

“Isn’t the market somewhat hypothetical? The public response to
your metal has not been encouraging. Except for the order from
Taggart Transcontinental, you haven’t obtained any major—”

“Well, then, if you think the public won’t go for it, what are you
worrying about?”

“If the public doesn’t go for it, you will take a heavy loss, *Mr.
Rearden.”

‘That’s my worry, not yours.”

“Whereas, if you adopt a more co-operative attitude and agree to
wait for a few years — ”

“Why should 1 wait?”

“But I believe I have made it dear that the State Science Institute
does not approve of the appearance of Rearden Metal on the metal-
lurgical scene at the present time.”

“Why should 1 give a damn about that?”

The man sighed. “You are a very difficult man, Mr Rearden,”
The sky of the late afternoon was growing heavy, as if thickening
against the glass of the windowpanes. The outlines of the man's
figure seemed to dissolve into a blob among the sharp, straight planes
of the furniture.

“I gave you this appointment,' ” said Rearden, "because you told
me that you wished to discuss something ot extreme importance. If
this is all you had to say, you will please excuse me now. I am
very busy.*’

Hie man settled back in his chair, T believe you have spent ten
years of research on Rearden Metal.” he said. “How* much has it
cost you?”

Rearden glanced up- he could not understand the drift of the ques-
tion, yet there was an undisguised purposefulness in the man’s voice;
the voice had hardened.

“One and a half million dollars,” said Rearden.

“How much w»U you take for it?”

Rearden had to let a moment pass He could not believe it. “For
what?” he asked, his voice low
“For all rights to Rearden Metal “

T think you had better get out ot here,” said Rearden.

“ t here is no call tor such an attitude You are a businessman, 1 am
offering you a business proposition. You may name your own price,”
“Hie rights to Rearden Mital are not tor sale,”

“1 am tn a position to speak ot large sums of money. Govern-
ment money.”

Rearden sat without moving, the muscles of his cheeks pulled tight;
but his glance was indifferent, focused only by the faint pull of mor-
bid curiosity.

“You are a businessman, Mr Rearden. This is a proposition which
you cannot afford to ignore. On the one hand, you are gambling
against great odds, you are bucking an unfavorable public opinion,
you run a good chance of losing every penny you put into Rearden
Metal. On the other hand, we can relieve you of the risk and the
responsibility; at an impressive profit, an immediate profit, much

171

larger than you could hope to realize from the sale of the metal for
the next twenty years/'

“The State Science Institute is a scientific establishment, not a
commercial one,” said Rearden. “What is it that they’re so afraid
of?”

“You are using ugly, unnecessary words, Mr. Rearden. 1 am en-
deavoring to suggest that we keep the discussion on a friendly plane.
The matter is serious.”

”1 am beginning to see that.”

“We are offering you a blank check on what is, as you realize, an
unlimited account. What else can you want? Name your price.”

“The sale of the rights to Rearden Metal is not open to discussion.
If you have anything else to say. please say it and leave.”

The man leaned back, looked at Rearden incredulously and asked,
“What are you after?”

’i? What do you mean?”

“You’re m business to make money, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

"You want to make as big a profit as possible, don't you?”

“I do.”

“Then why do you want to snuggle tor years, squeezing out your
gains in the form of pennies pel ton — rather than accept a fortune
for Rearden Metal? Why?”

“Because it's mine. Do you understand the word ’”

The man sighed and rose to his teet “1 hope you will not have
cause to regret your decision. Mr. Rearden,” he said; the tone of his
voice was suggesting the opposite.

“Good day,” said Rearden.

“I think 1 must tell you that the State Science Institute may issue
an official statement condemning Rearden Metal.”

“That is their privilege.”

“Such a statement would make things more difficult for you.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“As to further consequences . . .” The man shrugged. “ This is not
the day for people who refuse to co-operate. In this age, one needs
friends. You are not a popular man, Mr. Rearden.”

“What are you tiying to say?”

“Surely, you understand.”

“I don’t.”

“Society is a complex structure. There arc so many different issues
awaiting decision, hanging by a thin thread. We can never tell when
one such issue may be decided and what may be the decisive factor
in a delicate balance. Do 1 make mvself clear?”

“No.”

The red flame of poured steel shot through the twilight. Ajp orange
glow, the color of deep gold, hit the wall behind Hoarder's desk.
The glow moved gently across his forehead. His face had atji unmov-
ing serenity.

“The State Science Institute is a government organization* Mr. Re-
arden, There are certain bills pending in the Legislature, which may

172

be passed at any moment, Businessmen are peculiarly vulnerable
these days. I am sure you understand me.”

Rearden rose to his feet. He was smiling. He looked as if all
tension had left him.

“No, Dr. Potter,” he said, “I don’t understand. If I did. I’d have
to kill you.”

The man walked to the door, then stopped and looked at Rearden
in a way which, for once, was simple human curiosity. Rearden stood
motionless against the moving glow on the wall; he stood casually,
his hands in his pockets.

“Would you tell me,” the man asked, “just between us, it’s only
my personal curiosity— why are you doing this?”

Rearden answered quietly, “I’ll tell you. You won’t understand.
You see, it’s because Rearden Metal is good.”

* *

Dagny could not understand Mr, Mowen’s motive. The Amalgam-
ated Switch and Signal Company had suddenly given notice that they
would not complete her order. Nothing had happened, she could
find no cause for it and they would give no explanation.

She had hurried to Connecticut, to see Mr. Mowen in person,
but the sole result of the interview was a heavier, grayer weight of
bewilderment in her mind. Mr. Mowen stated that he would not
continue to make switches of Rearden Metal. For sole explanation,
he said, avoiding her eyes, “Too many people don’t like it.”

“What? Rearden Metal or your making the switches?”

“Both, I guess . . . People don’t like it ... 1 don’t want any
trouble,”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Any kind.”

“Have you heard a single thing against Rearden Metal that’s
true?”

“Aw, who knows what’s true? . . . That resolution of the National
Council of Metal Industries said — ”

“Look, you’ve worked with metals all your life. For the last four
months, you’ve worked with Rearden Metal. Don't you know that
it’s the greatest thing you’ve ever handled?” He did not answer.
“Don’t you know it?” He looked away “Don’t you know what’s
true?”

“Hell. Miss Taggart, I'm in business. I'm only a little guy. 1 just
want to make money.”

“How do you think one makes it?”

But she knew that it was useless. Dxiking at Mr. Mowen s face, at
the eyes which she could not catch, she felt as she had felt once on a
lonely section of track, when a storm blew down the telephone wires
that communications were cut and that words had become sounds
which transmitted nothing.

It was useless to argue, she thought, and to wonder about people
who would neither refute an argument nor accept it. Sitting restlessly
in the train, on her way back to New York, she told herself that Mr.
Mowen did not matter, that nothing mattered now, except finding
somebody else to manufacture the switches. She was wrestling with

173

a list of names in her mind, wondering who would be easiest to
convince, to beg or to bribe.

She knew, the moment she entered the anteroom of her office,
that something had happened. She saw the unnatural stillness, with
the faces of her staff turned to her as if her entrance were the mo-
ment they had all waited for, hoped for and dreaded.

Eddie Willers rose to his feet and started toward the door of her
office, as if knowing that she would understand and follow. She had
seen his face. No matter what it was. she thought, she wished it had
not hurt him quite so badly.

"The State Science Institute/' he said quietly, when they were
alone in her office, M has issued a statement warning people against
the use of Rearden Metal. 1 * He added, “It was on the radio. It’s in
the afternoon papers."

“What did they say?"

"Dagny, they didn't say it! , . . I hey haven’t really said it, yet it’s
there — and it — isn't. Thai’s what’s monstrous about it."

His effort was focused on keeping his voice quiet; he could not
control his words The words were forced out of him by the unbeliev-
ing. bewildered indignation of a child screaming in denial at his first
encounter with evil.

"What did they say, Eddie?"

"They . . . You'd have to read it." He pointed to the newspaper
he had left on her desk. "They haven't said that Rearden Metal is
bad. They haven't said that it’s unsafe. What they’ve done is . . ."
His hands spread and dropped in a gesture of futility.

She saw at a glance what they had done. She saw the sentences;
"It may be possible that after a period of heavy usage, a sudden
fissure may appear, though the length of this period cannot be

predicted The possibility of a molecular reaction, at present

unknown, cannot be entirely discounted. . . . Although the tensile
strength of the metal is obviously demonstrable, certain questions in
regard to its behavior under unusual stress are not to be ruled
out. . . ' Although there is no evidence to support the contention
that the use of the metal should be prohibited, a further study of its
properties would be of value."

"We can’t fight it. It can’t be answered," Eddie was saying dowly.
"Wc can t demand a retraction. We can't show them our tests or
prove anything. They’ve said nothing. They haven't said a thing that
could be refuted and embarrass them professionally. It’s the job of
a coward. You'd expect it from some con-man or blackmailer. Rut,
Dagny! It's the State Science Institute!"

She nodded silently. She stood, her eyes fixed on some point be-
yond the window. At the end of a dark street, the bulbs of an electric
sign kept going on and off, as if winking at her maliciously.

Eddie gathered his strength and said in the tone gif a military
report, "Taggart slock has crashed, lien Nealy quit. fThe National
Brotherhood of Road and Track Workers has forbiddeji its members
to work on the Rio Norte Line. Jim has left town."

She took her hat and coat off, walked across the roobi and slowly,
very deliberately sat down at her desk.

174

She noticed a large brown envelope lying before her; it bore the
letterhead of Rearden Steel.

“That came by special messenger, right after you left/’ said Eddie.
She put her hand on the envelope, but did not open it. She knew
what it was: the drawings of the bridge.

After a while, she asked, “Who issued that statement?'’

Eddie glanced at her and smiled briefly, bitterly, shaking his head.
“No,” he said. “1 thought of that, too. I called the Institute long-
distance and asked them. No, it was issued by the office of Dr. Floyd
Ferris, their co-ordinator.”

She said nothing.

“But still! Dr. Stadler is the head of that Institute. He u the Insti-
tute. He must have known about it. He permitted it. if it’s done, it's
done in his name . . . Dr. ^Robert Stadler ... Do you remember . . .
when we were in college . . . how we used to talk about the great
names in the world . . the men of pure intellect . . . and we always
chose his name as one of them, and—” He stopped. “Fm sorry,
Dngny. I know it's no use saying anything. Only—”

She sat, her hand pressed to the brown envelope.

“Dagny,” he asked, his voice low, “what is happening to people?
Why did that statement succeed? It s such an obvious smear-job, so
obvious and so rotten. You’d think a decent person would throw it tit
the gutter. How could” — his voice was breaking in gentle, desperate,
rebellious anger— “how could they accept it? Didn't they read it?
Didn't they see? Don’t they think? Dagny! What is it in people that
lets them do this — and how can we live with it?”

‘Quiet, Eddie.” she said, “quiet. Don’t be afraid.”

♦ *

The building of the State Science institute stood ovet a river of
New Hampshire, on a lonely hillside, halfway between the river and
the sky. From a distance, it looked like a solitary monument in a
virgin forest. The trees were carefully planted, the roads were laid
out as a park, the roof tops of a small town could be seen in a valley
some miles away. But nothing had been allowed to come too dose
and detract from the building’s austerity.

The white marble of the walls gave it a classical grandeur: the
composition of its rectangular masses gave it the cleanliness and
beauty of a modern plant, It was an inspired structure. From across
the river, people looked at it with reverence and thought of it as a
monument to a living man whose character had the nobility of the
building’s lines. Over the entrance, a dedication was cut into the
marble: “To the fearless mind. To the inviolate truth,” In a quiet
aisle, in a bare corridor, a small brass plate, such as dozens of other
name plates on other doors, said: Dr, Robert Stadler.

At the age of twenty-seven. Dr. Robert Stadler had written a trea-
tise on cosmic rays, which demolished most of the theories held
by the scientists who preceded hint. Those who followed, found his
achievement somewhere at the base of any line of inquiry they un-
dertook. At the age of thirty, he was recognized as the greatest
physicist of his time. At thirty-two, he became head of the Depart-
ment of Physics of the Patrick Henry University, in the days when

175

the great University still deserved its glory. It was of Dr. Robert
Sfadler that a writer had said: ‘Perhaps, among the phenomena of
the universe which he is studying, none is so miraculous as the brain
of Dr. Robert Stadler himself” it was Dr. Robert Stadler who had
once corrected a student: “Free scientific inquiry? The first adjective
is redundant.”

At the age of forty. Dr. Robert Stadler addressed the nation, en-
dorsing the establishment of a State Science Institute. “Set science
free of the rule of the dollar,” he pleaded. The issue had hung in
the balance; an obscure group of scientists had quietly forced a bill
through its long way to the floor of the Legislature; there had been
some public hesitation about the bill, some doubt, an uneasiness no
one could define. The name of Dr. Robert Stadler acted upon the
country like the cosmic rays he studied: it pierced any barrier. The
nation built the white marble edifice as a personal present to one of
its greatest men.

Dr. Stadler’s office at the Institute was a small room that looked
like the office of the bookkeeper of an unsuccessful firm. There was
a cheap desk of ugly yellow oak, a filing cabinet, two chairs, and a
blackboard chalked with mathematical formulas. Sitting on one of
the chairs against a blank wall, Dagny thought that the office had
an air of ostentation and elegance, together: ostentation, because it
seemed intended to suggest that the owner was great enough to
permit himself such a setting; elegance, because he truly needed
nothing else.

She had met Dr. Stadler on a few occasions, at banquets given by
leading businessmen or great engineering societies, in honor of some
solemn cause or another. She had attended the occasions as reluc-
tantly as he did, and had found that he liked to talk to her. “Miss
Taggart,” he had said to her once, “1 never expect to encounter
intelligence. That I should find it here is such an astonishing relief!”
She had come to his office, remembering that sentence. She sat,
watching him in the manner of a scientist: assuming nothing, dis-
carding emotion, seeking only to observe and to understand.

“Miss Taggart.” he said gaily, “I'm curious about you. I’m curious
whenever anything upsets a precedent. As a rule, visitors are a pain-
ful duty to me. I’m frankly astonished that 1 should feel such a simple
pleasure m seeing you here. Do you know what it’s like to feel
suddenly that one can talk without the strain of trying to force some
sort of understanding out of a vacuum?”

He sat on the edge of his desk, his manner gaily informal. He was
not tall, and his slenderness gave him an air of youthful energy,
almost of boyish zest. His thin face was ageless; it was a homely
face, but the great forehead and the large gray eyes held such an
arresting intelligence that one a>uld notice nothing else. There were
wrinkles of humor in the corners of the eyes, and faint dines of
bitterness in the corners of the mouth. He did not look li kb a man
in his early fifties; the slightly graying hair was his only sig|i of age.

“Tell me more about yourself,” be said. “I always meai$t to ask
you what you’re doing in such an unlikely career as heavy! industry
and how you can stand those people.”

176

“1 cannot take too much of your time* Dr, Stabler.” She spoke
with polite, impersonal precision. “And the matter I came to discuss
is extremely important.”

He laughed. “ There's a sign of the businessman —wanting to come
to the point at once. Well* by all means. But don’t worry about my
time -—it’s yours. Now, what was it you said you wanted to discuss?
Oh yes. Rearden Metal. Not exactly one of the subjects on which
I'm best informed, but if there’s anything I can do for you — ” His
hand moved in a gesture of invitation.

“Do you know the statement issued by this Institute in regard to
Rearden Metal?”

He frowned slightly. “Yes, I’ve heard about it.”

“Have you read it?”

“No.”

“It was intended to prevent the use of Rearden Metal.”

“Yes, yes, I gathered that much.”

“Could you tell me why?”

He spread his hands: they were attractive hands— long and bony,
beautiful in their suggestion of nervous energy and strength. “I really
wouldn't know. That is the province of Dr. Ferris. I’m sure he had
his reasons. Would you like to speak to Dr. Ferris?”

“No. Are you familiar wirh the metallurgical nature of Rearden
Metal, Dr. Stadler?”

“Why. yes. a little. But tell me, why are you concerned about it?”

A flicker of astonishment rose and died in her eyes; she answered
without change in the impersonal tone of her voice, “I am building
a branch line with rails of Rearden Metal, which— ”

“Oh, but of course! I did hear something about it You must for-
give me, I don’t read the newspapers as regularly as ! should. It’s
\our railroad that’s building that new branch, isn’t it?”

“'Hie existence of my railroad depends upon the completion of
that branch — and. I think, eventually, the existence of this country
will depend on it as well.”

The wtinkles of amusement deepened about his eyes. “Can you
make such a statement with positive assurance. Miss Taggart? I
couldn’t.”

“In this case?”

“In any case. Nobody can tell what the course of a counity’s future
may be. it is not a matter of calculable trends, but a chaos subject
to the rule of the moment, in which anything is possible.”

“Do you think that production is necessary to the existence of a
country, Dr. Stadler?”

“Why, yes, yes, of course.”

“T he building of our branch line has been stopped by the state-
ment of this Institute.”

He did not smile and he did not answer.

“Does that statement represent your conclusion about the nature
of Rearden Metal?” she asked,

“1 have said that 1 have not read it.” There was an edge of sharp-
ness in his voice.

She opened her bag, took out a newspaper dipping and extended

177

it to him. “Would you read it and tell me whether this is a language
which science may properly speak?”

He glanced through the clipping, smiled contemptuously and
tossed it aside with a gesture of distaste. “Disgusting, isn’t it?” he
said, “But what can you do when you deal with people?”

She looked at him, not understanding. “You do not approve of
that statement?”

He shrugged. “My approval or disapproval would be irrelevant.”

“Have you formed a conclusion of your own about Rearden
Metal?”

“Well, metallurgy is not exactly —what shall we say? — my
specialty.”

“Have you examined any data on Rearden Metal?”

“Miss Taggart, 1 don’t see the point of your questions.” His voice
sounded faintly impatient.

“1 would like to know your personal verdict on Rearden Metal."

“For what purpose?”

“So that I may give it to the press."

He got up, “That is quite impossible.”

She said, her voice strained with the effort of trying to force under-
standing, “I will submit to you all the information necessary to form
a conclusive judgment.”

“1 cannot issue any public statements about it.”

“Why not?”

“'lire situation is much too complex to explain m a casual
discussion.”

“But if you should find that Rearden Metal is, in fact, an extremely
valuable product which—”

“That is beside the point.”

"The value of Rearden Metal is beside the point?”

“There are other issues involved, besides questions ol iact.”

She asked, not quite believing that she had heard him right, "What
other issues ts science concerned with, besides questions of fact?”

The bitter lines of his mouth sharpened into the suggestion of a
smite. “Miss Taggart, you do not understand the problems of .scientists.”

She said slowly, as if she were seeing it suddenly in time with her
words, “l believe that you do know what Rearden Metal really is ”

He shrugged. "Yes, l know. From such information as I've seen,
it appears to be a remarkable thing. Quite a brilliant achievement—
as far as technology is concerned.” He was pacing impatiently across
the office. “In fact, I should like, some day, to order a special labora-
tory motor that would stand just such high temperatures as Rearden
Metal can take. It would be very valuable in connection witb certain
phenomena 1 should like to observe. I have found that whenl particles
are accelerated to a speed approaching the speed of light, *ihcy — ”

“Dr, Stadler,” she asked slowly, “you know the truth, yet vou will
not state it publicly?”

“Miss Taggart, you are using an abstract term, when we fare deal-
ing with a matter of practical reality.”

“Wc are dealing with a matter of science ”

178

“Science? Aren’t you confusing the standards involved? it is only
in the realm of pure science that truth is an absolute criterion. When
wc deal with applied science, with technology — we deal with people.
And when we deal with people, considerations other than truth enter
the question.”

“What considerations?”

“1 am not a technologist Miss Taggart. I have no talent or taste
for dealing with people. I cannot become involved in so-called practi-
cal matters.”

“That statement was issued in your name.”

“I had nothing to do with it!”

“The name of this Institute is your responsibility.”

“That’s a perfectly unwarranted assumption.”

"People think that the honor of your name is the guarantee behind
any action of this Institute.”

“I can’t help what people think — if they think at all!”

“They accepted your statement It was a lie.”

“How can one deal in truth when one deals with the public?”

"I don’t understand you.” she said very quietly.

“Questions of truth do not enter into social issues No principles
have ever had any effect on society.”

“What, then, directs men’s actions?”

He shrugged. “The expediency of the moment.”

“Dr. Sladler,” she said, “1 think l must tell you the meaning and
the consequences o! the fact that the construction ot my branch line
is being stopped. 1 am stopped, in the name ot public safety, because
1 am using the best rail ever produced. In six months, if l do not
complete that line, the best industrial section ot the country will be
left without transportation It will be destroyed, because it was the
best and there were men who thought a expedient to seize a share
of its wealth.”

“Well, that may be vicious, unjust, calamitous — but such is life in
society. Somebody is always sacrificed, as a rule unjustly; there is no
other wav to live among men. What can any one person do?”

“You can state the truth about Reardon Metal.”

He did not answer.

“1 could beg you to do it in order to save me. 1 could beg you to
do it in order to avert a national disaster. But 1 won’t These may
not be valid reasons. There is only one reason: you must say it,
because it is true.”

”1 was not consulted about that statement!” The cry broke out
involuntarily. T wouldn’t have allowed it! I don't like it any better
than you do! But l can’t issue a public denial!”

“You were not consulted? Then shouldn’t you want to find out
the reasons behind that statement?”

“I can’t destroy the Institute now!”

“Shouldn’t you want to find out the reasons?”

“1 know the reasons! They won’t tell me, but I know. And l can’t
say that I blame them, either.”

“Would you tell me?”

“t’H tell you, if you wish, IPs the truth that you want, isn’t it? Dr.

170

Ferris cannot help it, if the morons who vote the funds for this
Institute insist on what they call results. They are incapable of con-
ceiving of such a thing as abstract science. They can judge it only in
terms of the latest gadget it has produced for them. I do not know
how Dr. Ferris has managed to keep this Institute in existence, I can
only marvel at his practical ability. I don’t believe he ever was a
first-rate scientist — but what a priceless valet of science! I know that
he has been facing a grave problem lately. He’s kept me out of it,
he spares me all that, but I do hear rumors. People have been criticiz-
ing the Institute, because, they say, we have not produced enough.
The public has been demanding economy. In times like these, when
their fat little comforts are threatened, you may be sure that science
is the first thing men will sacrifice. This is the only establishment
left. There are practically no private research foundations any longer.
Look at the greedy ruffians who run our industries. You cannot
expect them to support science.”

“Who is supporting you now?" she asked, her voice low.

He shrugged. “Society."

She said, with effort, “You were going to tell me the reasons
behind that statement."

“I wouldn’t think you’d find them hard to deduce. If you consider
that for thirteen years this Institute has had a department of metal-
lurgical research, which has cost over twenty million dollars and has
produced nothing but a new' silver polish and a new anti -corrosive
preparation, which, I believe, is not so good as the old ones- you
can imagine what the public reaction will be if some private individ-
ual comes out with a product that revolutionizes the entire science
of metallurgy and proves to be sensationally successful!"

Her head dropped. She said nothing.

“I don’t blame our metallurgical department!" he said angrily “I
know that results of this kind are not a matter of any predictable
time. But the public won’t understand it. What, then, should we
sacrifice? An excellent piece of smelting — or the last center of sci
ence left on earth, and the whole future of human knowledge 7 That
is the alternative.”

She sat, her head down. Alter a while, she said, “All right, Dr
Stadler. I won’t argue.”

He saw her groping for her bag, as if she were trying to remember
the automatic motions necessary to get up.

“Miss Taggart,” he said quietly. It was almost a plea. She looked
up. Her face was composed and empty.

He came closer; he leaned with one hand against the wall above
her head, almost as if he wished to hold her in the circle of his arm.
“Miss Taggart,” he said, a lone of gentle, bitter persuasiveness in
his voice, “I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way
to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot
be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerlejjjs against
them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to a&omplish
anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or
force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their
support for any endeavor of the intellect* for any goal of the spirit.

180

.They are nothing but vicious animals. They are greedy* self-indulgent*
predatory dollar-chasers who—”

“lam one of the dollar-chasers, Dr. Stadlcr " she said* her voice
low.

“You arc an unusual* brilliant child who has not seen enough of
life to grasp the full measure of human stupidity. I’ve fought it all
my life. I’m very tired. . . The sincerity of his voice was genuine.
He walked slowly away from her. “There was a time when I looked
at the tragic mess they’ve made of this earth, and I wanted to cry
out, to beg them to listen— l could teach them to live so much better
than they did — but there was nobody to hear me. they had nothing
to hear me with. . . , Intelligence? It is such a rare, precarious spark
that flashes for a moment somewhere among men, and vanishes. One
cannot tell its nature, or its future ... or its death. . .

She made a movement to rise.

“Don’t go, Miss Taggart. I'd like you to understand.”

She raised her face to him, in obedient indifference. Her face was
not pale, but its planes stood out with strangely naked precision, as
if its skin had lost the shadings of color.

“You’re young," he said. “At your age, I had the same faith in
the unlimited power of reason. The same brilliant vision of man as
a rational being. 1 have seen so much, since I have been disillusioned
so often. ...Id like to tell you just one story."

He stood at the window of his office. It had grown dark outside.
The darkness seemed to rise from the black cut ot the river, far
below. A few lights trembled in the water, from among the hills of
the other shore. The sky was still the inten<e blue of evening. A
lonely star, low over the earth, seemed unnaturally large and rpade
the sky look darker.

“When 1 was at the Patrick Henry University,” he said, “1 had
three pupils. I have had many bright students in the past, but these
three were the kind of reward a teacher prays for. If ever you could
wish to receive the gift of the human mind at its best, young and
delivered into your hands for guidance, they were this gift. Theirs
was the kind of intelligence one expects to see. in the future, chang-
ing the course of the world. They came from very different back-
grounds. but they were inseparable friends. They made a strange
choice of studies. They majored in two subjects — mine and Hugh
Akston ’s, Physics and philosophy. It is not a combination of interests
one encounters nowadays. Hugh Akston was a distinguished man. a
great mind . . . unlike the incredible creature whom that University
has now put in his place. . . . Akston and I were a little jealous of
each other over these three students. It was a kind of contest be-
tween us, a friendly contest, because we understood each other. I
heard Akston saying one day that he regarded them as his sons. I
resented it a little . . . because l thought of them as mine. . .

He turned and looked at her. The bitter lines of age were visible
now, cutting across his cheeks. He said, “When I endorsed the estab-
lishment of this Institute, one of these three damned me. I have not
seen him since. It used to disturb me, in the first few years. I won*

181

dterei 1 once in a while, whether he had been right. ... It has ceased
to disturb me. long ago.’*

He smiled. There was nothing but bitterness now, in his smile and
his face,

"These three men, these three who held ail the hope which the
gift of intelligence ever proffered, these three from whom we ex-
pected such a magnificent future — one of them was Francisco d’An-
conia, who became a depraved playboy. Another was Ragnar
Danneskjdld. who became a plain bandit. So much for the promise
of the human mind.”

"Who was the third one?” she asked.

He shrugged. “The third one did not achieve even that sort of
notorious distinction. He vanished without a trace- -into the great
unknown of mediocrity. He is probably a second assistant book-
keeper somewhere ”

4 4

“ft’s a he! I didn’t run away!” cried James Taggart. “I came here
because 1 happened to he sick. Ask Dr. Wilson, it's a term of flu.
He’ll prove it. And how did you know that I was here?”

Dagny sti>od in the middle of the room, there were melting snow-
flakes on her coat collar, on the brim of her hat. She glanced around,
feeling an emotion that would have been sadness, had she had time
to acknowledge it

It was a room in the house of the old Taggart estate on the Hud-
son. Jim had inherited the place, but he seldom came here. In their
childhood, this had been their father's study. Now it had the desolate
air of a room which is used, yet uninhabited. There were slipcovers
on all but two chairs, a cold fireplace and the dismal warmth of an
electric heater with a cord twisting across the floor, a desk, its glass
surface empty

Jim lay on the couch, with a towel wrapped for a sea if around his
neck. She saw a Male, filled ashtray on a chair Inside him. a bottle of
whisky, a wilted paper cup. and two-day-old newspapers scattered about
the floor. A portrait of their grandfather hung over the fiteplace, full
figure, with a railroad bridge in the fading background.

“I have no time for arguments. Jim.”

“It was your idea! I hope you’ll admit to the Board that it was your
idea. That's what your goddamn Rearden Metal has done to us* If
wc had waited for Orren Boyle . . His unshaved face was pulled
by a twisted scramble of emotions; panic, hatred, a touch of triumph,
the relief of screaming at a victim —and the faint, cautious, begging
look that sees a hope of help.

He had stopped tentatively, but she did not answer. She stood
watching him, her hands in the pockets of her coat.

"There’s nothing we can do now?” he moaned. "I tried to call
Washington, to get them to seize the Phoenix* Du ran|o and turn it
over to us, on the ground of emergency', but they wonTt even discuss
it! Too many people objecting, they say, afraid of some fool prece-
dent or another! ... I got the National Alliance of Railroads to
suspend the deadline and permit Dan Conway to operate his road
for another year— that would have given us time— bijt he’s refused

182

to do it 1 1 tried 10 get Ellis Wyatt and his bunch of friends in Colo*
rack) to demand that Washington order Conway to continue opera-
tions — but all of them, Wyatt and all the rest of those bastards,
refused! It's their skin, worse than ours, they’re sure to go down the
drain — but they’ve refused!”

She smiled briefly, but made no comment

“Now there’s nothing left for us to do! We’re caught. We can’t
give up that branch and we can’t complete it. We can’t stop or go
on, We have no money. Nobody will touch us with a ten-foot pole!
What have we got left without the Rio Norte Line? But we can’t
finish it. We’d be boycotted. We’d be blacklisted. That union of track
workers would sue us. They would, there's a law about it. We can’t
complete that Line! Christ! What are we going to do?”

She waited. “Through, Jim?” she asked coldly, if you are, lil
tell you what we re going to do.”

He kept silent, looking up at her from under his heavy eyelids.

“This is not a proposal, Jim. It’s an ultimatum. Just listen and
accept, f am going to complete the construction of the Rio Norte
Line. 1 personally, not Taggart Transcontinental. 1 will take a leave
of absence from the job of Vice-President. 1 will form a company in
my own name. Your Board will turn the Rio Norte Line over to me.

1 will act as my own contractor. 1 will get my own financing. I will
take full charge and sole responsibility. 1 will complete the Line on
lime. After you have seen how the Rearden Metal rails can take it,
I will transfer the Line back to Taggart Transcontinental and I'll
return to my job. That is all.”

He was looking at her silently, dangling a bedroom slipper on the
tip of his foot. She had never supposed that hope could look ugly
in a man's lace, but it did; it was mixed with cunning. She turned
her eyes away from him, wondering how it was possible that a man's
first thought in such a moment could be a search for something to
put over on her.

Then, preposterously, the first thing he said, his voice anxious,
was, “But who will run Taggart Transcontinental in the meantime?”

She chuckled; the sound astonished her. it seemed old in its bitter-
ness. She said, “Bddie Wilier s.”

“Oh no 1 He couldn’t!”

She laughed, m the same brusque, mirthless way. “1 thought you
were smarter than i about things of this kind. Eddie will assume the
title ot Acting Vice-President. He will occupy my office and sit at my
desk. But who do you suppose will run Taggart Transcontinental?”

“But 1 don't see how — ”

“l will commute by plane between Eddie’s office and Colorado,
Also, there arc long-distance phones available. I will do just what l
have been doing. Nothing will change, except the kind of show you
will put on for your friends . . . and the fact that it will be a little
harder for me.”

“What show?”

“You understand me, Jim* I have no idea what sort of games
you’re tangled in, you and your Board of Directors, l don’t know
how many ends you’re all playing against the middle and against one

183

another, or how many pretenses you have to keep up in how many
opposite directions, I don't know or care, You can all hide behind
me. If you're all afraid, because you've made deals with friends
who 1 re threatened by Rearden Metal — well, here's your chance to
go through the motions of assuring them that you're not involved,
that you're not doing this — I am. You can help them to curse me
and denounce me. You can all stay home, take no risks and make
no enemies. Just keep out of my way.”

''Weil . . he said slowly, "of course, the problems involved in
the policy of a great railroad system are complex . . . while a small,
independent company, in the name of one person, could afford to — ”

"Yes, Jim, yes, I know all that. The moment you announce that
you're turning the Rio Norte Line over to me, the Taggart stock will
rise. The bedbugs will stop crawling from out of unlikely corners,
since they won’t have the incentive of a big company to bite. Before
they decide what to do about me, 1 will have the Line finished. And
as for me, I don't want to have you and your Board to account to,
to argue with, to beg permissions from. There isn't any time for that,
if I am to do the kind of job that has to be done. So I’m going to
do it alone."

"And . . if you fail?"

"If i fail. I’ll go down alone. 1 '

"You understand that in such case Taggart Transcontinental will
not be able to help you in any way?"

"I understand."

"You will not count on us?"

"No.”

"You will cut all official connection with us, so that your activities
will not reflect upon our reputation?”

"Yes.

‘i think we should agree that in case of failure or public scandal . .
your leave of absence will become permanent . . . that is, you will
not expect to return to the post of Vice-President."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "All right. Jim. In such case,
I will not return."

"Before we transfer the Rio Norte Line to you, we must have a
written agreement that you will transfer it back to us, along with
your controlling interest at cost, in case the Line becomes successful.
Otherwise you might try' to squeeze us for a windfall profit, since
we need that Line."

There was only a brief stab of shock in her eyes, then she said
indifferently, the words sounding as if she were tossing alms, "By all
means, Jim. Have that slated in writing.’’

"Now as to vour temporary successor ..."

"Yes?"

"You don’t really want it to be Eddie Wiilers, do you?’

"Yes. I do."

"But he couldn’t even act tike a vice-president! He doesn't have
the presence, the manner, the—”

"He knows his work and mine. He knows what 1 want. 1 trust
him, PH be able to work with him.”

184

‘‘Don’t you think it would be better to pick one of our more
distinguished young men, somebody from a good family, with more
social poise and — ”

“It's going to be Eddie Willers* Jim.”

He sighed. “AH right. Only . . . only we must be careful about
it. . . , We don't want people to suspect that it’s you who’re still
running Taggart Transcontinental. Wobody must know it.”

“Everybody will know it, Jim. But since nobody will admit it
openly, everybody will be satisfied.”

“But we must preserve appearances.”

“Oh, certainly! You don't have to recognize me on the street, if
you don’t want to. You can say you've never seen me before and
I’ll say I’ve never heard of Taggart Transcontinental.”

He remained silent, trying to think, staring down at the floor.

She turned to look at the grounds beyond the window. The sky
had the even, gray-white pallor ot winter. Far below, on the shore
of the Hudson, she saw the road she used to watch for F'rancisco’s
car — she saw the cliff over the river, where they climbed to look for
the towers of New York — and somewhere beyond the woods were
the trails that led to Rockdale Station. ITie earth was snow-covered
now, and what remained was like the skeleton of the countryside
she remembeied — a thin design of bare branches rising from the
snow to the sky. It was gray and while, like a photograph, a dead
photograph which one keeps hopefully for remembrance, but which
has no power to bring back anything.

“What are you going to call it?”

She turned, startled, “What‘S'

“What arc you going to call your company?”

“Oh . Why, the Dagny Taggart Line. 1 guess'*

“But . . Do you think that's wise? It*might be misunderstood.
The Idggart might be taken as -”

“Well, what do you want me to call it?” she snapped, worn down
to anger. “The Miss Nobody 4> The Madam X? Ihe John Galt?” She
slopped. She smiled suddenly, a cold, bright, dangerous smile.
That's what I'm going to call it: the John Galt Line.”

“Good God, no!”

“Yes.”

“But it's . . . it's just a cheap piece of slang!”

“Yes.”

“You can’t make a joke out ol such a serious project! . . . You
can’t be so vulgar and . . . and undignified!”

“Can't I?”

“But for God's sake, why? ’

“Because it’s going to shock all the rest of them just as it
shocked you.”

“Eve never seen you playing for effects,”

“l am, this time.”

“But . . .” His voice dropped to an almost superstitious sound:
“Look, Dagny, you know, it's . . . it's bad hick . . . What it stands
for is . . He stopped.

“What does it stand for?”

185

“1 don't know . . . but the way people use it. they always seem to
say it out of — ”

“Fear? Despair? Futility? 1 ’

“Yes . . . yes, that’s what it is."

“That’s what I want to throw in their faces!”

lire bright, sparkling anger in her eyes, her first look of enjoyment,
made him understand that he had to keep still.

“Draw up all the papers and all the red tape in the name of the
John Galt Line,” she said.

He sighed. “Well, it’s your Line.”

“You bet it is!”

He glanced at her. astonished. She had dropped the manners and
style of a vice-president; she seemed to be relaxing happily to the
level of yard crews and construction gangs.

“As to the papers and the legal side of it,” he said, “there might
be some difficulties. We would have to apply for the permission
of—”

She whirled to face him. Something of the bright, violent look still
remained in her face. But it was not gay and she was not smiling.
The look now had an odd. primitive quality. When he saw it, he
hoped he would never have to see it again.

“Listen, Jim,” she said: he had never heard that tone in any human
voice. “There is one thing you can do as your part of the deal and
you’d better do it: keep your Washington boys off. See to it that
they give me all the permissions, authorizations, charters and other
waste paper that their laws require. Don’t let them try to stop me
If they try . . . Jim, people say that our ancestor, Nat Taggart, killed
a politician who tried to refuse him a permission he should never
have had to ask. 1 don’t know whether Nat Taggart did it or not.
But HI tell you this: 1 know how he felt, if he did. If he didn’t — l
might do the job for him, to complete the family legend. I mean
it, Jim.”

* *

FraneiscoMAneonia sat in front of her desk. His face was blank.
It had remained blank while Dagny explained to him. in the dear,
impersonal tone of a business interview, the formation and purpose
of her own railroad company. He had listened He had not pro-
nounced a word.

She had never seen his face wear that look of drained passivity
There was no mockery, no amusement, no antagonism, it was as if
he did not belong in these particular moments of existence and could
not be reached. Yet his eyes looked at her attentively; they seemed
to see more than she could suspect; they made her think of one -way
glass; they let all light rays in, but none out.

“Francisco, I asked you to come here, because I wanted you to
see me in my office. You’ve never seen it. It would ha^e meant
something to you, once.”

His eyes moved slowly to look at the office. Its walls vfrere bare,
except for three things: a map of Taggart Transcont»nental4-the orig-
inal drawing of Nat Taggart, that had served as model for his
statue — and a large railroad calendar, in cheerful crude colors, the

186

kind that was distributed each year, with a change of its picture, to
every station along the Taggart track, the kind that had hung once
in her first work place at Rockdale.

He got up. He said quietly, “Dagny, for your sake, and” — it was
a barely perceptible hesitation — “and in the name of any pity you
might feel for me, don’t request what you’re going to request. Don't.
Let me go now.”

T his was not like him and like nothing she could ever have ex-
pected to hear from him. After a moment, she asked. “Why?”

“1 can’t answer you l can’t answer any questions. That is one of
the reasons why it's best not to discuss it.”

“You know what I am going to request?”

“Yes. ” The way she looked at him was such an eloquent, desperate
question, that he had to add. “I know that I am going to refuse,”

“Why?”

He smiled mirthlessly, spreading his hands out, as il to show her
that this was what he had predicted and had wanted to avoid.

She said quietly, “1 have to try, Francisco, I have to make the
request. That's my part What you’ll do about it is yours. But I’ll
know that I've tued everything.”

He remained standing, but he inclined his head a little, in assent,
and said, “1 will listen, if that will help you.”

“1 need fifteen million dollars to complete the Rio Norte Line. I
have obtained seven million against the laggart stock 1 own free
and clear. 1 can raise nothing else. I will issue bonds m the name of
mv new company, in the amount of eight million dollars. I called
you here to ask you to buy these bonds ”

He did not answer.

"1 am simply a beggar. Francisco, and 1 am begging you for money,

1 had always thought that one did not beg in business. I thought that
one stood on the merit of what one had to offer, and gave value for
value. This is not so any more, though I don't understand how we
can act on any other rule and continue to exist. Judging by every
objective tact, the Rio Norte Line is to be the best raitvoad in the
country. Judging by every known standard, it is the best investment
possible. And that is what damns me. I cannot raise money by offer-
ing people a giHKl business ventuto: the fact that it's good, makes
people reject it. 'there is no bank that would buy the bonds of my
company. So 1 can’t plead merit. I can only plead ”

Her voice was pronouncing the words with impersonal precision.
She stopped, wailing for his answer. He remained silent.

“I know that l have nothing to olter you,” she said. “1 can't speak
to you in terms of investment. You don't care to make money. Indus-
trial projects have ceased to concern you long ago. So l won’t pre-
tend that it’s a fair exchange It's just begging.*’ She drew her breath
and said, “Give me that money as alms, because it means nothing
to you.”

“Don't ” he said, his voice low. She could not tell whether the
strange sound of it was pam or anger, his eyes were lowered.

After a moment, she said, *i called you, not because 1 thought
you would agree, but because you were the only one who could

187

understand what I am saying. So 1 had to try it.” Her voice was
dropping lower, as if she hoped it would make emotion harder to
detect “You see, I can’t believe that you’re really gone . . . because
l know that you’re still able to hear me. The way you live is de-
praved. But the way you act is not. Even the way you speak of it,
is not. ... I had to try . . . But l can’t struggle to understand you
any longer/’

“I’ll give you a hint. Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you
think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You
will find that one of them is wrong.”

“Francisco,” she whispered, “why don’t you tell me what it was
that happened to you?”

“Because, at this moment, the answer would hurt you more than
the doubt.”

“Is it as terrible as that ?”

“It is an answer which you must reach by yourself.”

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to offer you. 1 don’t
know what is of value to you any longer. Don’t you see that even a
beggar has to give value in return, has to offer some reason why
you might want to help him’> . . . Well, I thought ... at one time,
it meant a great deal to you— success. Industrial success. Remember
how we used to talk about it? You were very severe You expected
a lot from me. You told me I’d better live up to it. I have. You
wondered how far I’d rise with Taggart Transcontinental.” She
moved her hand, pointing at the office. “ Ibis is how far I’ve risen. . . .
So I thought ... if the memory of what had been your values still
has some meaning for you, if only as amusement, or a moment’s
sadness, or just like . . . like putting flowers on a grave . . . you
might want to give me the money . . . in the name of that.”

“No.”

She said, with effort, “That money would mean nothing to you —
you’ve wasted that much on senseless parties — you’ve wasted much
more on the San Sebastian Mines—”

He glanced up. He looked straight at her and she saw the first
spark of a living response in his eyes, a look that was bright, pitiless
and, incredibly, proud: as if this were an accusation that gave him
strength.

“Oh, yes,” she said slowly, as if answering his thought, “I realize
that. I’ve damned you for those mines, I’ve denounced you. I’ve
thrown my contempt at you in every way possible, and now l come
back to you — for money. Like Jim, tike any moocher you’ve ever
met. I know it's a triumph for you, I know that you can laugh at me
and despise me with full justice. Well-— perhaps I can offer you that.
If it’s amusement that you want, it you enjoyed seeing Jir^i and the
Mexican planners crawl — wouldn’t it amuse you to bheak me?
Wouldn’t it give you pleasure? Don't you want to hear metacknowl-
edge that I’m beaten by you? Don’t you want to see mci crawling
before you? Tell me what form of it you’d like and I’ll sujbmit/’

He moved so swiftly that she could not notice how he parted: it
only seemed to her that his first movement was a shudder,’ He came
around the desk, he took her hand and raised it to his lipsi It began

188

as a gesture of the gTavest respect, as if its purpose were to give her
strength; but as he held his lips, then his face, pressed to her hand,
she knew that he was seeking strength from it himself.

He dropped her hand, he looked down at her face, at the fright*
ened stillness of her eyes, he smiled, not trying to hide that his smile
held suffering, anger and tenderness.

“Dagny, you want to crawl? You don’t know what the word means
and never will. One doesn’t crawl by acknowledging it as honestly
as that. Don’t you suppose 1 know that your begging me was the
bravest thing you could do? But . . . Don’t ask me, Dagny."

“In the name of anything I ever meant to you . she whispered,
“anything left within you . .

In the moment when she thought that she had seen this look
before, that this was the way he had looked against the night glow
of the city, when he lay in bed by her side for the last time— she
heard his cry, the kind of cry she had never torn from him before:

“My love, I can’t!'’

Ihen, as they looked at each other, both shocked into silence by
astonishment, she saw the change in his face. It was as crudely abrupt
as if he had thrown a switch. He laughed, he moved away from her
and said, his voice jarringly offensive by being completely casual:

“Please excuse the mixture in styles of expression. I've been sup*
posed to say that to so many women, but on somewhat different
occasions."

Her head dropped, she sat huddled tight together, not caring that
he saw it.

When she raised her head, she looked at him indifferently. “AH
right, Francisco It was a good act. I did believe it. If that was your
own way of having the kind of fun 1 was offering you. you succeeded.
1 won't ask you for anything."

“I warned you."

“I didn't know which side you belonged on. It didn't seem possi-
ble —but it’s the side ot Orren Boyle and Bertram Scudder and your
old teacher."

“My old teacher?" he asked sharply.

“Dr. Robert Stadler.”

He chuckled, relieved. “Oh, that one? He's the looter who thinks
that his end justifies his seizure of my means," He added, “You
know, Dagny, I’d like you to remember which side you said I’m on.
Some day, HI remind you of i* and ask you whether you’ll want to
repeat it."

“You won’t have to remind me."

He turned to go. He tossed his hand in a casual salute and said,
“If it could be built. I’d wish good luck to the Rio Noite Line."

“It’s going to be built. And it's going to be called the John Galt
Line."

"Whut?r

It was an actual scream; she chuckled derisively, “The John Galt
l ine."

“Dagny, in heaven’s name, why?"

“Don’t you like it?"

189

“How did you happen to choose that?”

“It sounds better than Mr. Nemo or Mr. Zero, doesn’t it?”

“Dagny, why that?”

“Because it frightens you,”

“What do you think it stands for?”

“The impossible. The unattainable. And you're all afraid of my
Line just as you’re afraid of that name.”

He started laughing- He laughed, not looking at her, and she felt
strangely certain that he had forgotten her. that he was far away,
that he was laughing— in furious gaiety and bitterness — at something
in which she had no part.

When he turned to her, he said earnestly, “Dagny, I wouldn’t, if
I were you.”

She shrugged. ‘Jim didn't like it. either.”

“What do you like about it?”

“I hate it! I hate the doom you’re all waiting for. the giving up,
and that senseless question that always sounds like a cry for help.
I’m sick of hearing pleas for John Galt. I’m going to light him.”

He said quietly, “You are ”

“I'm going to build a railroad tine for hnn. Let him come and
claim it!”

He smiled sadly and nodded- “He will.”

* A

The glow ot poured steel streamed across the ceiling and hiokc
against one wait. Rearden sat at his desk, in the light of a single
lamp. Beyond its circle, the darkness ot the ottice blended with the
darkness outside. He felt as it it were empty space where the rays
of the furnaces moved at will, as it the desk were a ratt hanging m
midair, holding two persons imprisoned in privacy. Dagny sat in Ironl
of his desk.

She had thrown her coal off, and she sat outlined against it. a
slim, tense body in a gray suit, leaning diagonally across the wide
armchair. Only her hand lay in the light, on the edge of the desk;
beyond it. 'he saw the pale suggestion of her face, the white of a
blouse, the triangle of an open collar.

“AH right. Hank,” she said, “we’re going ahead with a new Rear-
den Metal bridge. Thts is the official order of the official owner of
the John Galt Line.”

He smiled, looking down at the drawings of the bridge spread in
the light on his desk. “Have you had a chance to examine the scheme
we submitted?”

“Yes. You don’t need my comments or compliments. The order
says it.”

“Very well. Thank you. I'll start rolling the Metal.”

“Don’t you want to ask whether the John Galt Line is ill a position
to place orders or to function?”

“I don’t need to. Your coming here says it.”

She smiled. “True. It’s all set. Hank, I came to tell ycju that and
to discuss the details of the bridge in person.”

“All right, l am curious; who are the bondholders df the John
Galt Line?”

190

*i don't think any of them could afford it. All of them have grow-
ing enterprises. All of them needed their money for their own con-
cerns. But they needed the Line and they did not ask anyone for
help/’ She took a paper out of her bag. ‘‘Here's John Galt, Inc.,"
she said, handing it across the desk.

He knew most of the names on the list: “Llhs Wyatt, Wyatt Oil,
Colorado. Ted Nielsen, Nielsen Motors, Colorado. Lawrence Ham-
mond, Hammond Cars, Colorado. Andrew Stockton, Stockton
Foundry, Colorado." There were a few from other states; he noticed
the name: “Kenneth Danagger, Danagger Coal, Pennsylvania." The
amounts of their subscriptions varied, from sums in five figures to six.

He reached for his fountain pen, wrote at the bottom of the list
“Henry Reardon, Rearden Steel, Pennsylvania ---$L000,(XX)" and
tossed the list back at her.

“Hank," she said quietly, *1 didn’t want you in on this. You've
invested so much m Rearden Metal that it’s worse for you than for
any of us. You can’t aftord another risk."

“1 never accept favors," he answered coldly.

“What do you mean?"

“I don’t ask people to lake greater chances on my ventures than
1 take myself. If it’s a gamble. I'll match anybody’s gambling. Didn't
you say that that track was my first showcase?"

She inclined her head and said gravely. “All right. Thank you."

“Incidentally. 1 don't expect to lose this money. I am aware of the
conditions under which these bonds can be converted into stock at
my option. 1 therefore expect to make an inordinate protit — and
you’re going to earn it tor me."

She laughed. “God, Hank. I've spoken to so many yellow fools
that they've almost infected me into thinking of the Line as of a
hopeless loss! Thanks for reminding me. Yes. 1 think 111 earn your
inordinate profit for you."

“If it weren’t for the yellow fools, there wouldn't be any risk in
it at all. But we have to beat them. We will." He reached for two
telegrams from among the papers on his desk “There are still a tew
men m existence." He extended the telegrams *i think you’d like
to see these."

One of them read: “1 had intended to undertake it in two years,
but the statement of the State Science Institute compels me to pro-
ceed at onee. Consider this a commitment for the construction of a
12-inch pipe line of Rearden Metal. bOO miles, Colorado to Kansas
City. Details follow, Ellis Wyatt."

Ihc other read: “Re our discussion of my order Go ahead. Ken
Danaggci."

He added, in explanation, “He wasn’t prepared to proceed at once,
either. It’s eight thousand tons of Rearden Metal. Structural metal.
For coal mines."

they glanced at each other and smiled. They needed no further
comment*

He glanced down, as she handed the telegrams back to him. The
skin of her hand looked transparent in the light, on the edge of

191

his desk, a young girl's hand with long, thin fingers, relaxed for a
moment, defenseless.

“The Stockton Foundry 1 in Colorado.” she said, “is going to finish
that order for me- -the one that the Amalgamated Switch and Signal
Company ran out on. l'hey're going to get in touch with you about
the Metal/ 1

“They ha\e already. What have you done about the const! uetton
crews?”

“Nealy's engineers are staving on, the best ones, those l need.
And most ot the foremen, loo. It won't be too hard to keep them
going, Nealy wasn't of much use. anyway.”

“What about labor?”

“More applicants than l can hire, I don't think the union is going
to interfere. Most ot the applicants are giving phony names. They’re
union members. They need the work desperately. I'll have a few
guards on the lane; but 1 don't expect anv trouble ”

“What about your brother Jim’s Board of Directors? ”

They're all scrambling to get statements into the newspapers to
the effect that they have no connection whatever with the John tialt
Lane, and how reprehensible an undertaking they think it is. Hiey
agreed to everything I asked/’

The fine of her shoulders looked taut, yet thrown back easily, as
if poised for flight, tension seemed natural to her , not a sign of
anxiety, but a sign of enjoyment; the tension of her whole body,
under the gray suit, half-visible in the darkness.

“Eddie W filers has taken over the office of Operating Vice-Presi-
dent.” she said, “it you need anything, get in touch with him I'm
leaving for Colorado tonight.”

“Tonight? 1 /

“Yes. We have to make up time. We've lost a week.”

“Flying your own plane*”

“Yes. Ill be back m about ten dayv 1 intend to be in New York
once or twice a month *'

“Where will you live out there 0 "

“On the site. In my own railway car that is, Eddie's car, which
I’m borrowing ”

“Will you be safe?”

‘ Safe from what *” Then she laughed, startled. “Why, Hank, it s
the first time you’ve ever thought that I wasn't a man. Of course I’ll
be safe “

He was not looking at her; he was looking at a sheet of figures
on his desk. “I've had my engineers prepare a breakdown of the
cost of the bridge.” he said, “and an approximate schedule of the
construction time required. That js what l wanted to discuss with
you.” He extended the papers. She settled back to readrthem.

A wedge of light fell across her face. He saw the fi|m, sensual
mouth in sharp outline. Then she leaned back a little, |md he saw
only a suggestion ot its shape and the dark lines ot tfer towered
lashes.

Haven't 1?— he thought. Haven't I thought of it since tike first time
I saw you? Haven't I thought of nothing else for two years'? ... He

192

sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he had never
allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not
faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be said within his
own mind. Now it was as sudden and shocking as if he were saying
it to her. . . . Since the first time l saw you . . . Nothing but your
body, that mouth of yours, and the way your eyes would look at me,
if . . . Through every sentence I ever said to you, through every
conference you thought so safe, through the importance of all the
issues we discussed ... You trusted me, didn’t you? To recognize
your greatness? To think of you as you deserved — as if you were a
man? . . . Don’t you suppose 1 know how much I’ve betrayed? The
only bright encounter of my life — the only person I respected — the
best businessman I know— -my ally— my partner in a desperate
battle . . . The lowest of all desires — as iny answer to the highest
I’ve met . . Do you know what I am? I thought of it, because it
should have been unthinkable. For that degrading need, which
should never touch you, I have never wanted anyone but you . . . L
hadn’t known what it was like, to want it, until I saw you for the
first time, f had thought: Not 1, l couldn't be broken by it , . Since
then . . . for two years . . . with not a moment’s respite . . . Do you
know what it’s like, to want it? Would you wish to hear what I
thought when 1 looked at you . . . when 1 lay awake at night . , .
when I heard your voice over a telephone wire . . when 1 worked,
but could not drive it away? . . Jo bring you down to things you
can t conceive - and to know' that it's l who have done it. lo reduce
you to a body, to teach you an animal’s pleasure, to see you need
it . to see you asking me lor it. to see your wonderful spirit dependent
upon the obscenity of your need. To watch you as you are, as you face
the world with your clean, proud strength — then to see you. in my bed,
submitting to any infamous whim 1 may devise, to any act which V\\
perform for the sole purpose of watching your dishonor and to which
you'll submit tor the sake of an unspeakable sensation . . I want
vou - -and may I be damned for it! . . .

She was reading the papers, leaning back m the darkness— he saw
the reflection of the fire touching her hair, moving to her shoulder,
down her arm. to the naked skin of her wrist.

. . . Do you know what I'm thinking now, in this moment? . .

Your gray suit and your open collar . , . you look so young, so
austere, so sure of yourself . . . What would you be like if I knocked
your head back; if 1 threw you down in that formal suit of yours, if
1 raised your skirt —

She glanced up at him. He looked down at the papers on his desk.
In a moment, he said, “ Ibe actual cost of the bridge is less than our
original estimate You will note that the strength of the bridge allows
lor the eventual addition ol a second track, which, l thmk, that sec-
tion of the country will justify in a very few years. If you spread the
cost over a period of—”

He spoke, and she looked at his face in the lamplight, against the
black emptiness of the office. The lamp was outside her field of
vision, and she felt as if it were his face that illuminated the papers
on the desk. His face, she thought, and the cold, radiant clarity of

193

his voice, of his mine}, of his drive to a single purpose. The face was
like his words — as if the line of a single theme ran from the steady
glance of the eyes, through the gaunt muscles of the cheeks, to the
faintly scornful, downward curve of the mouth — the line of a ruth-
less asceticism.

* *

The day began with the news of a disaster: a freight train of the
Atlantic Southern had crashed head-on into a passenger train, in
New Mexico, on a sharp curve in the mountains, scattering freight
cars all over the slopes. The cars carried five thousand tons of copper,
bound from a mine in Arizona to the Rearden mills.

Rearden telephoned the general manager of the Atlantic Southern,
but the answer he received was: “Oh God, Mr. Rearden. how can
we tell? How can anybody tell how long it will take to clear that
wreck? One of the worst we’ve ever had ... I don’t know, Mr.
Rearden. There are no other lines anywhere in that section. The
track is torn for twelve hundred feet. There’s been a rockslide. Our
wrecking train can’t get through. I don't know how we’ll ever get
those freight cars back on rails, or when. Can’t expect it sooner than
two weeks . . . Three days? Impossible, Mr. Rearden’ . . . But we
can't help it! . . . But surely you can tell your customers that it's an
act of God! What if you do hold them up? Nobody can blame you
in a case of this kind!"

In the next two hours, with the assistance of his secretary, two
young engineers from his shipping department, a road map, and the
long-distance telephone, Rearden arranged for a fleet of trucks to
proceed to the scene of the wreck, and for a chain of hopper cars
to meet them at the nearest station of the Atlantic Southern. The
hopper cars had been borrowed from Taggart Transcontinental. The
trucks had been recruited from all over New Mexico, Arizona and
Colorado. Rearden’s engineers had hunted by telephone for private
truck owners and had offered payments that cut all arguments short.

It was die third of three shipments of copper that Rearden had
expected; two orders had not been delivered: one company had gone
out of business, the other was still pleading delays that it could not
help.

He had attended to the matter without breaking his chain of ap-
pointments, without raising his voice, without sign of strain, uncer-
tainty or apprehension; he had acted with the swift precision of a
military commander under sudden fire — and Gwen Ives, his secre-
tary, had acted as his calmest lieutenant. She was a girl in her
late twenties, whose quietly harmonious, impenetrable face had a
quality matching the best-designed office equipment; fhc was one
of his most ruthlessly competent employees; her manner of per-
forming her duties suggested the kind of rational cleanliness that
would consider any clement of emotion, while at work. k \ s an unpar-
donable immorality.

When the emergency was over, her sole comment wa$, “Mr. Rear-
den, i think we should ask all our suppliers to ship? via Taggart
Transcontinental/* ‘Tm thinking that, too/* he answered^ then added,

194

“Wire Fleming in Colorado, Tell him I’m taking an option on that
copper mine property.’*

He was back at his desk, speaking lo his superintendent on one
phone and to his purchasing manager on another, checking every
date and ton of ore on hand — he could not leave to chance or to
another person the possibility of a single hour’s delay in the flow of
a furnace: it was the last of the rail for the John Galt Line that was
being poured — when the buzzer rang and Miss Ives’ voice announced
that his mother was outside, demanding to see him.

He had asked his family never to come to the mills without an
appointment. He had been glad that they hated the place and seldom
appeared in his office. What he now felt was a violent impulse to
order his mother off the premises. Instead, with a greater effort than
the problem of the train wreck had required ot him, he said quietly,
“All right. Ask her to come in.”

His mother came in with an air of belligerent defensiveness. She
looked at his office as if she knew what it meant to him and as if
she were declaring her resentment against anything being of greater
importance to him than her own person. She took a long time settling
down in an armchair, arranging and rearranging her bag, her gloves,
the folds of her dress, while droning, “It’s a fine thing when a mother
has to wait in an anteroom and ask permission of a stenographer
before she’s allowed to see her own son who — '*

“Mother, is it anything important? 1 am very rushed today,”

“You're not the only one who's got problems. Of course, it’s
important. Do you think I'd go to the trouble of driving way out
here, if it wasn’t important?”

“What is it?”

“It’s about Philip.”

“Yes?”

“Philip is unhappy.”

“Well?”

“He feels it's not right that he should have to depend on your
charity and live on handouts and never be able to count on a single
dollar of his own.”

“Well!” he said with a stailied smile. “I’ve been waiting for him
to realize that.”

“It isn’t right for a sensitive man to be m such a position.”

“It certainly isn't ”

“I'm glad you agree with me. So what you have to do is give him
a job.”

“A . . . what?”

“You must give him a job, here, at the mills — but a nice, clean
job. of course, with a desk and an office and a decent salary, where
he wouldn’t have to be among your day laborers and your smelly
furnaces.”

He knew that he was hearing it; he could not make himself believe
it. “Mother, you’re not serious.”

“I certainly am. 1 happen to know that that's what he wants; only
he’s loo proud to ask you for it. But if you offer it to him and make
it look like it’s you who're asking him a favor — why, l know he’d

195

be happy to take it. That’s why I had to come here to talk to you —
so he wouldn't guess that I put you up to it."

It was not in the nature of his consciousness to understand the
nature of the things he was hearing. A single thought cut through
his mind like a spotlight, making him unable to conceive how any
eyes could miss it. The thought broke out of him as a cry of bewilder-
ment: '"But he knows nothing about the steel business!"

“What has that got to do with it? He needs a job."

“But he couldn't do the work."

“He needs to gain self-confidence and to feel important."

“But he wouldn’t be any good whatever."

“He needs to feel that he’s wanted."

“Here? What could I want him for?"

“You hire plenty of strangers."

“I hire rnen who produce. What has he got to offer?"

“He's your brother, isn’t he?"

“What has that got to do with it?"

She stared incredulously, in turn, silenced by shock. For a moment,
they sat looking at each other, as if across an interplanetary distance.

“He’s your brother," she said, her voice like a phonograph record
repeating a magic formula she could not permit herself to doubt:
“He needs a position in the world. He needs a salary, so that he’d
feel that he's got money coming to him as his due, mil as alms."

“As his due? But he wouldn't be worth a nickel to me."

“Is that what you think of first? Your profit? I’m asking you to
help your brother, and you’re figuring how to make a nickel on him,
and you won’t help him unless there’s money in it for you — is that
it?" She saw r the expression of his eyes, and she looked away, but
spoke hastily, her voice rising “Yes, sure, you’re helping him — like
you'd help any, stray beggar. Material help — that’s all you know or
understand. Have you thought about his spiritual needs and what his
position is doing to his self-respect? He doesn’t want to live like a
beggar. He wants to be independent of you."

“By means' of getting from me a salary he can’t earn for work he
can’t do ?"

“You’d never miss it. You’ve got enough people here who re mak-
ing money for you."

“Are you asking me to help him stage a fraud of that kind?"

“You don’t have to put it that way."

'is it a fraud — or isn’t it?"

“That’s why I can’t talk to you — because you're not human. You
have no pity, no feeling for your brother, no compassion for his
feelings."

“Is it a fraud or not?"

“You have no mercy for anybody."

“Do you think that a fraud of this kind would be just?"

“You’re the most immoral man living— you think of notping out
justice! You don’t feet any love at all!"

He got up, his movement abrupt and stressed, the movement of
ending an interview and ordering a visitor out of his office. ^Mother,
I’m running a steel plant— not a whorehouse."

1%

“Henry!” The gasp of indignation was at his choice of language,
nothing more.

“Don’t ever speak to me again about a job for Philip. I would not
give him the job of a cinder sweeper. 1 would not allow him inside
my mills. I want you to understand that, once and for all. You may
try to help him in any way you wish, but don’t ever let me see you
thinking of my mills as a means to that end.”

The wrinkles of her soft chin trickled into a shape resembling a
sneer. “What are they, your mills — a holy temple of some kind?”

“Why . . . yes,” he said softly, astonished at the thought.

“Don’t you ever think of people and of your moral duties?”

“1 don’t know what it is that you choose to call morality. No, I
don’t think of people— -except that if I gave a job to Philip, I wouldn’t
be able to face any competent man who needed work and de-
served it.”

She got up. Her head was drawn into her shoulders, and the righ-
teous bitterness of hei voice seemed to push the words upward at
his tall, straight figure: "That's your cruelly, that’s what's mean and
selfish about you. If you loved your brother, you'd give him a job
he didn’t deserve, precisely because he didn’t deserve it — that would
be true love and kindness and brotherhood. Rise what's love for? If
a man deserves a job. there’s no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is
the giving of the undeserved.”

He was looking at her like a child at an unfamiliar nightmare,
inciedulity preventing it from becoming horror. “Mother,” he said
slowly, “you don't know what you’re saying. Fm not able ever to
despise you enough to believe that you mean it.”

l’hc look on her face astonished him more than all the rest: it was
a look of defeat and yet of an odd, sly, cynical cunning, as if. for a
moment, she held some worldly wisdom that mocked his innocence.

The memory of that look remained in his mind, like a warning
signal telling him that he had glimpsed an issue which he had to
understand. But he could not grapple with it, he could not force his
mind to accept it as worthy of thought, he could find no clue except
his dim uneasiness and his revulsion — and he had no time to give it,
he could not think of it now. he was facing his next caller seated in
front of his desk— he was listening to a man who pleaded for his life.

The man did not state it in such terms, but Rearden knew that
that was the essence of the case. What the man put into words was
only a plea for five hundred tons of steel.

He was Mr. Ward, of the Ward Harvester Company of Minnesota.
It was an unpretentious company with an unblemished reputation,
the kind of business concern that seldom grows large, but never fails.
Mr. Ward represented the fourth generation of a family that had
owned the plant and had given it the conscientious best of such
ability as they possessed.

He was a man in his fifties, with a square, stolid face. Looking at
him, one knew that he would consider it as indecent to let his face
show suffering as to remove his clothes in public. He spoke in a dry.
businesslike manner. He explained that he had always dealt, as his
father had. with one of the small steel companies now taken over

197

by Orren Boyle's Associated Steel. He had waited for his last order
of steel for a year. He had spent the last month struggling to obtain
a personal interview with Reardcn.

“I know that your mills are running at capacity. Mr. Rearden,”
he said, “and I know that you are not in a position to take care of
new orders, what with your biggest, oldest customers having to wait
their turn, you being the only decent- -I mean, reliable— steel manu-
facturer left in the country. 1 don’t know what reason to offer you
as to why you should want to make an exception in my case. But
there was nothing else for me to do. except close the doors of my
plant for good, and I”— -there was a slight break in his voice — “1
can’t quite see my way to closing the doors . . . as yet . . . so 1
thought I'd speak to you, even if I didn't have much chance . . . still,
I had to try- everything possible.”

This was language that Rearden could understand. “1 wish 1 could
help you out,” he said, “but this is the worst possible time for me,
because of a very large, very special order that has to take prece-
dence over everything.”

“1 know. But would you just give me a hearing. Mr. Rearden?”

“Sure.”

“if it's a question of money, HI pay anything you ask. 11 I could
make it worth your while that way, why, charge me any extra you
please, charge me double the regular price, only let me have the
steel 1 wouldn't care if 1 had to sell the harvester at a loss this veat.
just so 1 could keep the doors open. I've got enough, personally, to
run at a loss for a couple of years, if necessary, just to hold out
because, I figure, things can’t go on this wav much longer, conditions
are bound ro improve, they've got to or else we ll He did riot
finish. He said firmly, “They’ve got to ”

“They will,” said Rearden.

The thought of the John Galt Line ran through his mind like a
harmony under the confident sound of his words. The John Galt
Line was mpvmg forward. Hie attacks on his Metal had ceased. He
felt as if. miles apart across the country, he and Dagny Taggart now
stood in empty space, their way cleared, free to finish the job. nicy’ll
leave us alone to do it. he thought. The words were like a battle
hymn in his mind: lhey’11 leave us alone.

“Our plant capacity is one thousand harvesters per year,” said Mr.
Ward. “Last year, we put out three hundred, t scraped the steel
together from bankruptcy sales, and begging a few tons here and
there from big companies, and just going around like a scavenger to
all sorts of unlikely places— well, I won’t bore you with that, only I
never thought I’d live to see the time when I’d have to do business
that way. And all the while Mr. Orren Boyle was swearing to me
that he was going to deliver the steel next week, But whatever he
managed to pour, it went to new customers of his, foi so^ne reason
nobody would mention, only I heard it whispered that Iftcy were
men with some sort of political pull. And now l can’t even get to
Mr. Boyle at all. He’s in Washington, been there for ovet a month.
And all his office tells me is just that they can’t help it, because they
can’t get the ore.”

198

“Don't waste your time on them,” said Reardcn. “You’ll never
get anything from that outfit.”

“You know, Mr. Reardcn,” he said in the tone of a discovery
which he could not quite bring himself to believe, “l think there’s
something phony about the way Mr. Boyle runs his business. I can’t
understand what he’s after. They’ve got half their furnaces idle, but
last month there were all those big stones about Associated Steel in
all the newspapers About their output? Why, no — about the won-
derful housing project that Mr. Boyle’s just built for his workers.
Last week, it was colored movies that Mr. Boyle sent to all the high
schools, showing how steel is made and what great service it per-
forms tor everybody. Now Mr. Boyle's got a radio program, they
give talks about the importance of the steel industry to the country
and they keep saying that we must preserve the steel industry as a
whole. I don’t understand what he means by ‘as a whole.' ”

“1 do. Forget it. He won’t get away with it.”

“You know, Mr. Reardcn, 1 don't like people who talk too much
about how everything they do is just for the sake of others It’s not
true, and 1 don’t think it would be right if it were true. So I’ll say
that what I need the steel tor is to save my own business. Because
it's mine. Because if I had to close it ... oh well, nobody understands
that nowadays.”

”1 do ”

“Yes . Y'es. 1 think you would . . , So. you see, that’s my first
concern. But still, there aie my customers, too. They've dealt with
me for years l hey Ye counting on me. It's just about impossible to
get any soil of machinery anywhere. Do you know what it's getting
to be like, out m Minnesota, when the farmers can't get tools, when
machines break down in tile middle <>i the harvest season and there
are no parts, no replacements . . . nothing but Mr. Orren Boyle's
colored movies about ... Oh well . . . And then there are my
workers, too. Some of them have been with us since my fathers
time They've got no other place to go. Not now.”

It was impossible, thought Reardcn. to squeeze more steel out of
mills where eveiy iurnace, every hour and every ton were scheduled
in advance lor urgent orders for the next six months. But . . . The
John Halt Line, he thought. If he could do that, he could do
anything. . . . He tell as it he wished to undertake ten new problems
at once. He felt as it this were a world where nothing was impossible
to him.

“Look.” he said, reaching for the telephone, “let me check with
my superintendent and see just what we’re pouring in the next few
weeks. Maybe I’ll find a way to borrow a few tons from some of the
orders and - ”

Mi. Ward looked quickly away from him. but Reardcn had caught
a glimpse of his face. It's so much lor him. thought Reardcn. and so
little for me!

He lifted the telephone receiver, but he had to drop it, because
the door of his office flew open and Gwen Ives rushed in.

It seemed impossible that Miss Ives should permit herself a breach
of that kind, or that the calm of her face should look like an unnatu-

199

ral distortion, or that her eyes should seem blinded, or that her steps
should sound a shred of discipline away from staggering. She said,
"Excuse me for interrupting, Mr, Rearden.” but he knew that she
did not see the office, did not see Mr. Ward, saw nothing but him.
"I thought t must tell you that the Legislature has just passed the
Equalization of Opportunity Bill ”

It was the stolid Mr. Ward who screamed, ’Oh God, no! Oh,
no!" — staring at Reardon.

Rearden had leaped to his feel He stood unnaturally bent, one
shoulder drooping fotward. It was only an instant Then he looked
around him. as il regaining eyesight, said, "Excuse me," his glance
including both Miss Ives and Mi, Ward, and sat down again.

"We were not informed that the Bill had been brought to the
floor, were we?" he asked, his voice controlled and dry.

"No, Mr. Rearden. Apparently, it was a surprise move and it took
them just torty-five minutes "

"Have you heaid from Mouch 9 ”

"No. Mr Rearden ” She stressed the no. Tl was the office hoy
from the fifth floor who came running in to tell me that he’d just
heard it on the radio. I called the newspapers to verily it. 1 tried to
reach Mr. Mnuch in Washington. His office does not answer."
"When did we hear from him last 9 ”

"Ten days ago, Mr. Rearden."

"All right. Thank you, Gwen. Keep trying to get his office "
"Yes, Mr. Rearden."

She walked out. Mr. Ward was on his teet. hat in hand He mut-
tered, "1 guess Td better—”

"Sit down!” Rearden snapped fiercely
Mr. Ward obeyed, staring at him.

"We had business to transact; didn't we 9 ” said Rearden. Mr. Ward
amid not define the emotion that contorted Rearden 's mouth as he
spoke. "Mr. Ward, what is it that the foulest bastards on earth de-
nounce us fot. among other things’? Oh yes, for our motto ol ‘Business
as usual ’ W'ell — business as usual. Mr. Ward!"

He picked up the telephone receiver and asked for Ins superinten-
dent. "Say. Pete . . . What? . . Yes, I’ve heard. Can it. We ll talk
about that later. What 1 want to know is. could you let me have live
hundred tons of steel, extra, above schedule, in the next few
weeks? . . . Yes, I know ... 1 know it’s tough . . . Give me the
dates and the figures.” He listened, rapidly jotting notes down on a
sheet of paper. Then he said, "Right Thank you,” and hung up.

He studied the figures for a tew' moments, making some brief
calculations on the margin of the sheet. T hen he raised hi# head.

"Ail right, Mr. Ward,” he said. "You will have your st$el in ten

days/' <

When Mr. Ward had gone, Rearden came into the antefoom, He
said to Miss Ives, his voice normal, "Wire Fleming in Colorado. HeTl
know why I have to cancel that option.” She inclined he| head, in
fhe manner of a nod signifying obedience, She did not look at him.

He turned to his next caller and said, with a gesture of snvitation
toward his office, "How do you do. Come in.”

200

He would think of it later, he thought; one moves step bv step
and one must keep moving. For the moment, with an unnatural
clarity, with a brutal simplification that made it almost easy, his con-
sciousness contained nothing but one thought: It must not stop me.
The sentence hung alone, with no past and no future. He did not
think of what it was that must not stop him, or why this sentence
was such a crucial absolute. It held him and he obeyed He went step
by step He completed his schedule of appointments, as scheduled.

It was late when his last caller departed and he came out of his
office. The rest ot his staff had gone home. Miss Ives sat alone at
her desk in an empty room. She sat straight and stiff, her hands
clasped tightly together in hot lap. Her head was not lowered, but
held rigidly level, and het face seemed frozen. 'Fears were lunmng
down her cheeks, with no sound, with no facial movement, against
her resistance, beyond control.

She saw him and said dryly, guiltily, m apology. *Tm sorry, Mr.
Reardon/' not attempting the futile pretense ot hiding her face.

He approached hei. “Thank >011," he said gently

She looked up at him, astonished.

He smiled ’But don't you think you're underestimating me,
Gwen? Isn't it too soon to erv over me?"

‘I could have taken the rest ot it." she whispered, “but they” —
she pointed at the newspapeis on her desk “thcv're calling it a
victory for anti -greed/’

He laughed aloud. "I can see where such a distortion of the En-
glish language would make you furious/' he said. “But what else?”

As she looked at him, her mouth relaxed a little. Ihe victim whom
she could not protect was her onlv point of reassurance in a world
dissolving around her

He moved his hand gently across her forehead; it was an unusual
break of formality for him, and a silent acknowledgment of the things
at which he had not laughed. “Go home. Gwen. I won't need you
tonight I'm going home myself in gist a little while. No, I don't want
\ou to wait/'

It was past midnight, when, shli sitting at his desk, bent over blue-
prints iit the bridge for the John Gall f ine, he stopped his work
abruptly, because emotion reached him in a sudden stab, not to be
escaped any longer, as if a curtain of anesthesia had broken.

He slumped down, halfway, still holding onto some shred of resis-
tance, and sat, his chest pressed to the edge of the desk to stop him,
his head hanging down, as if the only achievement still possible to
him was not to let his head drop down on the desk. He sat that way
tor a few moments, conscious of nothing but pain, a screaming pain
without content or limit — he sat, not knowing whether it was in his
mind or his body, reduced to the terrible ugliness of pain that
stopped thought.

In n few moments, U w<as over. He raised his head and sat up
straight, quietly, leaning back against his chair. Now he saw? that in
postponing this moment for hours* he had not been guilty of evasion:
he had not thought of it, because there was nothing to think.

Thought—- he told himself quietly — is a weapon one uses in order

201

to act. No action was possible. Thought is the tool by which one
makes a choice. No choice was left to him. Thought sets one’s pur-
pose and the way to reach it. In the matter of his life being tom
piece by piece out of him, he was to have no voice, no purpose, no
way. no defense.

He thought of this in astonishment. He saw for the first time that
he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held
the omnipotent cure of being able to act. No, he thought, not an
assurance of victory — who can ever have that? — only the chance to
act, which is all one needs. Now he was contemplating, impersonally
and for the first time, the real heart of terror: being delivered to
destruction with one’s hands tied behind one’s back.

Well, then, go on with your hands tied, he thought. Go on in
chains. Go on. It must not stop you. . . But another voice was

telling him things he did not want to hear, while he fought back,
crying through and against it: There's no point in thinking of that . . .
there’s no use . . . what for? . . . leave it alone!

He could not choke it ofl. He sat still, over the drawings of the
bridge for the John Galt Line and heard the things released by a
voice that was part-sound, part-sight: They decided it without
him. . . . They did not call tor him, they did not ask. they did not
let him speak. . . . They were not bound even by the duty to let him
know — to let him know that they had slashed part of his life away
and that he had to be ready to walk on as a cripple. ... Of all those
concerned, whoever they were, lor whichever reason, tor whatever
need, he was the one they had not had to consider.

The sign at the end of a long road said* Rcardcn Ore It hung
over black tiers ot metal . , and over years and nights . . over a
dock ticking drops of his blood away . . the blood he had given
gladly, exultantly in payment for a distant day and a sign over a
road . , . paid for with his eflort. his strength, his mind, his hope . .
Destroyed at the whim of some men who sat and voted . . Who
knows by wfiat minds? . . . Who knows whose will had placed them in
power? -what motive moved them? — what was their knowledge -
which one of them, unaided, could bring a chunk of ore out of the
earth? . . , Destroyed at the whim of men whom he had never seen
and who had never seen those tiers of metal . . . Destroyed, because
they so decided, tty what light?

He shook his head. Ihere are things one must not contemplate,
he thought. There is an obscenity of evil which contaminates the ob-
server. "There is a limit to what it is proper foi a man to see. He
must not think of this, or look within it, or try to learn the nature
of its roots.

Feeling quiet and empty, he told himself that he would lie all right
tomorrow. He would forgive himself the weakness of th^ night, it
was like the tears one is permitted at a funeral, and then one learns
how to live with an open wound or with a crippled factory.

He got up and walked to the window. The mills seemel deserted
and still; he saw feeble snatches of red above black fuiinels, long
coils of steam, webbed diagonals of cranes and bridges. <

He felt a desolate loneliness, of a kind he had never knetyn before.

202

He thought that Gwen ives and Mr. Ward could look to him for
hope, for relief, for renewal of courage. To whom could he look for
it? He, too, needed it. for once. He wished he had a friend who
could be permitted to see him suffer, without pretense or protection,
on whom he could lean for a moment, just to say, 4 Tm very tired,''
and tind a moment’s rest. Of all the men he knew, was there one
he wished he had beside him now? He heard the answer in his mind,
immediate and shocking: Francisco d’Anconia.

His chuckle of anger brought him back. The absurdity of the long-
ing jolted him into calm. That’s what you get, he thought, when you
indulge yourself in weakness.

He stood at the window, trying not to think. Bui he kept hearing
words in his mind: Rearden Ore . . Keardcn Coal . . . Rearden
Steel . . Rearden Metal . . What was the use? Why had he done
it? Why should he ever want to do anything again? . .

His first day on the ledges of the ore mines . , . The day when he
stood in the wind, looking down at the ruins of a steel plant . . .
The day when he stood here, in this office, at this window, and
thought that a bridge could be made to carry incredible loads on
just a tew bars of metal, if one combined a truss with an aich, if one
built diagonal bracing with the top members curved to —

He stopped and stood still. He had not thought of combining a
truss with an arch, that day.

In the next moment, he was at Ins desk, bending over it. with one
knee on the seat ot the chair, with no time to think of sitting down,
ho was drawing lines, ( uives. triangles, columns of calculations, indis-
criminately on the blueprints, on the desk blotter, on somebody’s
letters.

And an hour later, he was vailing for a longdistance line, he was
waiting for a phono to ring by a bed in a railway car on a siding* he
was saying, “Dagny! That bridge of ours- throw in the asbean all
the drawings l sent you. because . . What? . . . Oh, that? To hell

with that! Never mind the looters and their laws! Forget it! Dagny.
what do we care 1 Listen, you know the contraption you called the
Rearden Truss, that you admired so much? it s not worth a damn.
I've figured out a truss that will beat anything ever built! Your bridge
wall carry four trains at once, stand three hundred years and cost
you less than your cheapest culvert. I'll send you the di awing* in
two days, but i wanted to tell you about it right now. You see* it's
a matter of combining a truss with an arch. If we take diagonal
bracing and . . What 7 ... I can't hear you. Have you caught a
cold? . . What are you thanking me lor, as yet? Wait till I explain
it to you.”

Chapter VIII THE JOHN GALT LINE

The worker smiled, looking at Eddie Willers across the table.

“I fed like a fugitive,” said Eddie Willers. T guess you know why
1 haven't been here for months?” He pointed at the underground cafe-
teria. *Tm supposed to he a vice-president now. 'The Vice-President in

203

Charge of Operation. For God's sake, don’t take it seriously. I stood
it as long as I could, and then 1 had to escape, if only for one
evening, . . . The first time I came down here for dinner, after my
alleged promotion, they all stared at me so much, I didn’t dare come
back. Well, let them stare. You don't. Pm glad that it doesn’t make
any difference to you. . . . No, I haven’t seen her for two weeks.
But I speak to her on the phone every day, sometimes twice a
day. . . . Yes, I know how she feels: she loves it. What is it we hear
over the telephone —sound vibrations, isn’t it? Well, her voice sounds
as if it were turning into light vibrations — if you know what 1 mean.
She enjoys running that horrible battle single-handed and
winning. ... Oh yes, she’s winning! Do you know why you haven’t
read anything about the John Galt Line in the newspapers for some
time? Because it’s going so well . . . Only . . . that Reardon Metal
rail will be the greatest track ever built, but what will be the use, if
we don't have any engines powerful enough to take advantage of it?
Look at the kind of patched coal-burners we've got left — they can
barely manage to drag themselves last enough tor old trolley-car
rails. . . . Still, there's hope. The United Locomotive Works went
bankrupt. That's the best break we’ve had in the last few weeks,
because their plant has been bought by Dwight Sanders. He's a bril-
liant young engineer who’s got the only good aircraft plant in the
country. He had to sell the aircraft plant to his brother, in order to
take over United Locomotive That’s on account ot the Equalization
of Opportunity Bill. Sure, it's just a setup between them, but can
you blame him 7 Anyway, we ll see Diesels coming out ot the United
Locomotive Works now. Dwight Sanders will start things going. . ,
Yes, she’s counting on him Why do you ask that? . . Yes, he's
crucially important to us right now. We’ve just signed a contract with
him, foi the first ten Diesel engines he’ll build. When 1 phoned her
that the contract was signed, she laughed and said. ‘You sec? Is
there ever any reason to be afraid?' . , . She said that, because she
knows — Pve» never told her, but she knows — that Pm afraid. . . . Yes,
I am. ... I don't know ... 1 wouldn’t be afraid if I knew of what,
( could do something about it. But this . . . Tell me, don’t you really
despise me for being Operating Vice-President? . . . But don’t you
see — that it's vicious 7 . . . What honor? 1 don’t know' what it is that
1 really am: a clown, a ghost, an understudy or just a rotten stooge.
When I sit in her office, m her chair, at her desk, 1 fed worse than
that: I fed like a murderer. . . . Sure, I know that Pm supposed to
be a stooge for her —, and that would be an honor —but . . . but I
fed as if in some horrible way which I can’t quite grasp, Pm a stooge
for Jim Taggart. Why should it be necessary* for her to have a stooge?
Why does she have to hide? Why did they throw her out ot the
building? Do you know that she had to move out into a (Jinky hole
in the back alley, across from our Express and Baggage Entrance?
You ought to take a look at it some time, that’s the offidb of John
Galt, Inc. Yet everybody knows that it's she who’s still ruiining Tag-
gart Transcontinental. Why does she have to hide the nfagnificent
job she's doing 7 Why are they giving her no credit? Why are they
robbing her of her achievement — with me as the receiver of stolen

204

goods? Why are they doing everything in their power to make it
impossible for her to succeed, when she’s all they’ve got standing
between them and destruction? Why are they torturing her in return
for saving their lives? . . . What’s the matter with you? Why do you
look at me like that? ... Yes, 1 guess you understand. . . . There’s
something about it all that I can’t define, and it’s something evil.
That’s why I’m afraid. ... I don’t think one can get away with it. . . .
You know, it’s strange, but I think they know it, too, Jim and his
crowd and all of them in the building. There’s something guilty and
sneaky about the whole place. Guilty and sneaky — and dead. Taggart
Transcontinental is now like a man who's lost his soul . . . who’s
betrayed his soul. . . . No, she doesn’t care. Last time she was in
New York, she came in unexpectedly — 1 was in my office, in her
office —and suddenly the door opened and there she was. She came
in, saying, ‘Mr. Willers, I’m looking for a job as a station operator,
would you give me a chance?’ 1 wanted to damn them all, but I had
to laugh, I was so glad to see her and she was laughing so happily.
She had come straight from the airport — she wore slacks and a flying
jacket — she looked wonderful —she'd got windburned, it looked like
a suntan, just as if she'd returned from a vacation. She made me
remain where 1 was, in her chair, and she sat on the desk and talked
about the new bridge of the John Galt Line. . . . No. No, 1 never
asked her why she chose that name ... 1 don’t know what it means
to her. A sort of challenge, 1 guess ... I don’t know to whom . . .
Oh, it doesn't matter, it doesn’t mean a thing, there isn’t any John
Galt, but I wish she hadn't used it l don't like it, do you? . . . You
do? You don’t sound very happy saying it.”

* *

The windows of the offices of the John Galt Line faced a dark
alley. Looking up from her desk. Dagny could not see the sky. only
the wall of a building rising past her range of vision. U was the side
wall of the great skyscraper of Taggart Transcontinental.

Her new headquarters were two rooms on the ground floor of a
half-collapsed structure. The structure still stood, but its upper stories
were boarded off as unsafe for occupancy. Such tenants as it shel-
tered were half-bankrupt, existing, as it did, on the inertia of the
momentum of the past.

She liked her new place: it saved money. The rooms contained nt>
superfluous furniture or people. The furniture had come from junk
shops. The people were the best choice she could find. On her rare
visits to New York, she had no time to notice the room where she
worked; she noticed only that it served its purpose.

She did not know what made her stop tonight and look at the thin
streaks of rain on the glass of the window, at the wall of the building
across the alley.

ft was past midnight. Her small staff had gone. She was due at
the airport at three a.m., to fly her plane back to Colorado. She had
little left to do, only a few of Eddie’s reports to read. With the
sudden break of the tension of hurrying, she stopped, unable to go

205

on. The reports seemed to require an effort beyond her power. It
was too late to go home and sleep, too early to go to the airport.
She thought: You're tired — and watched her own mood with severe,
contemptuous detachment, knowing that it would pass.

She had flown to New York unexpectedly, at a moment’s notice,
leaping to the controls of her plane within twenty minutes after hear-
ing a brief item in a news broadcast. The radio voice had said that
Dwight Sanders had retired from business, suddenly, without reason
or explanation. She had hurried to New York, hoping to find him
and stop him. But she had felt, while flying across the continent, that
there would be no trace of him to find.

The spring rain hung motionless in the air beyond the window,
like a thin mist. She sat. looking across at the open cavern of the
Express and Baggage Entrance of the Taggart Terminal. There were
naked lights inside, among the steel girders of the ceiling, and a lew
piles of luggage on the worn concrete of the floor. The place looked
abandoned and dead.

She glanced at a jagged crack on the wall of her office. She heard
no sound. She knew she was alone in the ruins of a building. It
seemed as if she were alone in the city. She felt an emotion held
back for years: a loneliness much beyond tins moment, beyond the
silence of the room and the wet, glistening emptiness of the street:
the loneliness of a gray wasteland where nothing was worth reaching:
the loneliness of her childhood.

She rose and walked to the window. By pressing her lace to the
pane, she could see the whole of the Taggart Building, its lines con-
verging abruptly to its distant pinnacle in the sky. She looked up at
the dark window of the room that had been her office She felt as
if she were in exile, never to return, as if she were separated from
the building by much more than a sheet of glass, a curtain of rain
and the span of a few months.

She stood, in a room of crumbling plaster, pressed to the window-
pane, lookftig up at the unattainable form ol everything she loved.
She did not know the nature ot her loneliness. The only words that
named it were: This is not the world 1 expected.

Once, when she was sixteen, looking at a long stretch of Taggart
track, at the rails that converged— like the lines of a skyscraper —to
a single point in the distance, she had told Eddie Willers that she
had always felt as if the rails were held in the hand of a man beyond
the horizon — no, not her father or any of the men in the office —
and some day she would meeL him.

She shook her head and turned away from the window.

She went back to her desk. She tried to reach tor the reports But
suddenly she was slumped across the desk, her head on her arm.
Don’t, she thought: but she did not move to rise, it mad$ no difter-
encc, there was no one to see her.

This was a longing she had never permitted herself ip acknowl-
edge. She faced it now She thought: If emotion is one’s Response to
the things the world has to offer, if she loved the rails, the building,
and more: if she loved her love for them — there was slill one re-
sponse, the greatest, that she had missed. She thought: To lind a

206

feeling that would hold, as their sum, as their final expression, the
purpose of all the things she loved on earth ... To find a conscious-
ness like her own, who would be the meaning of her world, as she
would be of his . . . No, not Francisco d' Anconia, not Hank Rearden,
not any man she had ever met or admired ... A man who existed
only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion she had never
felt, but would have given her life to experience . . . She twisted
herself in a slow, faint movement, her breasts pressed to the desk;
she felt the longing in her muscles, in the nerves of her body.

Is that what you want? Is it as simple as that? she thought, but
knew that it was not simple. There was some unbreakable link be-
tween her love for her work and the desire of her body; as if one
gave her the right to the other, the light and the meaning; as if one
were the completion of the other— and the desire would never be
satisfied, except by a being of equal greatness.

Her face pressed to her arm, she moved her head, shaking it slowly
in negation. She would never find it. Her own thought of what life
could be like, was all she would ever have of the world she had
wanted. Only the thought of it — and a tew rare moments, like a few
lights reflected from it on her way-- “to know, to hold, to follow to
the end . . ,

She raised her head.

On the pavement of the alley, outside her window, she saw' the
shadow ot a man who stood at the door of her office.

The door was some steps away; she could not see him, or the
street light beyond, only his shadow on the stones of the pavement.
He stood perfectly still.

He was so dose to the door, like a man about to enter, that she
waited to hear him knock, instead, she saw the shadow jerk abruptly,
as if he were jolted backward, then he turned and walked away.
There was only the outline of his hat brim and shoulders left on the
ground, when he stopped. The shadow lay still for a moment, wa-
vered, and grew longer again as he came back.

She felt no fear. She sat at her desk, motionless, watching in blank
wonder. He stopped at the door, then backed away from it: he stood
somewhere in the middle of the alley, then paced restlessly and
stopped again. His shadow swung like an irregular pendulum across
the pavement, describing the course of a soundless battle: it was a
man fighting himself to enter that door or to escape.

She looked on, with peculiar detachment. She had no power to
react, only to observe. She wondered numbly, distantly: Who was
he? Had he been watching her from somewhere in the darkness?
Had he seen her slumped across her desk, in the lighted, naked
window? Had he watched her desolate loneliness as she was now
watching his? She felt nothing. They were alone in the silence of a
dead city — it seemed to her that he was miles away, a reflection of
suffering without identity, a fellow survivor whose problem was as
distant to her as hers would be to him. He paced, moving out of
her sight, coming back again. She sat, watching — on the glistening
pavement of a dark alley — the shadow of an unknown torment.

The shadow moved away once more. She waited. It did not return.

207

Then she leaped to her feet. She had wanted to see the outcome of
the battle; now that he had won it— or lost — she was struck by the
sudden, urgent need to know his identity and motive. She ran
through the dark anteroom, she threw the door open and looked out.

The alley was empty. The pavement went tapering off into the
distance, like a band of wet mirror under a few spaced lights. There
was no one in sight. She saw the dark hole of a broken window in
an abandoned shop. Beyond it. there were the doors of a few room-
ing houses. Across the alley, streaks of rain glittered under a light
that hung over the black gap of an open door leading down to the
underground tunnels of Taggart Transcontinental

* +

Reardon signed the papers, pushed them across the desk and
looked away, thinking that he would never have to think of them
again, wishing he were carried to the time when this moment would
be far behind him.

Paul Larkin reached for the papers hesitantly; he looked mgiatiat-
ingly helpless. “It’s only a legal technicality. Hank/’ he said "You
know that I’ll always consider these ore mines as yours.”

Rearden shook his head slowly; it was just a movement of his neck
muscles; his face looked immovable, as if he were speaking to a
stranger. “No.” he said. “Hither l own a property or 1 don't.”

“But . . . but you know that you can trust me. You don’t have to
worry about your supply of ore. We’ve made an agreement. You
know that you can count on me.”

”1 don't know it. I hope I can.”

“But I’ve given you my word.”

“1 have never been at the mercy of anyone's word before.”

“Why . . . wjhy do you say that? We’re friends I’ll do anything
you wish. You’ll get my entire output. The mines are still yours—
just as good as yours. You have nothing to tear. I’ll . , Hank, what’s
the matter?”

“Don’t talk/’

“But . . . but what's the matter?”

“1 don't like assurances. I don’t want any pretense about how safe
I am. I’m not. We have made an agreement which I can’t enforce.
1 want you to know that 1 understand my position fully. If you intend
to keep your word, don't talk about it, just do it.”

“Why do you look at me as if it were my fault? You know how
badly I feel about it. 1 bought the mines only because 1 thought it
would help you out — I mean, l thought you'd rather sell them to a
friend than to some total stranger. It’s not my fault. I don’t like that
miserable Equalization Bill, I don’t know who’s behind it, I never
dreamed they’d pass it, it was such a shock to me when they

“Never mind.”

“But I only — ”

“Why do you insist on talking about it?”

“I . . .” Larkin's voice was pleading. “I gave you the Hbst price.
Hank. The law said ‘reasonable compensation/ My bid wits higher
than anyone else’s.”

Rearden looked at the papers still lying across the desk. He

208

thought of the payment these papers gave him for his ore mines.
Two-thirds of the sum was money which Larkin had obtained as a
loan from the government: the new law made provisions lor such
loans “in order to give a fair opportunity to the new owners who
have never had a chance/' Two-thirds of the rest was a loan he
himself had granted to Larkin, a mortgage he had accepted on his
own mines. . .And the government money, he thought suddenly,
the money now given to him as payment for his property, where had
that come irom? Whose work had provided it?

“You don’t have to worry. Hank,” said Larkin, with that incom-
prehensible. insistent note of pleading in his voice. “It’s just a
paper formality.*'

Rcardcn wondered dimly what it was that Larkin wanted from
him. He felt lhat the man was waiting tor something beyond the
physical I act of the sale, some words which he, Rcardcn. was sup-
posed to pronounce, some action pertaining to mercy which he was
expected to grant. Larkin's eyes, in this moment of his best tortune,
had the sickening look ot a beggar.

“Why should you be angrv. Hank? It’s only a new form of legal
led tape. Just a new historical condition. Nobody can help it, if it’s
a historical condition. Nobody can be blamed tor it. But there's, al-
ways a way to get along Look at all the others They don’t mind.
Ihev're — ”

“ Ihev're setting up stooges whom thev control, to run the proper-
ties extorted from them. I-- 4 *

“Now why do vou want to use such words?”

“I might as well tell you- -and I think vou know it — that I am not
good at games ot that kind. I have neither the time nor the stomach
to devise some form of blackmail in cider to tie you up and own
my mines through you Ownership is a thing 1 don’t share. And I
don** wish to hold it by the grace of your cowardice -by means of
a constant struggle to outwit you and keep some threat over your
head I don't do business that way and 1 don’t deal with .cowards,
l he mines are yours. It you wish to give me first cull on all the ore
produced, you will do so. If you wish to doubleeross me, it’s in
your power.’*

Larkin looked hurt “That's veiy unfair ot you.” he said: there
was a dry little note ol righteous reproach in his voice. “I have never
given you cause to distrust me.” He picked up the papers with a
hasty movement.

Rcardcn saw the papers disappear into Larkin's inside coat pocket.
He saw the Hare ol the open coat, the wrinkles of a vest pulled
tight over tlabbv bulges, and a stain of perspiration in the armpit of
the shirt.

1 Jnsutnmoned, the picture of a face seen twenty-seven years ago
rose suddenly in hts mind. It was the face ot a preacher on a street
corner he had passed, m a town he could not remember any longer.
Only the dark walls of the slums remained in his memory, the rain
of an autumn evening, and the righteous malice of the man's mouth,
a small mouth stretched to yell into the darkness: *\ . . the noblest

209

ideal — that man live for the sake of his brothers, that the strong
work for the weak, that he who has ability serve him who hasn’t . . ."

Then he saw the boy who had been Hank Reardon at eighteen.
He saw the tension of the face, the speed of the walk, the drunken
exhilaration of the body, drunk on the energy of sleepless nights,
the proud lift of the head, the clear, steady, ruthless eyes, the eyes
of a man who drove himself without pity toward that which he
wanted. And he saw what Paul Larkin must have been at that time -
a youth with an aged baby’s face, smiling ingratiatingly, joylessly,
begging to be spared, pleading with the universe to give him a
chance. If someone had shown that youth to the Hank Rearden of
that time and told him that this was to be the goal of his steps, the
collector of the energy of his aching tendons, what would he have —

It was not a thought, it was like the punch of a fist inside his skull.
Then when he could think again, Rearden knew what the boy he
had been would have felt: a desire to step on the obscene thing
which was Larkin and grind every wet bit of it out of existence.

He had never experienced an emotion of this kind. It took him a
few moments to realize that this was what men called hatred.

He noticed that rising to leave and muttering some sort of good-
byes, Larkin had a wounded, reproachful, mouth-pinched look, as if
he, Larkin, were the injured party.

When he sold his coal mines to Ken Danagger. who owned the
largest coal company in Pennsylvania, Rearden wondered why he
felt as if it were almost painless. He fell no hatred. Ken Danagger
was a man in his fifties, with a hard, closed face; he had started in
life as a miner.

When Rearden handed to him the deed to his new property, Dan-
agger said impassively, "I don't betieve I've mentioned that any coal
you buy from me, you’ll get it at cost."

Rearden glanced at him, astonished. "It’s against the law," he said.

“Who's going to find out what sort of cash I hand to you in your
own living room?"

“You’re talking about a rebate."

“f am."

“Thai's against two dozen laws They’ll sock you worse than me,
if they catch you at it."

“Sure. That's your protection — so you won't be left at the mercy
of my good will"

Rearden smiled; it was a happy smile, but he dosed his eyes as
under a blow, Then he shook his head. “ Thanks," he said. “But I'm
not one of them. I don’t expect anybody to work for me at cost."

*i’m not one of them, either," said Danagger angrily, “took here,
Rearden, don’t you suppose 1 know what I’m gelling, unearned? The
money doesn’t pay you for it. Not nowadays."

“You didn't volunteer to bid to buy my property. 1 asked you to
buy it. I wish there had been somebody like you in the orjc business,
to take over my mines. There wasn’t. If you want to do the a favor,
don’t offer me rebates. Give me a chance to pay you higher prices,
higher than anyone else will offer, suck me anything you wish, just

210

so I’ll he first to get the coal. I’ll manage my end of it. Only let me
have the coal.”

“You’ll have it.”

Rearden wondered, for a while, why he heard no word from Wes-
ley Mouch, His calls to Washington remained unanswered. Then he
received a letter consisting of a single sentence which informed him
that Mr. Mouch was resigning from his employ. Two weeks later, he
read in the newspapers that Wesley Mouch had been appointed As-
sistant Coordinator of the Bureau of Economic Planning and Na-
tional Resources.

Don’t dwell on any of it — thought Rearden, through the silence
of many evenings, fighting the sudden access of that new emotion
which he did not want to feel- -there is an unspeakable evil in the
woild, you know it, and it’s no use dwelling on the details of it. You
must work a little harder. Just a little harder. Don’t let it win.

The beams and girders of the Rearden Metal bridge were coming
daily out of the rolling mills, and were being shipped to the site of
the John Galt Line, where the first shapes ol green-blue metal, swung
into space to span the canyon, glittered in the first rays of the spring
sun. He had no time for pain, no energy for anger. Within a few
weeks, it was over; the blinding stabs of hatred ceased and did not
return.

He was back m confident self-control on the evening when he
telephoned Eddie Willers “Eddie. I'm in New York, at the Wayne-
Ealkland Come to have breakfast with me tomorrow morning.
There’s something I'd like to discuss with you.”

Eddie Willers went to the appointment with a heavy feeling of
guilt. He had not recovered trom the shock of the Equalization of
Opportunity Bill; it had left a dull ache within him. like the black-
and-blue mark of a blow. He disliked the sight of the city: it now
looked as if it hid the threat of some malicious unknown. He dreaded
facing one of the Bill's victims: he fell almost as if he, Eddie Willers,
shared the responsibility for it in some terrible way which he could
not define.

When he saw Rearden, the feeling vanished. There was no hint
suggesting a victim in Reardon’s bearing. Beyond the windows of
the hotel room, the spring sunlight of early morning sparkled on the
windows of the city, the sky was a very pale blue that seemed young,
the offices were still closed, and the city did not look as if it held
malice, but as if it were joyously, hopefully ready to swing into ac-
tion- in the same manner as Rearden. He looked refreshed by an
untroubled sleep, he wore a dressing gown, he seemed impatient of
the necessity to dress, unwilling to delay the exciting game of his
business duties.

“Good morning. Eddie. Sorry il I got you out so early. It’s the only
time l had. Have to go back to Philadelphia right after breakfast. We
cap talk while we're eating,”

The dressing gown he wore was of dark blue flannel, with the
white initials “H R” on the breast pocket. He looked young, relaxed,
at home in this room and in the world.

Eddie watched a waiter wheel the breakfast table into the room

211

with a swift efficiency that made him feel braced. He found himself
enjoying the stiff freshness of the white tablecloth and the sunlight
sparkling on the silver, on the two bowls of crushed ice holding
glasses of orange juice: he had not known that such things could give
him an invigorating pleasure.

*i didn't want to phone Dagny long distance about this particular
matter.” said Reardcn. “She has enough to do. We can settle it in
a few minutes, you and I.”

“If 1 have the authority to do it.”

Rearden smiled. “You have ” He leaned forward across the table.
“Eddie, what’s the financial state of Taggart Transcontinental at the
moment? Desperate?”

“Worse than that, Mr. Rearden.”

“Arc you able to meet pay rolls 0 '*

“Not quite. We've kept it out ot the newspapers, but I think every-
body knows it. We’re in arrears all over the system and Jim is run-
ning out of excuses.’’

“Do you know that your first payment for the Rearden Metal rail
is due next week?''

“Yes. I know it.”

“Well, let's agree on a moratorium. I’m going to give you an
extension — you won't have to pay me anything until six months alter
the opening of the John Galt Line.”

Eddie Willers put down his cup of cot fee with a sharp thud. He
could not say a word.

Rearden chuckled. “What's the matter? You do have the authority
to accept, don't you?”

“Mr. Rearden ... I don’t know . . . what to say to \ou.”

“Why. just ‘.okay’ is all that’s necessary.”

“Okay, Mr. Rearden.” Eddie’s voice was baiely audible

“I’ll draw up the papers and send them to you. You can tell Jim
about it and have him sign them.”

“Yes, Mr.' Rearden.”

“I don’t like to deal with Jim. He'd waste two hours trying to
make himself believe that he’s made me believe that he’s doing me
a favor by accepting.”

Eddie sat without moving, looking down at his plate.

“What’s the matter 0 ”

“Mr. Rearden, I’d like ... to say thank you . . . but there isn’t
any form of it big enough to-—”

“Look. Eddie. You've got the makings ot a good businessman, so
you’d better get a few things straight, Ehere aren't any thank-you’s
in situations of this kind. I'm not doing it for Taggart 1 ranscont men-
tal. It’s a simple, practical, selfish matter on my part. Why should I
collect my money from you now, when it might prove to be the
death blow to your company? If your company were nr# good. I’d
collect, and fast. I don’t engage in charity and l don't gamble on
incompetents. But you’re still the best railroad in the country. When
the John Galt Line is completed, you’ll be the soundest one finan-
cially. So I have good reason to wait. Besides, you’re in trouble on
account of my rail. I intend to see you win.”

212

“1 still owe you thanks, Mr. Rearden . . . for something much
greater than charity.”

“No. Don’t you see? I have just received a great deal of money . . .
which I didn't want. I can’t invest it. It’s of no use to me whatever , . .
So, in a way, it pleases me that 1 can turn that money against the
same people in the same battle. They made it possible for me to
give you an extension to help you fight them.”

He saw Eddie wincing, as if he had hit a wound. “That’s what’s
horrible about it!”

“What?”

“What they’ve done to you — and what you’re doing in return. I
mean — ” He stopped. “Forgive me, Mr. Rearden. 1 know this is no
way to talk business.”

Rearden smiled. “Thanks, Eddie. 1 know what you mean. But
forget it. To hell with them.”

“Yes. Only . . . Mr. Rearden, may I say something to you? 1 know
it’s completely improper and I’m not speaking as a vice-president.”

“Go ahead.”

“1 don’t have to tell you what your offer means to Dagny, to me,
to every decent person on Taggart Transcontinental. You know it.
And you know you can count on as. But . . . but 1 think it’s horrible
that Jim Taggart should benefit, loo — that you should be the one to
save him and people like him. after they

Rearden laughed. “Eddie, what do we care about people like him?
We’re driving an express, and they’re riding on the roof, making a
lot of noise about being leaders. Why should we care? We have
enough power to carry them along- haven’t we?”

+ *

“It won’t stand.”

Hie summer sun made blotches of lire on the windows of the city,
and glittering sparks in the dust of the streets. Columns of heal
shimmered through the air, rising from the roofs to the white page
of the calendar. The calendar's motor ran on, marking off the last
days of June:

“It won’t stand,” people said “When they run the first train on
the John Galt Line, the rail will split. They’ll never get to the bridge.
If they do, the bridge will collapse under the engine,”

From the slopes of Colorado, freight trains roiled down the track
of the Phoenix- Durango, north to Wyoming and the main line of
Taggart Transcontinental, south to New Mexico and the main line
of the Atlantic Southern. Strings of tank cars went radiating in all
directions from the Wyatt oil fields to industries in distant states. No
one spoke about them. To the knowledge of the public, the tank
trains moved as silently as rays and, as rays, they were noticed only
when they became the light of electric lamps, the heat of furnaces,
the movement of motors; but as such, they were not noticed, they
were taken for granted.

The Phoenix- Durango Railroad was to end operations on July 25.
“Hanlfr Rearden is a greedy monster,” people said. “Look at the
fortune he’s made. Has he ever given anything in return? Has he
ever known any sign of social conscience? Money, that’s all he’s

213

after. Hell do anything for money. What does he care if people lose
their lives when his bridge collapses?’*

“The Taggarts have been a band of vultures for generations,”
people said, ‘it’s in their blood. Just remember that the founder of
that family was Nat Taggart, the most notoriously anti-social scoun-
drel that ever lived, who bled the country white to squeeze a fortune
for himself. You can be sure that a Taggart won’t hesitate to risk
people’s lives in order to make a profit They bought inferior rail,
because it’s cheaper than steel— what do they care about calastio-
phes and mangled human bodies, after they've collected the fares?”

People said it because other people said it. They did not know
why it was being said and heard everywhere. They did not give or
ask for reasons, “Reason,” Dr. Pritchett had told them, “is the most
naive of all superstitions.”

“The source of public opinion?” said Claude Slagenhop in a radio
speech. “There is no source of public opinion. Jt is spontaneously
general. It is a reflex of the collective instinct of the collective mind.”

Orren Boyle gave an interview to Globe , the news magazine with
the largest circulation. The interview was devoted to the subject of
the grave social responsibility of metallurgists, stressing the fact that
metal performed so many crucial tasks where human lives depended
on its quality. “One should not. it seems to me, use human beings
as guinea pigs in the launching of a new product,” he said. He men-
tioned no names.

“Why, no, I don’t say that that bridge will collapse,” said the chief
metallurgist of Associated Steel, on a television program. “I don't
say it at all. I just say that if I had any children. I wouldn't let them
ride on the first train that's going to cross that bridge. But it’s only
a personal preference, nothing more, just because l*m overly lond
of children.”

“I don't claim that the Rearden-Taggart contraption will collapse,”
wrote Bertram Scudder in Pie Future “Maybe it will and maybe it
won’t. That’s not the important issue. The important issue is- what
protection does society have against the arrogance, selfishness and
greed of two unbridled individualists, whose records aie conspicu-
ously devoid of any public-spirited actions? These two, apparently,
are willing to stake the lives of their fellow men on their own con-
ceited notions about their powers of judgment, against the over-
whelming majority opinion of recognized experts. Should society
permit it? If that thing dives collapse, won’t it be too late to take
precautionary measures? Won’t it be like locking the barn after the
horse has escaped? It has always been the belief of this column that
certain kinds of horses should be kept bridled and locked, on general
social principles.”

A group that called itself “Committee of Disinterested Citizens”
collected signatures on a petition demanding a year's study of the
John Galt Line by government experts before the first train was
allowed to run. The petition staled that its signers had n|> motive
other than “a sense of civic duty.” The fir's! signalmen wferc those
of Balph Tubank and Mort Liddy. The petition was givefc a great
deal of space and comment in all the newspapers, Tire consideration

214

it received was respectful, because it came from people who were
disinterested.

No space was given by the newspapers to the progress of the
construction of the John Galt l ine. No reporter was scat to look at
the scene. "Hie general policy of the press had been stated by a
famous editor five years ago. ”'Hiere are no objective facts/’ he had
said, -‘Every report on facts is only somebody’s opinion. It is, there-
fore, useless to write about facts.”

A few businessmen thought that one should think about the possi-
bility that there might be commercial value in Rearden Metal. They
undertook a survey of the question. They did not hire metallurgists
to examine samples, nor engineers to visit the site of construction.
They took a public poll, fen thousand people, guaranteed to repre-
sent every existing kind of brain, were asked the question. “Would
you ride on the John Galt Line?” The answer, overwhelmingly, was:
“No, sir-ree!”

No voices were heard in public in defense of Rearden Metal. And
nobody attached significance to the fact that the stock of Taggart
Transcontinental was rising on the market; very slowly, almost fur-
tively. There were men who watched and played sate. Mr. Mowen
bought Taggart stock in the name of his sister. Ben Nealy bought it
in the name of a cousin. Paul Larkin bought it under an alias. “1
don’t believe in raising controversial issues,” said one of these men.

“Oh, yes. of course, the construction is moving on schedule,” said
James Taggart, shrugging, to his Board of Directors “Oh yes, you
may feel full confidence. My dear sister does not happen to be a
human being, but just an internal combustion engine, so one must
not wonder at her success.”

When James Taggart heard a rumor that some bridge girders had
split and crashed, killing three workmen, he leaped to his feet and
ran to his secretary’s office, ordering him to call Colorado. He
wailed, pressed against the secretary’s desk, as if seeking protection:
his eyes had the unfocused look, of panic. Vet his mouth moved
suddenly into almost a smile and he said, “I’d give anything to see
Henry Rearden ’s face right now.” When he heard that the mmor
was false, he said, “Thank God!” But his voice had a note of
disapixnntment.

“Oh well!” said Philip Rearden to his friends, hearing the same
rumor. “Maybe he can fail, loo. once in a while. Maybe my great
brother isn’t as great as he thinks."

“Darling,” said Lillian Rearden to her husband, “I fought for you
yesterday, at a tea where the women were saying that Dagny Taggart
is your mistress. . . . Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t look at me like
that! 1 know it’s preposterous and I gave them hell for it. It’s just
that those silly bitches can’t imagine any other reason why a woman
would take such a stand against everybody for the sake of your
Metal. Of course, l know better than that. 1 know that the Taggart
woman is perfectly sexless and doesn't give a damn about you— and,
darling, I know that if you ever had the courage for anything of the
sort, ’which you haven’t, you wouldn’t go for an adding machine in

215

tailored suits, you’d go for some blond, feminine chorus girl who —
oh, but Henry, I’m only joking!— <lon’t look at me like that!”

“Dagny,” James Taggart said miserably, “what’s going to happen
to us? Taggart Transcontinental has become so unpopular!”

Dagny laughed, m enjoyment of the moment, any moment, as if
the undercurrent of enjoyment was constant within her and little was
needed to tap it. She laughed easily, her mouth relaxed and open.
Her teeth were very white against her sun-scorched face. Her eyes
had the look, acquired m open country, of being set for great dis-
tances. On her last tew visits to New York, he had noticed that she
looked at him as if she did not sec him.

“What are we going to do? The public is so overwhelmingly
against us!”

“Jim, do you remember the story they tell about Nat T aggart? He
said that he envied only one of his competitors, the one who said
The public be damned!' He wished he had savd it.”

In the summer days and in the heavy stillness of the evenings of
the city, there were moments when a lonely man or woman — on a
park bench, on a street corner, at an open window — would see in a
newspaper a brief mention of the progress ot the John Galt Line,
and would look at the city with a sudden stab of love. They were
the very young, who felt that it was the kind of event they longed
to see happening in the world— or the very old, who had seen a
world in which such events did happen. They did not care about
railroads, they knew' nothing about business, they knew only that
someone was fighting against great odds and winning. They did not
admire the fighters’ purpose, they believed the voices of public opin-
ion— and yet, when they read that the Line was growing, they felt a
moment’s sparkle and wondered why it made theii own problems
seem easier.

Silently unknow n to everyone except to the freight yard of Taggart
Transcontinental in Cheyenne and the office of the John Galt Line
in the dark alley freight was rolling in and orders for cars were piling
up — for the first train to run on the John Galt Line. Dagny Taggart
had announced that the first train would be not a passengei express
loaded with celebrities and politicians, as was the custom, but a
freight special.

"Hie freight came from farms, from lumber yards, from mines all
over the country, from distant places whose last means of survival
were the new factories of C olorado. No one wrote about these ship-
pers, because they were men who were not disinterested.

The Phoenix-Durango Railroad was to close on July 25. The first
train of the John Galt Line was to run on July 22.

“Well, it’s like this. Miss 1 aggart.” said the delegate ol the Union
of Locomotive Engineers. T don't think we re going to allow you
to run that train?'

Dagny sat at her battered desk, against the blotched wall* of her
office. She said, without moving, “Get out of here.”

It was a sentence the man had never heard in the polished! offices
of railroad executives. He looked bewildered. *i came to tell you — ”

“If you have anything to say to me, start over again.”

216

“What?”

“Don’t tell me what you’re going to allow me to do.”

“Well, 1 meant we’re not going to allow our men to run your
train.”

“That's different.”

"Well, that’s what we’ve decided.”

“Who’s decided, it?”

“The committee. What you’re doing is a violation of human rights.
You can’t torce men to go out to get killed — when that bridge col-
lapses just to make money for you.”

She searched for a sheet of blank paper and handed it to him.
“Put it down in writing,” she said, “and we’ll sign a contract to
that effect.”

“What contract?”

“That no member ot your union will ever be employed to run an
engine on the John Galt Line ”

“Why . . . wait a minute ... I haven’t said — *’

“You don’t want to sign such a contract?”

“No 1--”

“Why not. since you know that the bridge is going to collapse?”
“I only want — ”

“I know what you want. You want a stranglehold on your men
by means of the jobs which / give them- -and on me, by means of
your men. You want me to provide the jobs, and you want to make
it impossible for me to have any jobs to provide. Now I'll give you
a choice. That train is going to be run. You have no choice about
that. But you can choose whether it’s going to be run by one of your
men or not. If you choose not to let them, the train will still run. if
1 have to drive the engine myself. Then, if the bridge collapses, there
won't be any railroad left in existence, anyway. But if it doesn’t
collapse, no member of your union will ever get a job on the John
Galt Line if you think that ! need your men more than they need
me, choose accordingly. If you know that I can run an engine, but
they can’t build a railroad, choose according to that. Now arc you
going to forbid your men to run that train?”

“I didn’t say we'd torbid it. 1 haven't said anything about forbid-
ding. But . . . but you can't force men to risk their lives on something
nobody’s ever tried before.”

“I’m not going to force anyone to take that run/'

“What are you going to do?”

“f’m going to ask for a volunteer.”

“And if none of them volunteers?”

“Then it will be my problem, not yours.”

“Well, let me tell you that I’m going to advise them to refuse,”
“Go ahead. Advise them anything you wish. Tell them whatever
you like. But leave the choice to them. Don’t try to forbid it,”
file notice that appeared in every roundhouse of the Taggart system
was signed “Kdwin WiUers, Vice-President in Charge of Operation.” It
asked engineers, who were willing to drive the first train on the John
Galt Line, so to inform the office of Mr, Willers. not later than
eleven a.m. of July 15.

217

It was a quarter of eleven, on the morning of the fifteenth, when
the telephone rang in her office. It was Eddie, calling from high up
in the Taggart Building outside her window. "Dagny, 1 think you’d
better come over.’' His voice sounded queer.

She hurried across the. street, then down the marble-floored halls,
to the door that still carried the name "Dagny Taggart” on its glass
panel. She pulled the door open.

The anteroom of the office was full. Men stood jammed among
the desks, against the walls. As she entered, they took their hats olf
in sudden silence. She saw the graying heads, the muscular shoulders,
she saw the smiling faces of her staff at their desks and the face of
Eddie Willers at the end of the room. Everybody knew that nothing
had to be said.

Eddie stood by the open door of her office. The crowd parted to
let her approach him. He moved his hand, pointing at the room,
then at a pile of letters and telegrams.

“Dagny. every one of them,” he said, "Every engineer on Taggart
Transcontinental. Those who could, came here, some from as far as
the Chicago Division.” He pointed at the mail. "There’s the rest of
them. To be exact, there's only three I haven’t heard from: one’s on
a vacation in the north woods, one’s in a hospital, and one’s in jail
for reckless driving — of his automobile.”

She looked at the men She saw the suppressed grins on the sol-
emn faces. She inclined her head, in acknowledgment. She stood for
a moment, head bowed, as if she were accepting a verdict, knowing
that the verdict applied to her, to every man in the room and to the
world beyond the walls of the building

“Thank you,” she said.

Most of the men had seen her many times. Looking at her, as she
raised her head, many of them thought — in astonishment and for the first
time — that the face of their Operating Vice-President was the face of
a woman and that it was beautiful.

Someone in the back of the crowd cried suddenly, cheerfully, "To
hell with Jim Taggart!”

An explosion answered him. The men laughed, they cheered, they
broke into applause. The response was out of all proportion to the
sentence. But the sentence had given them the excuse they needed.
They seemed to be applauding the speaker, in insolent defiance of
authority. But everyone in the room knew who it was that they
were cheering.

She raised her hand. "We re too early,” she said, laughing. "Wail
till a week from today. That’s when we ought to celebrate. And
believe me. wc will!”

They drew lots for the run. She picked a folded slip of paper from
among a pile containing all their names. The winner was not in the
room, but he was one of the best men on the system, Paf Logan,
engineer of the Taggart Comet on the Nebraska Division. ,

“Wire Pat and tell him he’s been demoted to a freight,” jjshe stud
to Eddie. She added casually, as if it were a last-moment decision,
but it fooled no one, “Oh yes, tell him that I’m going to iide with
him in the cab of the engine on that run.” '

218

An old engineer beside her grinned and said, “I thought you
would. Miss Taggart.*’

* *

Rcarden was in New York on the day when Dagny telephoned
him from her office. “Hank, I’m going to have a press conference
tomorrow.”

He laughed aloud. "No!”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded earnest, hut, dangerously, a bit too
earnest. “The newspapers have suddenly discovered me and arc ask-
ing questions. I’m going to answer them.”

“Have a good time.”

“1 will. Are you going to be in town tomorrow? I’d like to have
you in on it.”

“Gkav. I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

The reporters who came to the press conference in the office of
the John Galt Line were young men who had been trained to think
that their job consisted of concealing from the world the nature of
its events. It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some
public figure who made utterances about the public giWKl in phrases
carefully chosen to convey no meaning, ft was their daily job to sling
words together in any combination they pleased, so long as the words
did not fall into a sequence saying something specific. They amid
riot understand the interview now being given to them.

Dagny Taggart sal behind her desk in an office that looked like a
slum basement. She wore a dark blue suit with a white blouse, beau-
< dully tailored, suggesting an air of formal, almost military elegance.
She sal straight, and her manner was severely dignified, just a shade
too dignified.

Rcarden sat in a comer of the room, sprawled across a broken
armchair, his long legs thrown over one of its arms, his body leaning
against the other. His manner was pleasantly informal, just a bit
too informal

In the clear, monotonous voice of a military report, consulting no
papers, looking straight at the men, Dagny recited the technological
facts about the John Cialf Line, giving exact figures on the nature of
the rail, the capacity of the bridge, the method of construction, the
costs. Then, m the drv tone of a banker, she explained the financial
prospects of the Line and named the large profits she expected to
make. “ Ibat is all,” she said.

“AH?” said one of the reporters. “Aren’t you going to give us a
message for the public?”

“ I hat was mv message.”

“Rut hell —I mean, aren’t you going to defend yourself*”

“Against what?"

“Don’t you want to tell us something to justify your Line?”

“I have.”

A man with a mouth shaped as a permanent sneer asked, “Well,
what I want to know, as Bertram Scudder stated, is what protection
do we have against your line being no good?”

“Don’t ride on it.”

219

Another asked, 44 Aren’t you going to tell us your motive for build*
ing that Line?”

“1 have told you; the profit which 1 expect to make.”

44 Oh, Miss Taggart, don’t say that!” cried a young boy. He was
new, he was still honest about his job, and he felt that he liked
Dagny Taggart, without knowing why. “That’s the wrong thing to
say. That’s what they’re all saying about you.”

“Are they?”

“Tm sure you didn’t mean it the way it sounds and . . . and I’m
sure you’ll want to clarify it."

“Why, yes, if you wish me to. The average profit of tailroads has
been two per cent of the capital invested. An industry that docs so
much and keeps so little, should consider itself immoral. As I have
explained, the cost of the John Galt Line in relation to the traffic
which it will carry makes me expect a profit of not less than fifteen
per cent on our investment. Of course, any industrial profit above
four per cent is considered usury nowadays. 1 shall, nevertheless, do
my best to make the John Galt Line earn a profit ol twenty per cent
for me. if possible. That was my motive for building the Line. Have
I made myself clear now?”

The boy was looking at her helplessly. “You don't mean, to earn
a profit for vow. Miss Taggart? You mean, for the small stockholders,
of course?” he prompted hopefully.

“Why, no. I happen to be one of the largest stockholders of Tag-
gart Transcontinental, so my share of the profits will be one of the
largest. Now, Mr Rearden is in a much more fortunate position,
because he has no stockholders to share with— or would you rather
make your own statement. Mr Rearden 4 ’”

“Yes. gladly." said Rearden. ‘inasmuch as the formula of Rearden
Metal is my own personal secret, and in view of the fact that the
Metal costs much less to produce than you boys can imagine, I expect
to skin the public to the tune of a profit of twenty-five per cent in
the next few -years.”

“What do you mean, skin the public, Mr. Rearden?” asked the
boy. "If it’s true, as I’ve read in your ads. that your Metal will last
three times longer than any other and at halt the price, wouldn’t the
public be getting a bargain?"

"Oh, have you noticed that?” said Rearden.

“Do the two of you realize you're talking for publication?" asked
the man with the sneer.

“But, Mr. Hopkins,” said Dagny. in polite astonishment, “is there
any reason why we would talk to you, if it weren’t for pubheation?"

“Do you want us to quote all the things you said?”

“I hope I may trust you to be sure and quote them. Would you
oblige me by taking this down verbatim?” She paused to | see their
pencils ready, then dictated: “Miss Taggart says — quote — l ^expect to
make a pile of money on the John Galt Line. 1 will have famed it.
Close quote. Thank you so much.” 1

“Any questions, gentlemen?” asked Rearden,

There were no questions.

“Now J must tell you about the opening of the John Cldt Line,”

220

said Dagny. '‘The first train will depart from the station of Taggart
Transcontinental in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at four p.m, on July twenty-
second. It will be a freight special, consisting of eighty cars. It will
be driven by an eight-thousand-horsepower, four-unit Diesel locomo-
tive— which I’m leasing from Taggart Transcontinental for the occa-
sion. It will run non-stop to Wyatt Junction, Colorado, traveling at
an average speed of one hundred miles per hour. 1 beg your par-
don?” she asked, hearing the long, low sound of a whistle.

‘What did you say, Miss Taggart?”

“I said, one hundred miles per hour — grades, curves and all.”

“But shouldn’t you cut the speed below normal rather than . . .
Miss Taggart, don’t you have any consideration whatever for pub-
lic opinion?”

“But 1 do, If it weren’t for public opinion, an average speed of
sixty -five miles per hour would have been quite sufficient.”

“Who’s going to run that train?”

“I had quite a bit of trouble about that. All the Taggart engineers
volunteered to do it. ,So did the firemen, the brakemen and the
conductors. We had to draw lots for every job on the train’s crew.
The engineer will be Pat Logan, of the Taggart Comet, the fireman —
Ray McKim. I shall ride in the cab of the engine with them.”

“Not really!”

“Please do attend the opening. It’s on July twenty-second. The
piess is most eagerly invited Contrary to my usual policy, 1 have
become a publicity hound. Really. I should like to have spotlights,
radio microphones and television cameras. I suggest that you plant
a few cameras around the bridge. T he collapse of the bridge would
give you some interesting shots.”

“Miss Taggart,” asked Rearden, “why didn't you mention that I’m
going to ride in that engine, loo*”

She looked at him across the loom, and for a moment they were
alone, holding each othet’s glance

“Yes, ot course. Mr. Rearden,” she answered.

♦ *

She did not see him again until they looked at each other across
the platform of the Taggart station in Cheyenne, on July 22.

She did not look for anyone when she stepped out on the platform;
she felt as if her senses had merged, so that she could not distinguish
the sky, the sun or the sounds of an enormous crowd, but perceived
only a sensation of shock and light.

Yet he was the first person she saw, and she could not tell for
how long a time he was also the only one. He stood by the engine
ol the John Galt train, talking to somebody outside the field of her
consciousness. He was dressed in gray slacks and shut, he looked
like an expert mechanic, but he was stared at by the faces around
him, because he was Hank Rearden of Rearden Steel. High above
him, she saw the letters TT on the silver front of the engine. The
lines of the engine slanted back, aimed at space.

There was distance and a crowd between them, but his eyes moved
to her the moment she came out. They looked at each other and
she knew that he fell as she did. This was not to be a solemn venture

221

through the air, far at the end, she moved her arm in answering
signal.

Rearden, Logan and McKim stood silently, as if at attention, let-
ting her be first to get aboard. As she started up the rungs on the
side of the engine, a reporter thought ot a question he had not asked.

“Miss Taggart," he called after her, “who is John Galt?"

She turned, hanging onto a metal bat with one hand, suspended
for an instant above the heads of the crowd

“WV are!" she answered.

Logan followed her into the cab. then McKim: Reardon went last,
then the door of the engine was shut, with the tight finality of
sealed metal.

The lights, hanging on a signal bridge against the sky. were green.
There were gieen lights between the tracks, low over the ground,
dropping otf into the distance where the rails turned and a green
light stood at the curve, against leaves of a summer green that looked
as if they, loo. were lights.

Two men held a white silk ribbon stretched across the track in
front of the engine. The) were the superintendent ot the Colorado
Division and Nealy's chief engineer, who had remained on the job
Eddie Willers was to cut the ribbon they held and thus to open the
new line.

The photographers posed him carefully, scissors in hand, his back
to the engine He would icpeat the ceremony two or three times,
they explained, to give them a choice ot shots; they had a fresh bolt
of ribbon ready. He was about to comply, then stopped. “No," he
said suddenly, “It’s not going to be a phony "

In a voice of quiet authority, the voice of a vice-president, he
ordered, pointing at the cameras, “Stand back - way back. Take one
shot when I cut it. then get out of the way. fast "

They obeyed, moving hastily farther down the track. There was
only one minute left. Eddie turned his back to the cameras and stood
between the* rails, facing the engine He held the scissors ready over
the white ribbon. He took his hat off and tossed it aside He was
looking up at the engine. A faint wind stirred his blond hair l he
engine was a great silver shield bearing the emblem of Nat Taggart,

Eddie Willers raised his hand as the hand of the station clock
reached- the instant of four

“Open her up, Pat!" he aided.

In the moment when the engine started forward, he cut the while
ribbon and leaped out of the way.

From the side track, he saw the window of the aib go b> and
Dagny waving to him »n an answering salute Then the engine was
gone, and he stood looking across at the crowded platfornji that kept
appearing and vanishing as the freight ears clicked past hjm.

*. *

The green-blue rails ran to meet them, like two jets sh$t out ot a
single point beyond the curve of the earth, The aossties jroelted, as
they approached, into a smooth stream rolling down junder the
wheels, A blurred streak dung to the side of the engine, low over
the ground. Frees and telegraph poles sprang into sight abruptly and

224

went by as if jerked back. The green plains stretched past, in a
leisurely flow. At the edge of the sky, a long wave of mountains
reversed the movement and seemed to follow the train.

She fell no wheels under the floor. The motion was a smooth flight
on a sustained impulse, as if the engine hung above the rails, riding
a current. She felt no speed, it seemed strange that the green lights
of the signals kept coming at them and past, every few seconds. She
knew that the signal lights were spaced two miles apart.

The needle on the speedometer in front of Pat Logan stood at
one hundred.

She sat in the fireman's chair and glanced across at Logan once in
a while. He sat slumped forward a Tittle, relaxed, one hand resting
lightly on the throttle as if by chance; but his eyes were fixed on the
track ahead. He had the ease ol an expert, so confident that it seemed
casual, but it was the ease of a tremendous concentration, the concen-
tration on one's task that has the ruthlessness of an absolute, Ray
McKim sat on a bench behind them. Reardcn stood in the middle
of the cab.

He stood, hands in pockets, feet apart, braced against the motion,
looking ahead. Inhere was nothing he could now care to see by the
side of the track: he was looking at the rail.

Ownership -she thought, glancing back at him — weren't there
those who knew nothing of its nature and doubted its reality? No,
it was not made of papers, seals, grants and permissions. There it
was in his eyes.

The sound lilling the cab seemed part of the space they were
crossing. It held the low drone of the motors- the sharper clicking
of the many parts that rang in varied cries of metal— and the high,
ihm chimes of trembling glass panes.

Things streaked past- -a water tank, a tree, a shanty, a grain silo.

I hey had a windshield-wiper motion: they were rising, describing a
curve and dropping back. The telegraph wires ran a race with the
train, rising and falling from pole to pole, in an even rhythm, like
the cardiograph record of a steady heartbeat written across the sky.

She looked ahead, at the ha/e that melted rail and distance, a
ha/c that amid rip apart at any moment to some shape of disaster.
She wondered why she felt safer than she had ever felt in a car
behind the engine, safer here, where it seemed as if, should an obsta-
cle rise, her breast and the glass shield would be first to smash against
it. She smiled, grasping the answer it was the security of being first,
with full sight and full knowledge of one’s course — not the blind
sense of being pulled into the unknown by some unknown power
ahead. It was the greatest sensation of existence: not to trust, but
to know.

The glass sheets of the cab's windows made the spread of the
fields seem vaster: the earth looked as open to movement as it was
to sight. Yet nothing was distant and nothing was out of reach. She
had barely grasped the sparkle of a lake ahead— and in the next
instant she was beside it, then past.

It "was a strange foreshortening between sight and touch, she
thought, between wish and fulfillment, between— the words clicked

225

sharply in her mind after a startled stop — between spirit and body.
First, the virion — then the physical shape to express it. First, the
thought — then the purposeful motion down the straight line of a
single track to a chosen goal. Could one have any meaning without
the other? Wasn't it evil to wish without moving — or to move with-
out aim? Whose malevolence was it that crept through the world,
struggling to break the two apart and set them against each other?

She shook her head. She did not want to think or to wonder why
the world behind her was as it was. She did not care. She was flying
away from it, at the rate of a hundred miles an hour. She leaned to
the open window by her side, and felt the wind of the speed blowing
her hair off her forehead. She lay back, conscious of nothing but the
pleasure it gave her

Yet her mind kept racing. Broken bits of thought flew past her
attention, like the telegraph poles by the track. Physical pleasure? —
she thought. This is a train made of steel . . . running on rails of Reardon
Metal . . . moved by the energy of burning oil and electric genetators . . .
ifs a physical sensation of physical movement through space . . . but
is that the cause and the meaning of what I now feel? , . l>o they call it
a low, animal joy — this feeling that I would not care if the rail did
break to bits under us now— it won't — but 1 wouldn't care, because
I have experienced this? A low, physical, material, degrading plea-
sure of the body?

She smiled, her eyes closed, the wind streaming through her hair

She opened her eyes and saw that Rearden stood looking down
at her. It was the same glance with which he had looked at the rail.
She felt her power of volition knocked out by some single, dull blow
that made her unable to move. She held his eyes, lying back m her
chair, the wind pressing the thin cloth of her shirt to her body.

He looked away, and she turned again to the sight of the earth
tearing open before them.

She did not want to think, but the sound of thought went on, like
the drone of the motors under the sounds of the engine. She looked
at the cab around her. The line steel mesh of the ceiling, she thought,
and the row of rivets in the corner, holding sheets of steel sealed
together — who made them? The brute force of men's muscles? Who
made it possible for four dials and three levers in front of Pat Logan
to hold the incredible power of the sixteen motors behind them and
deliver it to the effortless control of one man's hand?

These things and the capacity from which they came— was this the
pursuit men regarded as evil? Was this what they called an ignoble
concern with the physical world? Was this the state of being enslaved
by matter? Was this the surrender of man's spirit to his twdv?

She shook her head, as if she wished she could toss tfce subject
out of the window and let it get shattered somewhere tatong the
track. She looked at the sun on the summer fields. She di^l not have
to think, because these questions were only details of a| truth she
knew and had always known, Let them go past like the* telegraph
poles. The thing she knew was like the wires flying a hove in an
unbroken line. The words for it, and for this journey, and for her

226

feeling, and for the whole of man’s earth, were: IPs so simple and
so right I

She looked out at the country. She had been aware for some time
of the human figures that flashed with an odd regularity at the side
of the track. But they went by so fast that she could not grasp their
meaning until, like the squares of a movie film, brief flashes blended
into a whole and she understood it. She had had the track guarded
since its completion, but she had not hired the human chain she saw
strung out along the right-of-way. A solitary figure stood at every
mile post. Some were young schoolboys, others were so old that the
silhouettes of their bodies looked bent against the sky. All of them
were armed, with anything they had found, from costly rifles to an-
cient muskets. All of them wore railroad caps. They were the sons
of Taggart employees, and old railroad men who had retired after a
full lifetime of Taggart service. They had come, unsummoned, to
guard this train. As the engine went past him, every man in his turn
stood erect, at attention, and raised his gun in a military salute.

When she grasped it, she burst out laughing, suddenly, with the
abruptness of a cry. She laughed, shaking, like a child: it sounded
like sobs of deliverance. Pal Logan nodded to her with a faint smile;
he had noted the guard of honor long ago. She leaned to the open
window, and her arm swept in wide curves of triumph, waving to
the men by the track.

On the crest of a distant hill, she saw a crowd of people, their
arms swinging against the sky. The gray houses of a village were
scattered through a valley below, as it dropped there once and for-
gotten; the roof lines slanted, sagging, and the years had washed
away the coloi of the walls Perhaps generations had lived there,
with nothing to mark the passage of their days but the movement
of the sun from east to west. Now, these men had climbed the hill
to see a silver- headed cornel cut through their plains like the sound
of a bugle through a long weight of silence

As houses began to come more frequently, closer to the track, she
saw people at the windows, on the poichcs, on distant roofs. She
saw crowds blocking the roads at grade crossings. The roads went
sweeping past like the spokes of a fan, and she could not distinguish
human figures, only their arms greeting the train like branches wav-
ing in the wind of its speed. They stood under the swinging red lights
of warning signals, under the signs saying: “Stop. Look. Listen.**

The station past which they flew, as they went through a town at
a hundred miles an hour, was a swaying sculpture ot people from
platform to roof. She caught the flicker of waving arms, of hats tossed
in the air, of something flung against the side of the engine, which
was a bunch of flowers.

As the miles clicked past them, the towns went by. with the sta-
tions at which they did not stop, with the crowds of people who had
come only to see, to cheer and to hope. She saw garlands of flowers
under the sooted eaves of old station buildings, and bunting of red-
white-and-hltH? on the time-eaten walls. U was like the pictures she
had seen — and envied - -in schoolbook histories of railroads, from the
era when people gathered to greet the first run of a train. It was

227

like the age when Nat Taggart moved across the country* and the
stops along his way were marked by men eager for the sight of
achievement. That age* she had thought, was gone; generations had
passed* with no event to greet anywhere* with nothing to see but the
cracks lengthening year by year on the walls built by Nat Taggart.
Yet men came again* as they had come in his time* drawn by the
same response.

She glanced at Rearden. He stood against the wall* unaware of
the crowds, indifferent to admiration. He was watching the perfor-
mance of track and train with an expert’s intensity of professional
interest, his bearing suggested that he would kick aside, as irrelevant,
any thought such as “They like it,” when the thought ringing in his
mind was it works!”

His tall figure in the single gray of slacks and shirt looked as if
his body were stripped for action. The slacks stressed the long lines
of his legs, the light, firm posture of standing without effort or being
ready to swing forward at an instant's notice: the short sleeves
stressed the gaunt strength of his amis; the open shirt bared the light
skin of his chest.

She turned away, realizing suddenly that she had been glancing
back at him too often. But this day had no ties to past or future —
her thoughts were cut off from implications — she saw no further
meaning, only the immediate intensity of the feeling that she was
imprisoned with him, sealed together in the same cube of air. the
closeness of his presence underscoring her awareness of this day, as
his rails underscored the flight of the train.

She turned deliberately and glanced back. He was looking at her.
He did not turn away, but held her glance, coldly and with full
intention. She smiled defiantly, not letting herself know the full
meaning of her smile, knowing only that it was the sharpest blow
she could strike at this inflexible face. She felt a sudden desire to
see him trembling, to tear a cry out of him. She turned her head
away, slowty, feeling a reckless amusement, wondering why she
found it difficult to breathe.

She sat leaning back in her chair, looking ahead, knowing that he
was as aware of her as she was of him. She found pleasure in the
special self-consciousness it gave her. When she crossed her legs,
when she leaned on her arm against the window sill, when she
brushed her hair off her forehead — every movement of her body was
underscored by a feeling the unadmitted words for which were: Is
he seeing it?

The towns had been left behind. The track was rising through a
country growing more grimly reluctant to permit approach!. The rails
kept vanishing behind curves, and the ridges of hills kept moving
closer, as if the plains were being folded into pleats The- flat stone
shelves of Colorado were advancing to the edge of the |rack— and
the distant reaches of the sky were shrinking into wave* of bluish
mountains.

Far ahead* they saw a mist of smoke over factory chim&eys— then
the web of a power station ami the lone needle of a steej structure.
They were approaching Denver.

228

She glanced at Pat Logan. He was leaning forward a little farther.
She saw a slight tightening in the fingers of his hand and in his eyes.
He knew, as she did, the danger of crossing the city at the speed
they were traveling.

It was a succession of minutes, but it hit them as a single whole.
First, they saw the lone shapes, which were factories, rolling across
their windowpanes— then the shapes fused into the blur of streets —
then a delta of rails spread out before them, like the mouth of a
funnel sucking them into the Taggart station, with nothing to protect
them but the small green beads of light scattered over the ground —
from the height of the cab, they saw boxcars on sidings streak past
as flat ribbons of roof tops — the black hole of the train-shed flew at
their faces— they hurtled through an explosion of sound, the beating
of wheels against the glass panes of a vault, and the screams of
cheering from a mass that swayed like a liquid in the darkness among
steel columns they flew toward a glowing arch and the green lights
hanging in the open sky beyond, the green lights that were like the
doorknobs of space, throwing door after door open before them.
Then, vanishing behind them, went the streets clotted with traffic,
the open windows bulging with human figures, the screaming sirens,
and— I rom the top of a distant skyscraper- -a cloud of paper snow-
flakes shimmering on the air, flung by someone who saw the passage
ol a silver bullet across a city stopped still to watch it.

Then they were out again, on a r<K v ky grade- -anti with shocking
suddenness, the mountains were before them, as if the city had flung
them straight at a granite wall, and a thin ledge had caught them in
time They were clinging to the side of the vertical cliff, with the
earth rolling down, dropping away, and giant tiers of twisted boulders
streaming up and shutting out the sun. leaving them to speed through
a bluish twilight, with no sight of soil or sky.

The curves of rail became coiling circles among walls that ad-
vanced to grind them off their sides. But the track cut through at
times and the mountains parted, flaring open like two wings at the
tip of the rail — <mc wing green, made of vertical needles, with whole
pines serving as the pile of a solid carpet— the other reddish-brown,
made of naked rock.

She looked down through the open window and saw the silver
side of the engine hanging over empty spaa'. Far below, the thin
thread of a stream went falling from ledge to ledge, and the ferns
that drooped to the water were the shimmering tops of birch trees.
She saw the engine's tail of boxcars winding along the face of a
granite drop- -and miles of contorted stone below, she saw the coils
of gieen-bluc rail unwinding behind the train.

A wall of rock shot upward in their path, filling the windshield,
darkening the cab. so close that it seemed as if the remnant of time
could not let them escape it. But she heard the screech of wheels
on curve, the light came bursting back -and she saw an open stretch
of rail on a narrow shelf. The shelf ended m space. The nose of the
engine was aimed straight at the sky. There was nothing to stop
them but two strips of green-blue metal strung in a curve along
the shelf.

229

To take the pounding violence of sixteen motors, she thought, the
thrust of seven thousand tons of steel and freight, to withstand it, grip
it and swing it around a curve, was the impossible feat performed by
two strips of metal no wider than her arm. What made it possible?
What power had given to an unseen arrangement of molecules the
power on which their lives depended and the lives of all the men
who waited for the eighty boxcars? She saw a man's face and hands
in the glow of a laboratory oven, over the white liquid of a sample
of metal.

She felt the sweep of an emotion which she could not contain, as
of something bursting upward. She turned to the door of the motor
units, she threw it open to a screaming jet of sound and escaped
into the pounding of the engine’s heart.

For a moment, it was as if she were reduced to a single sense, the
sense of hearing, and what remained of her hearing was only a long,
rising, falling, rising scream. She stood in a swaying, sealed chamber
of metal, looking at the giant generators. She had wanted to sec
them, because the sense of triumph within her was bound to them,
to her love for them, to the reason of the life-work she had chosen.
In the abnormal clarity of a violent emotion, she left as it she were
about to grasp something she had never known and had to know.
She laughed aloud, but heard no sound of it; nothing could be heard
through the continuous explosion. ‘The John (Jail Line!” she
shouted, for the amusement of feeling her voice swept away from
her lips.

She moved slowly along the length of the motor units, down a
narrow passage between the engines and the wall She felt the im-
modesty of an intruder, as if she had slipped inside a living creature,
under us silver skin, and were watching its lite beating in gray metal
cylinders, in twisted coils, in sealed tubes, in the convulsive whirl ot
blades in wire cages. The enormous complexity ol the shape above
her was drained by invisible channels, and the violence raging within
it was led to'fragile needles on glass dials, to green and red beads
winking on panels, to tall, thin cabinets stenciled “High Voltage *'

Why had she always lelt that joyous sense of confidence when
looking at machines? — she thought. In these giant shapes, two as-
pects pertaining to the inhuman were radiantly absent: the causeless
and the purposeless Every part of the motors was an embodied
answer to “Why?" and “What tor — like the steps of a life -course
chosen by the sort of mind she worshipped. The motors were a moral
code cast in steel.

They are alive, she thought, because thev are the physical shape
of the action of a living power— of the mind that had been able to
grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.
For an instant, it seemed to her that the motors were transparent
and she was seeing the net of their nervous system. It wa$ a net of
connections, more intricate, more crucial than all of their jwires and
circuits: the rational connections made by that human mind which
had fashioned any one part of them for the first time.

They are alive, she thought, but their soul operates them Jby remote
control Their soul is in every man who has the capacity to equal

230

this achievement. Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors
would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going — not
the oil under the floor under her feet, the oil that would then become
primeval ooze again — not the steel cylinders that would become
stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages — the
power of a living mind — the power of thought and choice and
purpose.

She was making her way back toward the cab, feeling that she
wanted to laugh, to kneel or to lift her arms, wishing she were able to
release the thing she felt, knowing that it had no form of expression.

She stopped. She saw Rcarden standing by the steps of the door
to the cab He was looking at her as if he knew why she had escaped
and what she felt. They stood still, their bodies becoming a glance
that met across a narrow passage. The beating within her was one
with the beating of the motors — and she felt as if both came from
him; the pounding rhythm wiped out her will. They went back to
the cab, silently, knowing that there had been a moment which was
not to be mentioned between them.

The cliffs ahead were a bright, liquid gold. Strips of shadow were
lengthening in the valleys below. The sun was descending to the
peaks in the west. They were going west and up, toward the sun.

The sky had deepened to the gteenish-blue of the rails, when they
saw smokestacks in a distant valley. It was one of Colorado's new
towns, the towns that had grown like a radiation trom the Wyatt oil
fields. She saw the angular lines of modern houses, flat roofs, great
sheets of windows It was too far to distinguish people. In the mo-
ment when she thought that they would not be watching the train
at that distance, a locket shot out trom among the buildings, rose
high above the town and broke as a fountain ot gold stars against
the darkening sky. Men whom she could not see, were seeing the
streak of the tram on the side of the mountain, and were sending a
salute, a lonely plume ol tire in the dusk, the symbol of celebration
or ot a call tor help.

Beyond the next turn, in a sudden view of distance, she saw two
dots of electric light, white and red, low in the sky. They were not
an planes -she saw the cones of metal girders supporting them — and
in the moment when she knew that they were the derricks of Wyatt
Oil, she saw that the track was sweeping downward, that the earth
Hared open, as if the mountains were Hung apart— and at the bottom,
at the foot of the Wyatt hill, across the dark crack of a canyon, she
saw (he bridge of Rcarden Metal.

They were Hying down, she toigot the careful grading, the great
curves of the gradual descent, she felt as if the train were plunging
downward, head first, she watched the bridge growing to meet
them -a small, square tunnel of metal lace work, a few beams criss-
crossed through the air, green-blue and glowing, struck by a long
ray of sunset light trom some crack in the barrier of mountains,
'There were people by the bridge, the dark splash of a crowd, but
they, rolled off the edge of her consciousness. She heard the rising,
accelerating sound of the wheels — and some theme of music, heard
to the rhythm of wheels, kept tugging at her mind, growing louder —

231

it hum suddenly within the calx hut she knew that it was only in
her mind: the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley — she thought: did
he write it for this? had he known a feeling such as this?- -they were
going faster, they had left the ground, she thought, flung oft by the
mountains as by a springboard, they were now sailing through
space — it's not a fair test, she thought, we’re not going to touch that
bridge — she saw Rearden’s face above her, she held his eyes and
her head leaned back, so that her face lay still on the air under his
face— they heard a ringing blast of metal, they heard a drum roll
under their feet, the diagonals of the bridge went smearing aeioss
the windows with the sound of a metal rod being run along the
pickets of a fence — then the windows were too suddenly clear,
the sweep ol their downward plunge was carrying them up a hill, the
derricks of Wyatt Oil were reeling belore them — Pat Logan turned,
glancing up at Kcardcn with the hint of a smile --and Reardon said,
'That’s that.”

The sign on the edge of a roof read, wy m i jinc non She stared,
feeling that there was something odd about it, until she grasped what
it was: the sign did not move. The shaipcst jolt ot the journey' was
the realization that the engine stood still

She heard voices somewhere, she looked down and saw that there
were people on the platform. Then the doot ot the cab was flung
open, she knew that she had to be first to descend, and she stepped
to the edge. For the flash ol an instant, she felt the slenderness ot
her own body, the lightness of standing full-figure in a current of
open air, She gripped the metal bars and started down the ladder.
She was halfway down when she felt the palms of a man’s hands
slam tight against her ribs and waistline, she was torn oft the steps,
swung through the air and deposited on the ground She could not
believe that the voting boy laughing in her lace was Hllis Wyatt. The
tense, scornful face she remembered, now had the purity, the eager-
ness, the joyous benevolence of a child in the kind of world for
which he had been intended.

She was leaning against his shoulder, feeling unsteady on the mo-
tionless ground, with his arm about her. she was laughing, she was
listening to the things he said, she was answering, “Hut didn't you
know we would 0 '

In a moment, '-he saw the faces around them Fhcy were the bond-
holders of the John Galt Line, the men who were Nielsen Motors,
Hammond Cars, Stockton Foundry and all the others. She shook
their hands, and there were no speeches; she stoiwj against Hllis
Wyatt, sagging a little, brushing her hair away from her eves, leaving
smudges of soot on her forehead. She shook the hands <«! the men
of the train’s crew, without words, with the seal of the grifs on their
faces. There were flash hulbs exploding around them, and* men wav-
ing to them from the riggings of the oil wells on the slopes of the
mountains. Above her head, above the heads of the erovfd, the let-
ters TT on a silver shield were hit by the last ray of a sinking sun.

Ellis Wyatt had taken charge. He was leading her somewhere, the
sweep of his arm cutting a path for them through the crpwd, when
one of the men with the cameras broke through to her side. “Mis-s

232

Taggart,” he called, ‘‘will you give us a message for the public?”
Ellis Wyatt pointed at the long string of freight ears “She has/’

Then she was sitting in the back seat of an open ear, driving up
the curves of a mountain road. The man beside her was Reardon,
the driver was Ellis Wyatt.

They stopped at a house that stood on the edge ot a dill, with no
other habitation anywhere in sight, with the whole of the oil fields
spread on the slopes below,

“Why, ol course you’re staving at mv house overnight, both of
you,” said Ellis Wyatt, as they went in. “Where did you expect to
slay?”

She laughed. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought ot it at all.”

“The nearest town is an hour’s drive away That's where your
trew has gone: your boys at the division point are giving a party in
their honor. So is the whole town. But I told led Nielsen and the
others that we’d have no banquets for you and no oratory. Unless
you'd like if’”

“God, no!” she said. “Thanks, Ellis.*'

It was dark when they sat at the dinner table in a room that had
large windows and a tew pieces ol costly furniture. The dinner was
solved bv a silent figure m a white jacket, the only other inhabitant
of the house, an elderly Indian with a stony face and a courteous
manner. A tew points of tire were seafteied through the room, run-
ning-over and out beyond the windows, the candies on the table, the
lights on the derricks, and the stars:

“Do you think that you have vour hands tul! now?” Ellis Wyatt
was saying “Just give me a year and HI give you something to keep
you busy. I wo tank trams a day. Dagnv' 1 It s going to be four or six
01 as many as you wish me to till.” Elis, hand swept over the lights
on the mountains. “This? Ifs nothing, compared to what Eve got
coming.” He pointed west “ The Buena Esperan/.d Pass. Five miles
from here. Evei vbody’s wondering what Em doing with it. Oil shale.
How many years ago was it that they gave up trying to get oil from
shale, because it was too expensive” Well, wait till you see the pro-
cess Eve developed. It will be the cheapest oil ever to splash in their
faces, and an unlimited supply ol it. an untapped supply that will
make the biggest oil pool look hke a mud puddle. Did 1 order a
pipe line? Hank, you and I will have to build pipe lines in all direc-
tions to . . . Oh. I beg your pardon. I don't believe l introduced
myself when f spoke to you at the station. 1 haven't even told you
iny name.”

Rcardcn grinned. “Eve guessed it by now.”

“Em sorry, 1 don’t like to be careless, but I was too excited.”

“What were you excited about?” asked Dagny, her eyes narrowed
in mockery.

Wyatt held her glance for a moment; his answer had a tone of
solemn intensity strangely conveyed by a smiling voice, “About the
most beautiful slap in the face 1 ever got and deserved,”

“Do you mean, for our first meeting?”

“I mean, for our first meeting? 1

“Don't. You were right.’ 1

233

“I was. About everything but you. Dagny, to find an exception
after years of . . . Oh, to hell with them! Do you want me to turn
on the radio and hear what they’re saying about the two of you
tonight?’'

“No."

•‘Good. I don’t want to hear them. Let them swallow their own
speeches. They’re all climbing on the band wagon now. We’re the
band." He glanced at Rearden. “What are you smiling at?"

“I’ve always been curious to see what you’re like."

‘“I’ve never had a chance to be what I’m like — except tonight."

‘“Do you live here alone, like this, miles away from everything?"

Wyatt pointed at the window. ‘Tin a couple of steps away
from — every thi ng. ’ *

“What about people?"

“I have guest rooms for the kind of people who come to see me
on business. 1 want as many miles as possible between myself and
all the other kinds." lie leaned forward to refill their wine glasses.
“Hank, why don’t you move to Colorado? To hell with New York
and the Eastern Seaboard! This is the capital of the Renaissance.
The Second Renaissance — not of oil paintings and cathedrals — but
of oil derricks, power plants, and motors made of Rearden Metal.
They had the Stone Age and the Iron Age and now they’re going
to call it the Rearden Metal Age — because there’s no limit to what
your Metal has made possible."

“I’m going to buy a few square miles of Pennsylvania.” said Rear-
den. “The ones around my mills. It would have been cheaper to
build a branch here, as I wanted, but you know why I can’t, and to
hell with them! I’ll beat them anyway. I’m going to expand the
mills — and if she can give me tlirec-day freight service to Colorado.
I’ll give you a race for who’s going to be the capital of the Ren-
aissance!"

“Give me n year,” said Dagny, “of running trains on the John
Galt Line, give me time to pull the Taggart system togethei — and
I’ll give you three-day freight service across the continent, on a Rear-
den Metal track from ocean to ocean!”

“Who was it that said he needed a fulcrum?" said Ellis Wyatt.
“Give me an unobstructed right-of-wav and I’ll show them how to
move the earth!"

She wondered what it was that she liked about the sound of Wy-
att’s laughter. Their voices, even her own, had a tone she had never
heard before. When they rose from the table, she was astonished to
notice that the candies were the only illumination of the room: she
had fell as if she were sitting in a violent light.

Ellis WyatL picked up his glass, looked at their faces andtsnid, “To
the world as it seems to be right now!"

He emptied the glass with a single movement.

She heard the crash of the glass against the wall in the sa^ne instant
that she saw a circling current — from the curve of his btjjdy to the
sweep of his arm to the terrible violence of his hand that flung the
glass across the room. It was not the conventional gesture meant as

234

celebration, it was the gesture of a rebellious anger, the vicious ges-
ture which is movement substituted for a scream of pain,

“Ellis ” she whispered, “what’s the matter?”

He turned to look at her. With the same violent suddenness* his
eyes were clear, his face was calm; what frightened her was seeing
him smile gently. “I’m sorry,’* he said, “Never mind. We’ll try to
think that it will last.”

The earth below was streaked with moonlight, when Wyatt led
them up an outside stairway to the second floor of the house, to the
open gallery at the doors of the guest rooms. He wished them good
night and they heard his steps descending the stairs. The moonlight
seemed to drain sound as it drained color. The steps rolled into a
distant past, and when they died, the silence had the quality of a
solitude that had lasted for a long time, as if no person were left
anywhere in reach.

She did not turn to the door of her room. He did not move. At
the level of their feet, there was nothing but a thin railing and a
spread of space. Angular tiers descended below, with shadows re-
peating the steel Uaccry ot derricks, criss-crossing sharp, black lines
on patches of glowing rock. A tew lights, white and red, trembled
in the clear air. like drops of rain caught on the edges of steel girders.
Far in the, distance, three small drops were green, strung in a line
along the Taggart track. Beyond them, af the end of space, at the
foot of a white curve, hung a webbed rectangle which was the bridge.

She felt a rhythm without sound or movement, a sense of beating
tension, as if the wheels of the John Galt Line were still speeding
on Slowly, in answer and m resistance to an unspoken summons,
she turned and looked at him.

The look she saw on his face made her know lor the first time
that she had known this would be the end of the journey. That look
was not as men are taught to represent it. it was not a matter of
loose muscles, hanging lips and mindless hunger, l’he lines of his
face were pulled tight, giving it a peculiar purity, a sharp precision
of form, making it clean and young. His mouth was taut, the lips
faintly drawn inward, stressing the outline ot its shape. Only his eyes
were blurred, their lower lids swollen and raised, iheir glance intent
with that which resembled hatred and pain.

The shock became numbness spreading through her body— she felt
a tight pressure in her throat and her stomach— she was conscious
of nothing but a silent convulsion that made her unable to breathe.
But what she felt, without words for it, was: Yes, Hank, yes— now —
because it is part of the same battle, m some way that I can't
name . . . because it is our being, against theirs . . . our great capacity,
for which they torture us, the capacity of happiness . . . Now, like
this, without words or questions . . because we want it . . .

It was like an act of hatred, like the cutting blow of a lash encir-
cling her body: she felt his arms around her, she felt her legs pulled
forward against him and her chest bent back under the pressure of
his, .his mouth on hers.

Her hand moved from his shoulders to his waist to his legs, releas-
ing the unconfessed desire of her every meeting with him. When she

235

tore her mouth away from him, she was laughing soundlessly, in
triumph, as if saying: Hank Rearden — the austere, unapproachable
Hank Rearden of the monklike office, the business confeiences, the
harsh bargains — do you remember them now? — I’m thinking of it,
for the pleasure of knowing that I’ve brought you to this. He was
not smiling, his face was tight, it was the face of an enemy, he jerked
her head and caught her mouth again, as if he were inflicting a
wound.

She felt him trembling and she thought that this was the kind of
cry she had wanted to tear from him — this surrender through the
shreds of his tortured resistance. Yet she knew, at the same time,
that the triumph was his, that her laughter was her tribute to him,
that her defiance was submission, that the purpose of all of her vio-
lent strength was only to make his victory the greater — he was hold-
ing her body against his, as if stressing his wish to let her know that
she was now only a tool for the satisfaction— of his desire — and his
victory, she knew, was her wish to let him reduce her to that. What-
ever I am, she thought, whatever pride of person I may hold, the
pride of my courage, of my work, of my mind and my freedom —
that is what I offer you for the pleasure of your body, that is what
I want you to use in your service — and that you want it to serve you
is the greatest reward I can have.

There were lights burning in the two rooms behind them. He took
her wrist and threw her inside his room, making the gesture tell her
that he needed no sign of consent or resistance. He locked the door,
watching her face. Standing straight, holding his glance, she extended
her arm to the lamp on the table and turned out the light, lie ap-
proached- He turned the light on again, with a single, contemptuous
jerk of his wrist. She saw him smile for the first time, a slow, mock-
ing, sensual smile that stressed the purpose of his action.

He was holding her half-stretched across the bed, he was tearing
her clothes off, while her face was pressed against him, her mouth
moving down the line of his neck, down his shoulder. She knew that
every gesture oLher desire for him struck him like a blow, that there
was some shudder of incredulous anger within him — yet that no gesture
would satisfy his greed for every evidence of her desire.

He stood looking down at her naked body, he leaned over, she
heard his voice — it was more a statement of contemptuous triumph
than a question: “You want it‘>” Her answer was more a gasp than
a word, her eyes closed, her mouth open: “Yes.”

She knew that what she felt with the skin of her arms was the
cloth of his shirt, she knew that the lips she felt on her mouth were
his, but in the rest of her there was no distinction between his being
and her own, as there was no division between body and spirit.
Through all the steps of the years behind them, the steps down a
course chosen in the courage of a single loyalty: their love of exis-
tence-chosen in the knowledge that nothing will be given, that one
must make one’s own desire and every shape of its fulfilltnent —
through the steps of shaping metal, rails and motors— they had
moved by the power ol the thought that one remakes the earth for
one’s enjoyment, that man’s spirit gives meaning to insentient matter

236

by molding it to serve one’s chosen goal. The course led them to
the moment when, in answer to the highest of one’s values, in an
admiration not to be expressed by any other form of tribute, one’s
spirit makes one’s body become the tribute, recasting it — as proof*
as sanction, as reward — into a single sensation of such intensity of
joy that no other sanction of one’s existence is necessary. He heard
the moan ot her breath, she felt the shudder of his body, in the
same instant.

Chapter IX THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

She looked at the glowing bands on the skin of her arm, spaced like
bracelets from her wrist to her shoulder. They were strips of sunlight
from the Venetian blinds on the window of an unfamiliar room. She saw
a bruise above her elbow, with dark beads that had been blood. Her
arm lay on the blanket that covered her body. She was aware of her
legs and hips, but the rest of her body was only a sense of lightness,
as if it were stretched restfuJly across the air in a place that looked
like a cage made of sunrays.

fuming to look at him, she thought: From his aloofness, from his
manner of glass-enclosed formality, from his pride in never being
made to feel anything — to this, to Hank Rearden in bed beside her,
after hours of a violence which they could not name now, not in
words or in daylight — but which was in their eyes, as they looked at
each other, which they wanted to name, to stress, to throw at each
other's face.

He saw the face of a young girl, her lips suggesting a smile, as if
her natural slate of relaxation were a state of radiance, a lqck of
hair tailing across her cheek to the curve of a naked shoulder, her
eyes looking at him as if she were ready to accept anything he might
wish to say, as she had been ready to accept anything he had wished
to do.

He reached over and moved the lock of hair from her cheek,
cautiously, as if it were fragile. He held it back with his fingertips
and looked at her face. Then his fingers closed suddenly in her hair
and he raised the lock to his lips. The way he pressed his mouth to
it was tenderness, but the way his fingers held it was despair.

He dropped back on the pillow and lay still, his eyes closed. Fits
face seemed young, at peace. Seeing it for a moment without the
reins of tension, she realized suddenly the extent of the unhappiness
he had borne; but it's past now, she thought, it’s over.

He got up, not looking at her. His face was blank and closed again.
He picked up his clothes from the floor and proceeded to dress*
standing in the middle of the room, half-turned away from her. He
acted, not as if she wasn’t present, but as if it did not matter that
she was. His movements, as he buttoned his shirt, as he buckled the
belt of his slacks, had the rapid precision of performing a duty.

She lay back on the pillow, watching him, enjoying the sight of
his figure in motion. She liked the gray slacks and shirt — the expert
mechanic of the John Galt Line, she thought, in the stripes of sun-

237

light and shadow, like a convict behind bars. But they were not bars
any longer, they were the cracks of a wall which the John Galt Line
had broken, the advance notice of what awaited them outside, be-
yond the Venetian blinds — she thought of the trip back, on the new
rail, with the first train from Wyatt Junction — the trip back to her
offio> in the Taggart Building and to all the things now open for her
to win — but she was free to let it wait, she did not want to think of
it, she was thinking of the first touch of his mouth on hers — she was
free to feel it, to hold a moment when nothing else was of any
concern — she smiled defiantly at the strips of sky beyond the blinds.

*‘I want you to know this.*’

He stood by the bed, dressed, looking down at her. His voice had
pronounced it evenly, with great clarity and no inflection. She looked
up at him obediently. He said:

“What I feel for you is contempt. But it’s nothing, compared to
the contempt l teel for myself. I don’t love you. I’ve never loved
anyone, f wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I wanted
you as one wants a whore — for the same reason and purpose. 1 spent
two years damning myself, because I thought you were above a de-
sire of this kind. You're not. You’re as vile an animal as 1 am. I
should loathe my discovering it, I don’t. Yesteiday, I would have
killed anyone who’d tell me that you were capable of doing what I've
had you do. Today, 1 would give my life not to let it be otherwise, not
to have you be anything but the bitch you are. All the greatness that
1 saw in you — l would not take it in exchange for the obscenity of
your talent at an animal’s sensation of pleasure. Wc were two great
beings, you and 1, proud of our strength, weren't we? Well, this is
all that’s left of us— and 1 want no self-deception about it.”

He spoke slowly, as if lashing himself with his words. There was
no sound of emotion in his voice, only the lifeless pull of effort; it
was not the tone of a man's willingness to speak, but the ugly, tor-
tured sound of duty.

“I held it as my honor that 1 would never need anyone 1 need
you. It had been my pride that I had always acted on my convictions.
I’ve given in to a desire which I despise. It is a desire that hits
reduced my mind, my will, my being, my power to exist into an
abject dependence upon you— not even upon the Dagny Taggart
whom I admired — but upon your body, your hands, your mouth and
the few seconds of a convulsion of your muscles. I had never broken
my word. Now I’ve broken an oath I gave for life. I had never
committed an act that had to be hidden. Now I am to lie, to sneak,
to hide. Whatever 1 wanted, I was free to proclaim it aloud and
achieve it in I he sight of the whole world. Now my only desire is
one 1 loathe to name even to myself. But it is my only desire. I’m
going to have you — I’d give up everything I own for it. the mills,
the Metal, the achievement ol my whole life. I’m going to have you
at the price of more than myself: at the price of my sclf-hsteem —
and l want you to know u. I want no pretense, no evasion /no silent
indulgence, with the nature of our actions left unnamed. l»want no
pretense about love, value, loyalty or respect. I want no!shred of
honor left to us, to hide behind. I’ve never begged for m<rcy. I've

238

chosen to do this-and Til take all the consequences* including the
full recognition of my choice. It's depravity— and 1 accept it as
such — and there is no height of virtue that 1 wouldn’t give up for it.
Now if you wish to slap my face* go ahead. I wish you woukl*”

She had listened, sitting up straight, holding the blanket clutched
at her throat to cover her body. At first, he had seen her eyes grow-
ing dark with incredulous shock. Then it seemed to him that she was
listening with greater attentiveness, but seeing more than his face,
even though her eyes were fixed on his. She looked as if she were
studying intently some revelation that had never confronted her be-
fore. He felt as if some ray of light were growing stronger on his
face, because he saw its reflection on hers, as she watched him— he
saw the shock vanishing, then the wonder — he saw her face being
smoothed into a strange serenity that seemed quiet and glittering
at once.

When he stopped, she burst out laughing.

The shock to him was that he heard no anger in her laughter. She
laughed simply, easily, in joyous amusement, in release, not as one
laughs at the solution of a problem, but at the discovery that no
problem had ever existed.

She threw the blanket off with a stressed, deliberate sweep of her
arm. She stood up. She saw her clothes on the floor and kicked them
aside. She stood facing him, naked. She said:

“1 want you. Hank. I’m much more of an animal than you think,
l wanted you from the first moment 1 saw you— and the only thing
I'm ashamed of is that I did not know it. 1 did not know why, for
two years, the brightest moments 1 found were the ones in your
office, where I could lilt my head to look up at you. I did not know
the nature of what I felt in your presence, nor the reason. 1 know
it now. That is all l want. Hank. 1 want you in my bed — and you
are free of me for all the rest of your time. There’s nothing you’ll
have to pretend — don’t think of me, don’t feel; don't care — I do not
want your mind, your will, your being or your soul, so long as it’s
to me that you will come for that lowest one of your desires. 1 am
an animal who wants nothing but the sensation of pleasure which
you despise— but 1 want it from you. You’d give up any height of
virtue for it, while l — I haven’t any to give up. There’s none I seek
or wish to reach. I am so low that l would exchange the greatest
sight of beauty in the world for the sight of your figure in the cab
of a railroad engine. And seeing it, I would not Ire able to see it
indifferently. You don’t have to fear that you're now dependent
upon me. It’s I who will depend on any whim of yours. You’ll have
me any time you wish, anywhere, on any terms. Did you call it the
obscenity of my talent? lt\s such that it gives you a safer hold on
me than on any other property you own. You may dispose of me as
you please — I’m not afraid to admit it — 1 have nothing to protect
from you and nothing to reserve. You think that thi*s is a threat to
your achievement* but it is not to mine. I will sit at my desk, and
work, and when the things around me get hard to bear, I will think
that for my reward I will be in your bed that night. Did you call it
depravity? I am much more depraved than you are: you hold it as

239

your guilt, and I — as my pride. I'm more proud of it than of anything
IVe done, more proud than of building the Line. If Tm asked to
name my proudest attainment, I will say: I have vslept with Hank
Rearden. 1 had earned it.”

When he threw her down on the bed, their bodies met like the
two sounds that broke against each other in the air of the room: the
sound of his tortured moan and of her laughter.

* *

The rain was invisible in the darkness’ of the streets, but it hung
like the sparkling fringe of a lampshade under the corner light. Fum-
bling in his pockets, James Taggart discovered that he had lost his
handkerchief. He swore half-aloud, with resentful malice, as if the
loss, the rain and his head cold were someone's personal conspiracy
against him.

There was a thin gruel of mud on the pavements; he felt a gluey
suction under his shoe soles and a chill slipping down past his collar.
He did not want to walk or to stop. He had no place to go.

Leaving his office, after the meeting of the Board of Directors, he
had realized suddenly that there were no other appointments, that
he had a long evening ahead and no one to help him kill it. The
front pages of the newspapers were screaming of the triumph of the
John Galt Line, as the radios had screamed it yesterday and all
through the night. The name of Taggart Transcontinental was
stretched in headlines across the continent, like its track, and he had
smiled in answer to the congratulations. He had smiled, seated at
the head of the long table, at the Board meeting, while the Directors
spoke about the soaring rise of the Taggart stock on the Exchange,
while they cautiously asked to see his written agreement with his
sister just in case, they said — and commented that it was fine, it was
holeproof, there. was no doubt but that she would have to turn the
Line over to Taggart Transcontinental at once, they spoke about
their brilliant future and the debt of gratitude which the company
owed to James Taggart.

He had sat through the meeting, wishing it were over with, so that
he could go home, then he had stepped out into the street and
realized that home was the one place where he dared not go tonight.
He could not be alone, not in the next few hours, yet there was
nobody to call. He did not want to see people. He kept seeing the
eye,s of the men of the Board when they spoke about his greatness:
a sly, filmy look that held contempt for him and, more terrifyingly,
for themselves.

He walked, head down, a needle of rain pricking the skin of his
neck once in a while. He looked away whenever he passed a news-
stand. The papers seemed to shriek at him the name of tbe John
Galt Line, and another name which he did not want to hear: v Ragnar
Danneskjold. A ship bound for the People's State of Norway! with an
Emergency Gift cargo of machine tools had been seized by| Ragnar
Danneskjold last night. That story disturbed him in some personal
manner which he could not explain. The feeling seemed -to have
some quality in common with the things he felt about the John
Galt Line.

240

It’s because he had a cold, he thought; he wouldn’t fee! this way
if he didn’t have a cold; a man couldn’t be expected to be in top
form when he had a cold — he couldn’t help it — what did they expect
him to do tonight, sing and dance?— he snapped the question angrily
at the unknown judges of his unwitnessed mood- He fumbled for his
handkerchief again, cursed and decided that he’d better stop some-
where to buy some paper tissues.

Across the square of what had once been a busy netghborhr>od,
he saw the lighted windows ot a dune store, still open hopefully at
this late hour. There's another one that will go out of business pretty
soon, he thought as he crossed the square; the thought gave him
pleasure.

There were glaring lights inside, a few tired salesgirls among a
spread ot deserted counters, and the screaming ot a phonograph
record being played for a tone, listless customer in a corner. The
music swallowed the sharp edges of Taggart's voice: he asked for
paper tissues in a tone which implied that the salesgirl was responsi-
ble tor his cold The girl turned to the counter behind her, but turned
back once to glance swiftly at his face She took a packet, but
stopped, hesitating, studying him with peculiar curiosity.

“Are you James Taggart?” she asked.

“Yes 1 ” he snapped. ’Why 7 ”

“Oh!”

She gasped like a child at a burst of firecrackers, she was looking
at him with a glance which he had thought to be reserved only for
movie stars.

T saw vour picture in the paper this morning, Mr. Taggart,” she
sail! very rapidly, a faint flush appearing on her face and vanishing.
“It said what a great achievement it was and how it was really you
who had done it ail, only you didn't want it to be known.”

“Oh.” said Taggart. He was smiling.

“You look just like your picture,” she said in immense astonish-
ment, and added, “Imagine you walking in here like this, in person!”

“Shouldn’t J?” His tone was amused.

“1 mean, everybody’s talking about it. the whole country, and
you’re the man who did it— arid here you are* I’ve never seen an
important person before. I've never been so close to anything impor-
tant, 1 mean to any newspaper news.”

He had never had the experience of seeing his presence give color
to a place he entered: the girl looked as it she was not tired any
longer, as if the dime store had become a scene of drama and
wondeT .

“Mr. laggart. is it true, what they said about you in the paper 7 ”

“What did they say?”

“About your secret.”

“What secret?”

“Weil, they said that when everybody was fighting about your
bridge, whether it would stand or not. you didn't argue with them,
you ’just went ahead, because you knew it would stand, when nobody
else was sure of it — so the Line was a Taggart project and you were

241

the guiding spirit behind the scenes, but you kept it secret, because
you didn’t care whether you got credit for it or not.”

He had seen the mimeographed release of his Public Relations
Department. “Yes,” he said, “it’s true.” The way she looked at him
made him feel as if it were.

“It was wonderful of you, Mr. Taggart.”

“Do you always remember what you read in the newspapers, so
well, in such detail?”

“Why, yes, I guess so — all the interesting things. The big things. I
like to read about them. Nothing big ever happens to me.”

She said it gaily, without self-pity. There was a young, determined
brusqueness in her voice and movements. She had a head of reddish-
brown curls, wide-set eyes, a few freckles on the bridge of an up-
turned nose. He thought that one would call her face attractive if
one ever noticed it, but there was no particular reason to notice it.
It was a common little face, except for a look of alertness, of eager
interest, a look that expected the world to contain an exciting secret
behind every corner.

“Mr. Taggart, how does it feel to be a great man?”

“How does it feel to be a little girl?”

She laughed. “Why, wonderful.”

“Then youYe better off than I am.”

“Oh, how can you say such a — ”

“Maybe you’re lucky if you don’t have anything to do with the
big events in the newspapers. Big. What do you call big, anyway?”

“Why . . . important.”

“What's important?”

“You’re the one who ought to tell me that, Mr. Taggart “

“Nothing’s important.”

She looked at him incredulously. “You, of all people, saying that
tonight of all nights!”

“I don't feel wonderful at all. if that’s what you want to know.
I’yc never felt less wonderful in my life.”

He was astonished to see her studying his face with a look of
concern such as no one had ever granted him “You're worn out.
Mr, Taggart,” she said earnestly. “Tell them to go to hell.*'

“Whom?”

“Whoever's getting you down. It isn't right.”

“What isn't?”

“That you should feel this way. You’ve had a tough time, but
you've licked them all, so you ought to enjoy yourself now. You’ve
earned it.”

“And how do you propose that I enjoy myself?”

“Oh, I don’t know. But l thought you’d be having a celebration
tonight, a party with all the big shots, and champagne, afrd things
given to you, like keys to cities, a real swank party like that*— instead
of walking around all by yourself, shopping for paper handkerchiefs,
of all fool things!”

“You give me those handkerchiefs, before you forget tfcem alto*
gether” he said, handing her a dime. “And as to the swfink party,
did it occur to you that 1 might not want to sec anybody tonight?”

242

She considered it earnestly. “No,*’ she said, “I hadn’t thought of
it. But I can see why you wouldn’t.”

“Why?” It was a question to which he had no answer.

“Nobody’s really good enough for you, Mr. Taggart,” she an-
swered very simply, not as flattery, but as a matter of fact.

“Is that what you think?”

“I don’t think I like people very much, Mr. Taggart. Not most
of them.”

“1 don't either. Not any of them.”

“I thought a man like you — you wouldn’t know how mean they
can be and how they try to step on you and ride on your back, if
you let them. I thought the big men in the world could get away
irom them and not have to be flea-bait all of the time, but maybe 1
was wrong ”

“What do you mean, flea-bait?”

“Oh, it’s just something I tell myself when things get tough — that
I've got to beat my way out to where I won't feel like I'm flea-
bitten all the time by all kinds of lousiness — but maybe it’s the same
anywhere, only the fleas get bigger."

“Much bigger.”

She remained silent, as if considering something, it's tunny,” she
said sadly to some thought oi her own.

“What’s tunny?”

“I read a book once where it said that great men are always
unhappy, and the gi eater— the unhappier. It didn't make sense to
me. But maybe it's true."

“It’s much truer than you think "

She looked away, her face disturbed.

“Why do you wortv so much about the gieat men?" he asked.
“What are you, a hero worshipper ot some kind?”

She turned to look at him and he saw the light of an inner smile,
while her lace remained solemnly grave, it was the most eloquently
personal glance he had ever seen directed at himself, while she an-
swered in a quiet, impersonal voice. “Mr. Taggart. w f hat else is there
to look up to'*”

A screeching sound, neither quite bell nor buzzer, rang out sud-
denly and went on ringing with nerve-grating insistence.

.She jerked her head, as if awakening at the scream of an alarm
dock, then sighed. “That’s closing time, Mr. Taggart,” she said
regretfully.

“Go get your hat — I’ll wait for you outside,” he said.

She stared at him, as if among all of life's possibilities this was
one she had never held as conceivable.

“No kidding?" she whispered.

“No kidding."

She whirled around and ran like a streak to the door of the em-
ployees' quartets, forgetting her counter, her duties and all feminine
.concern about never showing eagerness in accepting a man’s in-
vitation.

hie stood looking after her for a moment, his eyes narrowed. He
did not name to himself the nature of his own feeling — never to

243

“Mr. Taggart, what is it that makes you so unhappy?”

“Why should you care whether I am or not?”

“Because . . . well, if you haven’t the right to be happy and proud,
who has?”

“That’s what 1 want to know — who has?” He turned to her
abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown, “He
didn't invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”

“Who?”

“Rearden. He didn't invent smelting and chemistry and air com-
pression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and
thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why
does he think it’s his invention ? Everybody uses the work of everybody
else. Nobody ever invents anything.”

She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were
there all the time. Why didn't anybody else make that Metal, but Mr,
Rearden did?”

“He didn't do it for any noble purpose, he did it just tor his own
profit. He’s never done anything for any other reason.”

“What’s wrong with that, Mr. Taggart?” Then she laughed softly,
as if at the sudden solution of a riddle “That’s nonsense, Mr. Tag-
gart. You don’t mean it. You know that Mr. Rearden has earned all
his profits, and so have you. You're saying those things just to be
modest; when everybody knows what a great job you people have
done — you and Mr. Rearden and your sister, who must be such a
wonde rf u 1 pe rson ’ ’ ’

“Yeah? That’s what you think. She's a hard, insensitive woman
who spends her life building tracks and bridges, not lor any great
ideal, but only because that’s what she enjoys doing. It she enjoys
it. what is there to admire about her doing it? I'm not so sure it was
great — building that L.ine for all those prosperous industrialists in
Colorado, when there are so many poor people in blighted areas
who need transportation."

“But, Mr. Taggart, it was you who fought to build that Line,”

“Yes, because it was my duty — to the company and the slockhold-
ers and our employees. But don't expect me to enjoy it. I’m not so
sure it was great — inventing this complex new Metal, when so many
nations are in need of plain iron- -why, do you know that the Peo-
ple's State of China hasn’t even got enough nails to put wooden
roofs over people’s heads?”

“But . . . but 1 don’t see that that's your fault.”

“Somebody should attend to it. Somebody with the vision to see
beyond his own pocketbook. No sensitive person these days — when
there's so much suffering around us — would devote ten years of his
life to splashing about with a lot ot trick metals. You think it's great?
Well, it's not any kind of superior ability, but just a hidfe that you
couldn't pierce if you poured a ton of his own steel ovef his head!
There are many people of much greater ability in the world, but you
don’t read about them in the headlines and you don’t rim to gape
at them at grade crossings — because they can't invent nonkollapsible
bndges at a time when the suffering of mankind weighs on their
spirit!”

246

She was loojdng at him silently, respectfully, her joyous eagerness
toned down, her eyes subdued. He felt better.

He picked up his drink, took a gulp, and chuckled abruptly at a
sudden recollection.

“It was funny, though,” he said, his tone easier, livelier, the tone
of a confidence to a pal. “You should have seen Orren Boyle yester-
day, when the first flash came through on the radio from Wyatt
Junction! He turned green — but 1 mean, green, the color of a fish
that's been flying around too long! Do you know what he did last
night, by way of taking the bad news 7 Hired himself a suite at the
Valhalla Hotel — and you know what that is — and the last 1 heard,
he was still there today, dnnking himself under the table and the
beds, with a few choice friends of his and half the female population
of upper Amsteidam Avenue!"

“Who is Mr. Boyle?” she asked, stupefied.

“Oh, a fat slob that’s inclined to overreach himself. A smart guy
who gets too smart at times. You should have seen his face yester-
day! I got a kick out of that. That — and Dr. Floyd Ferris. That
smoothy didn't like it a bit, oh not a bit! — the elegant Dr. Ferris of
the State Science Institute, the servant of the people, with the patent-
leather vocabulary —but he carried it off pretty well, 1 must say,
only you could see him squirming in every paragraph — 1 mean, that
interview he gave out this morning, where he said. The country gave
Rearden that Metal, now we expect him to give the country some-
thing in return.’ That was pretty nifty, considering who’s been riding
on the gravy train and , . . well, considering. That was belter than
Bertram Scudder — Mr. Scudder couldn’t think of anything but ‘No
comment,' when his fellow gentlemen of the press asked him to voice
his sentiments. ‘No comment' — from Bertram Scudder who’s never
been known to shut his trap from the day he was born, about any-
thing you ask him or don't ask. Abyssinian poetry or the state of
the ladies’ rest rooms in the textile industry! And Dr. Pritchett, the
old fool, is going around saying that he knows for certain that Rear-
den didn’t invent that Metal — because he was told, by an unnamed
reliable source, that Rearden stole the formula from a penniless in-
ventor whom he murdered!"

He was chuckling happily. She was listening as to a lecture on
higher mathematics, grasping nothing, not even the style of the lan-
guage, a style which made the mystery greater, because she was
certain that it did not mean — coming from him — what it would have
meant anywhere else.

He refilled his glass and drained it. but his gaiety vanished
abruptly. He slumped into an armchair, facing her, looking up at her
from under his bald forehead, his eyes blurred.

“She’s coming back tomorrow,” he said, with a sound like a
chuckle devoid of amusement.

“Who?”

“My sister. My dear sister. Oh, she’ll think she’s great, won’t she?”

“You dislike your sister, Mr. Taggart?” He made the same sound;
its, meaning was so eloquent that she needed no other answer,
“Why?” she asked.

247

‘‘Because she thinks she's so good. What right has she to think
it? What right has anybody to think he's good? Nobody's any good."

“You don't mean it. Mr, Taggart/’

‘i mean, we’re only human beings — and what’s a human being?
A weak, ugly, sinful creature, bom that way, rotten in his bones —
so humility is the one virtue he ought to practice. He ought to spend
his life on his knees, begging to be (orgiven for his dirty existence.
When a man thinks he’s good — that’s when he’s rotten. Pride is the
worst of all sins, no matter what he's done,"

“But if a man knows that what he’s done is good?"

"Then he ought to apologize for it."

"To whom?"

"To those who haven’t done it."

"I ... I don’t understand."

"Of course you don’t. It takes years and yeais of study in the
higher reaches of the intellect. Have you ever heard of The Meta-
physical Contradictions of the Universe, by Dr. Simon Pritchett?"
She shook her head, frightened, "How do you know what’s good,
anyway? Who knows what’s good 7 Who can ever know? There are
no absolutes — as Dr. Pritchett has proved irrefutably. Nothing is ab-
solute. Everything is a matter ot opinion. How do you know that
the bridge hasn’t collapsed? You only think it hasn’t. How do you
know that there’s any bridge at all? You think that a system of
philosophy — such as Dr. Pritchett's — is just something academic, re-
mote, impractical? But it isn't. Oh. boy, how it isn’t!"

"But, Mr. Taggart, the Tine you built—"

“Oh, what's that Lino, anyway? It’s only a materia! achievement
Is that of any importance 0 Is there any greatness in anything mate-
rial? Only a low animal can gape at that bridge — when there are so
many higher things in life. But do the higher things ever get recogni-
tion? Oh no! Look at people. All that hue and cry and front pages
about some trick arrangement of some scraps of matter. Do they
care about any nobler issue? Do they ever give front pages to a
phenomenon of the spirit? Do they notice or appreciate a person of
finer sensibility? And you wonder whether it’s true that a great man
is doomed to unhappiness m this depraved world!" He leaned for-
ward, staring at her intently, i'll tell you . , . I ll tell you
something . , unhappiness is the hallmark of virtue. If a man is
unhappy, really, truly unhappy, it means that he is a superior sort
of person."

He saw the puzzled, anxious look ot her face. "But. Mr, Taggart,
you got everything you wanted. Now you have the best railroad in
the country, the newspapers call you the greatest business executive
of the age, they say the stock of your company made a fortune lor
you overnight, you got everything you could ask for — aren't you glad
of it?"

In the brief space of his answer, she felt frightened, (sensing a
sudden fear within him. He answered, “No."

She didn't know why her voice dropped to a whispqr. “You'd
rather the bridge had collapsed?"

248

“I haven't said that!” he snapped sharply. Then he shrugged and
waved his hand in a gesture of contempt. “You don’t understand.”

*Tm sorry . . . Oh, I know that I have such ari awful lot to learn!”

“I am talking about a hunger for something much beyond that
bridge. A hunger that nothing material will ever satisfy.”

“What, Mr. Taggart? What is it you want?”

“Oh. there you go! The moment you ask, ‘What is it?’ you’re back
in the crude, material world where everything's got to be tagged and
measured. I’m speaking of things that can't be named in materialistic
words . . . the higher realms of the spirit, which man can never
reach. . . . What's any human achievement, anyway? The earth is
only an atom whiiling in the universe —of what importance is that
bridge to the solar system?"

A sudden, happy look of understanding cleared her eyes. “It’s
great of you, Mr. Taggart, to think that your own achievement isn’t
good enough for you. I guess no matter how far youwe gone, you
want to go still farther. You're ambitious. That's what I admire most:
ambition. 1 mean, doing things, not stopping and giving up, but
doing. 1 understand, Mr. Taggart . . . even if l don’t understand all
the big thoughts.”

“You'll learn.”

“Oh, I'll work very hard to learn!”

Her glance of admiration had not changed. He walked across the
room, moving in that glance as in a gentle spotlight. He went to
refill his glass. A mirror hung in the niche behind the portable bar.
He caught a glimpse of his own figure: the tall body distorted by a
sloppy, sagging posture, as if in deliberate negation of human grace,
the thinning hair, the soft, sullen mouth it struck him suddenly that
she did not see him at all: what she saw was the heroic figure of a
builder, with pioudly straight shoulders and wind-blown hair. He
chuckled aloud, feeling that this was a good joke on her. feeling
dimly a satisfaction that resembled a sense of victory: the superiority
of having put something over on her.

Sipping his drink, he glanced at the door of his bedroom and
thought of the usual ending for an adventure of this kind. He thought
that it would be easy: the girl was too awed to resist. He saw the
reddish -bronze sparkle of her hair— as she sat, head bent, under a
light — and a wedge of smooth, glowing skin on her shoulder. He
looked away. Why bother? he thought.

The hint of desire that he felt was no more than a sense of physical
discomfort. The sharpest impulse in his mind, nagging him to action,
was not the thought of the girl, but of all the men who would not
pass up an opportunity of this kind. He admitted to himself that she
was a much better person than Betty Pope, perhaps the best person
ever offered to him. The admission left him indifferent. He felt no
more than he had felt for Betty Pope. He fell nothing. The prospect
of experiencing pleasure was not worth the effort; he had no desire
to experience pleasure.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “Where do you live? Let me give you
andther drink and then I’ll take you home.”

When he said good-bye to her at the door of a miserable rooming

249

house in a slum neighborhood, she hesitated, fighting not to ask a
question which she desperately wished to ask him.

“Will 1 . . she began, and stopped.

“What?”

“No, nothing, nothing!'’

He knew that the question was: "Will I see you again?” it gave
him pleasure not to answer, even though he knew that she would.

She glanced up at him once more, as if it were perhaps for the
last time, then said earnestly, her voice low. “Mr. Taggart, I’m very
grateful to 'you. because you ... I mean, any other man would have
tried to ... 1 mean, that’s all he’d want, but you’re so much better
than that, oh, so much better!”

He leaned closer to her with a faint, interested smile. “Would you
have?” he asked.

She drew back from him, in sudden terror at her own words. “Oh,
I didn’t meaa it that way!” she gasped. “Oh God, 1 wasn’t hinting
or ... or . . She blushed furiously, whirled around and ran,
vanishing up the long, steep stairs of the rooming house.

He stood on the sidewalk, feeling an odd, heavy, foggy sense of
satisfaction: feeling as if he had committed an act of virtue— and as
if he had taken his revenge upon every person who had stood cheer-
ing along the three-hundred-milc track of the John Galt Line.

♦ *

When their train reached Philadelphia, Rcarden left her without
a word, as if the nights of their return journey deserved no acknowl-
edgment in the daylight reality of crowded station platforms and
moving engines, the reality he respected. She went on to New York,
alone. But late that evening, the doorbell of her apartment rang and
Dagny knew that she had expected it.

He said nothing when he entered, he looked at her, making his
silent presence more intimate a greeting than words. There was the
faint suggestion of a contemptuous smile in his face, at once admit-
ting and mdeking his knowledge of her hours of impatience and his
own. He stood in the middle of her living room, looking slowly
around him; this was her apartment, the one place in the city that
had been the focus of two years ot his torment, as the place be could
not think about and did, the place he could not enter — and was now
entering with the casual, unannounced right of an owner. He sat
down in an armchair, stretching his legs forward — and she stood
before him, almost as if she needed his permission to sit down and
it gave her pleasure to wait.

“Shall I tell you that you did a magnificent job, building that
Line?” he asked. She glanced at him in astonishment; he had never
paid her open compliments of that kind; the admiration ifr his voice
was genuine, but the hint of mockery remained in his fa^e, and she
felt as if he were speaking to some purpose which shd could not
guess. “I’ve spent at! day answering questions about you-iand about
the Line, the Metal and the future. That, and counting! the orders
for the Metal. They’re coming in at the rate of thousand# of tons an
hour. When was it, nine months ago?— I couldn’t get a single answer
anywhere. Today, I had to cut off my phone, nol to listen to all the

250

people who wanted to speak to me personally about their urgent
need of Rearden Metal. What did you do today?”

“I don’t know. Tried to listen to Eddie’s reports — tried to get
away from people — tried to find the rolling stock to put more trains
on the John Galt Line, because the schedule I’d planned won’t be
enough for the business that’s piled up in just three days,”

“A great many people wanted to see you today, didn’t they?”

“Why, yes,”

‘They’d have given anything just for a word with you, wouldn’t
they‘d”

“I ... I suppose so.”

“The reporters kept asking me what you were like. A young boy
from a local sheet kept saying that you were a great woman. He
said he’d be afraid to speak to you, if he ever had the chance. He’s
right. That future that they're all talking and trembling about — it
will be as you made it, because you had the courage none of them
could conceive of. All the roads to wealth that they’re scrambling
for now, it’s your strength that broke them open. The strength to
stand against everyone. The strength to recognize no will but your
own.”

She caught the sinking gasp ol her breath, she knew his purpose.
She stood straight, her arms at her sides, her face austere, as if in
unflinching endurance: she stood under the praise as under a lashing
of insults.

“They kept asking you questions, too. didn't they?” He spoke
intently, leaning forward. “And they looked at you with admiration,
t hey looked, as it you stood on a mountain peak and they could only
take their hats off to you across the great distance. Didn’t they?”

“Yes.’’ she whispered.

“They looked as if they knew that one may not approach you or
speak in your presence or touch a fold of yout dress. They knew it
and it's true. They looked at you with respect, didn't they? They
looked up to you?”

He seized her aim, threw her down on her knees, twisting her
body against his legs, and bent down to kiss her mouth. She laughed
soundlessly, her laughter mocking, but her eyes half-closed, veiled
with pleasure.

Hours later, when they lay in bed together, his hand moving over
her body, he asked suddenly, throwing her back against the curve
of his arm, bending over her— and she knew, by the intensity of his
lace, by the sound of a gasp somewhere in the quality of his voice,
even though his voice was low and steady, that the question broke
out of him as if it were worn by the hours of torture he had spent
with it:

“Who were the other men that had you?”

He looked at her as if the question were a sight visualized in every
detail, a sight he loathed, but would not abandon: she heard the
contempt in his voice, the hatred, the suffering — and an odd eager-
ness that did not pertain to torture; he had asked the question, hold-
ing her body tight against him.

She answered evenly, but he saw a dangerous flicker in her eyes,

251

as of a warning that she understood him too well. “There was only
one other. Hank.”

“When?”

“When I was seventeen.”

“Did it last?”

“For some years.”

“Who was he?”

She drew back, lying against his arm; he leaned closer, his face
taut; she held his eyes. “1 won’t answer you,”

“Did you love him?”

“I won't answer.”

“Did you like sleeping with him?”

“Yes!”

The laughter in her eyes made it sound like a slap across his face,
the laughter of her knowledge that this was the answer he dreaded
and wanted.

He twisted her arms behind her, holding her helpless, her breasts
pressed against him; she felt the pain ripping through her shoulders,
she heard the anger in his words and the huskiness of pleasure in
his voice: “Who was he?”

She did not answer, she looked at him, her eyes dark and oddly
brilliant, and he saw that the shape of her mouth, distorted by pain,
was the shape of a mocking smile.

He felt it change to a shape of surrender, under the touch of his
lips. He held her body as if the violence and the despair of the way
he took her could wipe his unknown rival out of existence, out ot
her past, and more: as if it could transform any part of her, even
the rival, into an instrument of his pleasure. He knew, by the eager-
ness of her movement as her arms seized him, that this was the way
she wanted to be taken.

* *

The silhouette of a conveyor belt moved against the strips of fire
in the sky* raising coal to the top of a distant tower, as if an inex-
haustible number of small black buckets rode out of the earth in a
diagonal line across the sunset. The harsh, distant clatter kept going
through the rattle of the chains which a young man in blue overalls
was fastening over the machinery, securing it to »he flatcars lined on
the siding of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company of Connecticut.

Mr. Mowen, of the Amalgamated Switch and Signal Company
across the street, stood by, watching. He had stopped to watch, on
his way home from his own plant. He wore a light overcoat stretched
over his short, paunchy figure, and a derby hat over his graying,
blondish head. There was a first touch of September chill in the air.
All the gates of the Quinn plant buildings stood wide i open, while
men and cranes moved the machinery out; like taking ;thc vital or-
gans and leaving a carcass, thought Mr. Mowen.

“Another one?” asked Mr, Mowen, jerking his thumb: at the plant,
even though he knew the answer.

“Huh?” asked the young man, who had not notice^ him stand-
ing there.

“Another company moving to Colorado?”

252

“Uh-huh”

“It’s the third one from Connecticut in the last two weeks/' said
Mr. Mowen. “And when you look at what's happening in New Jer-
sey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and all along the Atlantic
coast * . The young man was not looking and did not seem to
listen. “It’s like a leaking faucet/’ said Mr. Mowen, “and all the
water's running out to Colorado. All the money/' The young man
flung the chain across and followed it deftly, climbing over the big
shape covered with canvas. “You'd think people would have some
feeling for their native state, some loyalty . . . But they're running
away. 1 don't know what’s happening to people.’’

“It’s the Bill,” said the young man.

“What Bill?"

“The Equalization of Opportunity Bill ’’

“How do you mean?"

“I hear Mr. Quinn was making plans a year ago to open a branch
in Colorado. The Bill knocked that out cold. So now he's made up
his mind to move there, lock, stock and barrel/’

“1 don’t see where that makes it right. The Bill was necessary. It's
a rotten shame — old firms that have been here for generations . . .
There ought to be a law ..."

The young man worked swiftly, competently, as if he enjoyed it.
Behind him, the conveyor belt kept using and clattering against the
skv. Four distant smokestacks stood like flagpoles, with coils of
smoke weaving slowly about them, like long banners at half-mast in
the reddish glow of the evening.

Mr. Mowen had lived with every smokestack of that skyline since
the days of Ins father and grandfather. He had seen the conveyor
belt from his office window for thirty years. That the Qumn Ball
Bearing Company should vanish from across the street had seemed
inconceivable; he had known about Quinn's decision and had not
believed it; or rather, he had believed it as he believed any words
he heard or spoke: as sounds that bore no fixed relation to physical
reality. Now he knew that it was real. He stood by the flatcars on
the siding as if he still had a chance to stop them.

“ft isn’t right," he said; he was speaking to the skyline at large,
but the young man above was the only part of it that could hear
him, “That’s not the way it was in my father’s time. I’m not a big
shot. I don't want to fight anybody. What’s the matter with the
world?" There was no answer. “Now you. for instance — are they
taking you along to Colorado?"

“Me? No. I don't work here I’m just transient labor. Just picked
up this job helping to lug the stuff out,"

“Welt, where are you going to go when they move away?"

“Haven’t any idea."

“What arc you going to do, if more of them move out?"

“Wait and see."

Mr. Mowen glanced up dubiously: he could not tell whether the
answer was intended to apply to him or to the young man. But the
youiig man’s attention was fixed on his task; he was not looking
down. He moved on to the shrouded shapes on the next flatcar, and

253

Mr. Mowen followed, looking up at him, pleading with something
up in space: ‘Tvc got rights, haven’t I? 1 was born here. 1 expected
the old companies to be here when I grew up. I expected to run the
plant like my father did. A man is part of his community, he’s got
a right to count on it, hasn’t he? . . . Something ought to be done
about it.”

“ About what?”

“Oh, l know, you think it’s great, don’t you? — that Taggart boom
and Rearden Metal and the gold rush to Colorado and the drunken
spree out there, with Wyatt and his bunch expanding their produc-
tion like kettles boiling over! Everybody thinks it’s great — that’s all
you hear anywhere you go— people are slap-happy, making plans
like six-year-olds on a vacation— you'd think it was a national honey-
moon of some kind or a permanent Fourth ol July!”

The young man said nothing.

“Weil, 1 don’t think so,” said Mr. Mowen. He lowered his voice
“The newspapers don't say so, cither— mind you that — the newspa-
pers aren’t saying anything.”

Mr. Mowen heard no answer, only the clanking of the chains

“Why are they all running to Colorado?” he asked. “What have
they got down there that we haven’t goC”

The young man grinned. “Maybe it's something you've got that
they haven’t got.”

‘ What?” The young rnan did not answer “1 don’t see it It’s a
backward, primitive, unenlightened place. They don't even have a
modern government it's the worst government in any stale. I he
la/iest It does nothing — outside ot keeping law courts and a police
department. It doesn't do anything tor the people It doesn't help
anybody. I-don’t see why all our best companies want to inn there.”

The young man glanced down at him, but did not answer

Mr. Mowen sighed. “Things aren’t right,” he said. “The Equaliza-
tion of Opportunity Bill was a sound idea. There's got to be a chance
for everybody. It’s a rotten shame if people like Quinn take unfair
advantage o! it. Why didn't he let somebody else start manufacturing
ball bearings in Colorado? . . I wish the Colorado people would

leave us alone. I hat Stockton Foundry out there had no right going
into ihe switch and signal business That’s been my business tor
years. I have the right of seniority, it isn’t fair, it’s dog-eat-dog coni
petition, newcomers shouldn’t be allowed to muscle m. Where am 1
going to sell switches and signals? There were two big railroads out
in Colorado Now the Phoeniv-Durango’s gone, so there's just Tag*
gart Transcontinental left. It isn 't fair - their forcing Dan Conway
out. There's got to be room for competition. . , . And I’ve been
waiting six months for an order of steel from Orrcn Boyle — and now
he says he can’t promise me anything, because Rearden Metal has
shot his market to hell, there's a run on that MetaI,J Boyle has to
retrench. It isn’t fair— Rearden being allowed to ruin jpther people's
markets that way. . . . And 1 want to get some Reardlm Metal, too,
I need it — but try and get it! He has a waiting line that would stretch
across three states — nobody can get a scrap of it, except his old
friends, people like Wyatt and Danagger and such. U isn’t fair. It’s

254

discrimination. I'm just as good as the next fellow. Vm entitled to
my share of that Metal.”

The young man looked up, “I was in Pennsylvania last week,” he
said. ”[ saw the Reardon mills. There's a place that's busy! They’re
building four new open-hearth furnaces, and they’ve got six more
coming. . . . New furnaces,” he said, looking off to the south. ’No-
body's built a new furnace on the Atlantic Coast for the last five
y*‘ais. . . .” He stood against the sky, on the top of a shrouded
motor, looking off at the dusk with a faint smile of eagerness and
longing, as one looks at the distant vision of one’s love. ’They’re
busy. . . he said.

Then his smile vanished abruptly; the way he jerked the chain was
the first break in the smooth competence of his movements: it looked
like a jolt of anger.

Mr Mowen looked at the skyline, at the belts, the wheels, the
smoke -the smoke that settled heavily, peacefully across the evening
air, stretching in a long ha/c all the way to the city of New York
somewhere beyond the sunset— and he felt reassured by the thought
of New Yoik in its ring of sacred fires, the ring of smokestacks, gas
tanks, cranes and high tension lines. He felt a current of power
flowing through every grirny structure of his familiar street; he liked
the figure of the young man above him, there was something reassur-
ing m the way he worked, something that blended with the
skyline . . Yet Mr. Mowen wondeted why he felt that a crack w'as
gmwing somewhere, eating through the solid, the eternal walls,

‘ Something ought to be done.” said Mr. Mowen. “A friend of
mine went out of business —last week— the oil business -had a cou-
ple ol wells down in Oklahoma—couldn’t compete with Flhs Wyatt,
h isn’t fair. They ought to leave the little people a chance. They
ought to place a limit on Wyatt’s output. He shouldn’t be allowed
to produce so much that he’ll swamp everybod\ else off the
market. ... I got ^luck in Ncw> Yoik yesterday, had to leave my car
then e and come home on a damn commuters' local, couldn't get any
gas tor the car. they said there’s a shortage of oil in the city. . . .
Things aren’t right. Something ought to be done about it , .

1 ooking at the skyline, Mr. Mowen wondered what was the name-
less threat to it and who was its destroyer.

‘‘What do you want to do about it?” asked the young man.

“Who, me?” said Mr, Mowen. ”1 wouldn’t know. I'm not a big
^hot 1 can’t, solve national ptoblems. 1 just want to make a living.
All J know is. somebody ought to do something about it. . . Things
tiionT right. . . I islen what’s your name?”

‘Owen Kellogg.”

“Listen, Kellogg, what do you think is going to happen to the
world?*'

“You wouldn't care to know.”

A whistle blew on a distant tower, the night-shift whistle, and Mr.
Mowen realized that it was getting late. He sighed, buttoning his
coat,. turning to go.

“Well, things are being done,” he said. “Steps are being taken.
Constructive steps. The Legislature has passed a Bill giving wider

255

powers to the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources.
They’ve appointed a very able man as Top Co-ordinator. Can’t say
I’ve heard of him before, but the newspapers said he’s a man to be
watched. His name is Wesley Mouch ”

* *

Dagny stood at the window of her living room, looking at the city.
It was late and the lights were like the last sparks left glittering on
the black remnants of a bonfire.

She felt at peace, and she wished she could hold her mind still to
let her own emotions catch up with her, to look at every moment
of the month that had lushed past her. She had had no time to feet
that she was back in her own office at Taggart Transcontinental;
there had been so much to do that she forgot it was a return from
exile. She had not noticed what Jim had said on her return or
whether he had said anything. There had been only one person
whose reaction she had wanted to know; she had telephoned the
Wayne-Falkland Hotel; but So nor Francisco d’Anconia, she was told,
had gone back to Buenos Aires

She remembered the moment when she signed her name at the
bottom of a long legal page: it was the moment that ended the John
Galt Line. Now it was the Rio Norte Line of Taggart Transcontinen-
tal again — except that the men of the tram crews refused to give up
its name. She. too, lound it hard to give up; she forced herself not
to call it “the John Galt." and wondered why that required an effort,
and why she felt a faint wrench of sadness.

One evening, on a sudden impulse, she had turned the comer of the
Taggart Building, for a la<4 look at the office of John Gait. Inc., in the
alley; she did not know what she wanted- just to see it, she thought.
A plank barrier had been raised along the sidewalk: the old building
was being demolished: it had given up, at last. She had climbed over
the planks and. by the light of the street lamp that had once thrown
a stranger’s shadow across the pavement, she had looked in through
the window of her former office. Nothing was left of the ground
floor; the partitions had been torn down, there were broken pipes
hanging from the ceiling and a pile of rubble on the Hour. There
was nothing to see.

She had asked Reardon whether he had come there one night Iasi
spring and stood outside her window, fighting his desire to enter.
But she had known, even before he answered, that he had not. She
did not tell him why she asked it. She did not know why that memory
still disturbed her at times.

Beyond the window of her living room, the lighted rectangle of
the calendar hung like a small shipping tag in the black $ky. It read
September 2. She smiled defiantly, remembering the r^ee she had
run against its changing pages: there were no deadlines now. she
thought, no barriers, no threats, no limits.

She heard a key turning m lhe door of her apanmiM; this was
the sound she had waited for, had wanted to hear tonigjht.

Rearden came in, as he had come many times, using (he key she
had given him, as sole announcement. He threw his hat and coal

256

down on a chair with a gesture that had become familiar; he wore
the formal black of dinner clothes.

“Hello,” she said.

‘Tm still waiting for the evening when l won’t lind you in,” he
answered.

“Then you'll have to phone the offices of I aggart Transcontinental.”

“Any evening? Nowhere else?”

“Jealous, Hank?”

“No. Curious what it would feel like, to be.”

He stood looking at her across the room, refusing to let himself
approach her, deliberately prolonging the pleasure of knowing that
he could do it whenever he wished. She wore the tight gray skirt of
an office suit and a blouse of transparent white cloth tailored like a
man’s shirt: the blouse flared out above her waistline, stressing the
trim flatness of her hips: against the glow of a lamp behind her, he
could see the slender silhouette of her body within the flaring circle
of the blouse.

“How was the banquet?” she asked.

“Fine. 1 escaped as soon as I could. Why didn’t you come? You
were invited.”

“1 didn’t want to see you in public ”

He glanced at her, as if stressing that he noted the full meaning
of her answer; then the lines of his face moved to the hint of an
amused smile. “You missed a lot. The National Council of Metal
Industries won’t put itself again through the ordeal of having me for
guest of honor. Not if they can help it ”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Just a lot of speeches.”

“W'as it an ordeal for you?”

“No ... Yes, in a way ... I had really wanted to enjoy it.”

“Shall I get you a dunk?”

“Yes, will you?”

She turned to go. He stopped her, grasping her shoulders from
behind; he bent her head back and kissed her mouth When he raised
his head, she pulled it down again with a demanding gesture of
ownership, as it stressing her right to do it Then she stepped away
from him.

“Never mind the drink,” he said. “1 didn't really want it — except
tor seeing you wait on me.”

“Well, then, let me wait on you.”

“No.”

He smiled, stretching himself out on the couch, his hands crossed
under his head. He felt at home: it was the first home he had ever
tound.

“You know, the worst part ot the banquet was that the only wish
of every person present was to get it over with*” he said, “What 1
can’t understand is why they wanted to do it at all. They didn’t have
to Certainly not for my sake.”

She picked up a cigarette box, extended it to him, then held the
flame of a lighter to the tip of his cigarette, in the deliberate manner

751

of wailing on him. She smiled in answer to his chuckle, then sat
down on the arm of a chair across the room.

"‘Why did you accept their invitation. Hank?” she asked, “You’ve
always refused to join them,”

“I didn't want to refuse a peace offer — when I’ve beaten them
and they know it. I'll never join them, but an invitation to appear
as a guest of honor— well. I thought they were good losers. J thought
it was generous of them.”

“Of them ?”

“Are you going to say: of meT'

“Hank! After all the things they've done to stop you--'’

“1 won. didn’t I? So l thought . . . You know, I didn’t hold it
against them that they couldn't see the value of the Metal sooner —
so long as they saw it at last. Hvery man learns in his own way and
time. Sure, I knew' there was a lot of cowardice there, and envy and
hypocrisy, but I thought that that was only the surface- now. when
I've proved my ease, when I’ve proved it so loudly! — I thought their
real motive for inviting me was their appreciation ot the Metal,
and — ”

She smiled in the brief space of his pause: she knew the sentence
he had stopped himself from uttering: “—and for that, I would for-
give anyone anything

“But it wasn’t,” he said. “And I couldn’t figure out what their
motive was. Dagny, I don't think they had any motive at all. They
didn’t give that banquet to please me, or to gain something from
me, or to save face with the public. There was no purpose of any
kind about it, no meaning. They didn't really care when they de-
nounced the Metal — and they don't care now. They’re not really
afraid that 1’il drive them all off the market — they don't care enough
even about that Do you know what that banquet was like? It's as
if they’d heard that there are values one is supposed to honor and
this is what one does to honor them-— so they went through the
motions, like ghosts pulled by some sort of distant echoes from a
better age. 1 . . . J couldn't stand it.”

She said, her face tight. “And you don't think you’re generous!”

He glanced up at her: his eyes brightened to a look of amusement
“Why do they make you so angry '”

She said, her voice low' to hide the sound of tenderness, “You
wanted to enjoy it , .

“It probably serves me right. I shouldn't have expected anything
I don’t know what it was that 1 wanted.”

“J do.”

“I've never liked occasions of that sort. 1 don’t see why I expected
it to be different, this time. . . . You know, 1 went tfiere feeling
almost as if the Metal had changed everything, even people.”

“Oh yes. Hank, I know!”

“Well, it was the wrong place to seek anything, . . . Do^you remem-
ber? You said once that celebrations should be only fo&r those who
have something to celebrate.”

The dot of her lighted cigarette stopped in mid-air; she sat still

258

She had never spoken to him of that party or of anything related to
his home. In a moment, she answered quietly, “I remember/'*

“1 know what you meant ... I knew it then, too/*

He was looking straight at her. She lowered her eyes.

He remained silent; when he spoke again, his voice was gay. ‘The
worst thing about people is not the insults they hand out, but the
compliments. I couldn’t bear the kind they spouted tonight, particu-
larly when they kept saying how much everybody needs me — they,
the city, the country and the whole world, 1 guess. Apparently, their
idea of the height of glory is to deal with people who need them.

1 can’t stand people who need me/’ He glanced at her. “Do you
need me?”

She answered, her voice earnest. “Desperately/’

He laughed. “No Not the way I meant. You didn't say it the way
they do/'

‘How did 1 say it?"

“Like a trader— who pays for what he wants. They say it like
beggars who use a tin cup as a claim check ”

“I . . . pay for it, Hank?"

“Don’t look innocent You know exactly what 1 mean/’

“Yes,” she whispered; she was smiling.

“Oh. to hell with them!" he said happily, stretching his legs, shift-
ing the position of his body on the couch, stressing the luxury of
relaxation. “I'm no good as a public figure. Anyway, it doesn't matter
imvv. We don’t have to care what they see or don't see. They'll leave
us alone. It's clear track ahead What’s the next undertaking, Mr.
Vice-President?”

“A transcontinental track of Rcaiden Metal.”

“How soon do you want it?”

“Tomortow morning. Three years from now is when I'll get it.”

4,1 Think you can do it in three years?”

“If the John Cialt . . it the Rio Norte Line does as well as it’s
doing now.”

“It's going to do better. 1 hat’s only the beginning.”

“1 have an installment plan made out. As the money comes in,
!’m going to start tearing up the main track, one division at a time,
and replacing it with Rearden Metal rail ”

“Okay Any time you wish to start. '

“I'll keep moving the old rail to the branch lines— they won’t last
much longer, if I don't, In three years, you’ll ride on your own Metal
into San Francisco, if somebody wants to give you a banquet there/’
“In three years. I’ll have nulls pouring Rearden Metal in Colorado,
in Michigan and in Idaho. That's my installment plan.”

“Your own mills? Branches?”

"Uh-huh.”

“What about the Equalisation of Opportunity Bill?”

“You don’t think it's going to exist three years from now, do you?
We’ve given them such a demonstration that all that rot is going to
be swept away, llie whole country is with us. Who’ll want to slop
things now? Who'll listen to the bilge? There's a lobby of the better

259

kind of men working in Washington right this moment. They're going
to get the Equalization Bill scrapped at the next session."

"I ... 1 hope so."

"I’ve had a terrible time, these last few weeks, getting the new
furnaces started, but it’s all set now, they’re being built, 1 can sit
back and take it easy. 1 can sit at my desk, rake in the money, loaf
like a bum, watch the orders for the Metal pouring in and play
favorites all over the place. . . . Say, what’s the first train you’ve got
for Philadelphia tomorrow morning?"

“Oh, I don’t know."

“You don’t? What's the use of an Operating Vice-President? I
have to be at the mills by seven tomorrow Got anything running
around six?"

“Five-thirty *m. is the first one. I think."

“Will you wake me up in time to make it or would you rather
order the train held for me?"

“I'll wake you up."

She sat, watching him as he remained silent. He had looked tired
when he came in; the lines of exhaustion were gone from his face
now.

“Dagny" he asked suddenly, his tone had changed, there was
some hidden, earnest note in his voice, “why didn’t you want to see
me in public?"

“I don’t want to be part of your . . . official life."

He did not answer; in a moment, he asked casually. “When did
you take a vacation last?"

“I think it was two . . no, three years ago."

“What did you do?"

“Went to the Adirondacks for a month Came back in a week."

“I did that live yean ago. Only it was Oregon" He lay flat on his
back, looking at the ceiling. “Dagny, let’s take a vacation together.
Let’s take, my car and drive away for a few weeks, anywhere, just
drive, down the back roads, where no one knows us. We’ll leave no
address, wc won’t look at a newspaper, we won't touch a phone--
we won’t have any official life at all.”

She got up. She approached him, she stood by the side of the
couch, looking down at him, the light of the lamp behind her; she
did not want him to see her face and the effort she was making not
to smile.

“You can take a few weeks off, can't you?" he said. “Things are
set and going now. It’s safe. We won’t have another chance in the
next three years.”

“All right. Hank,” she said, forcing her voice to sound calmly
toneless.

“Will you?”

“When do you want to start?”

“Monday morning.”

“All right.”

She turned to step away. He seized her wrist, pulled her down,
swung her body to lie stretched full-length on top of him, he held
her still, uncomfortably, as she had fallen, his one hand in her hair,

260

pressing her mouth to his, his other hand moving from the shoulder
blades under her thin blouse to her waist, to her legs* She whispered,
'‘And you say 1 don't need you * . . !"

She pulled herself away from him, and stood up, brushing her hair
off her face. He lay still, looking up at her, his eyes narrowed, the
bright flicker of some particular interest in his eyes, intent and faintly
mocking. She glanced down: a strap of her slip had broken, the slip
hung diagonally from her one shoulder to her side, and he was look-
ing at her breast under the transparent film of the blouse. She raised
her hand to adjust the strap. He slapped her hand down. She smiled,
in understanding, in answering mockery. She walked slowly, deliber-
ately across the room and leaned against a table, facing him, her
hands holding the table's edge, her shoulders thrown back. It was
the contrast he liked— the severity of her clothes and the half-naked
body, the railroad executive who was a woman he owned.

He sat up; he sat leaning comfortably across the couch, his legs
eiossed and stretched forward, his hands in his pockets, looking at
her with the glance of a property appraisal.

“Did you say you wanted a transcontinental track of Rearden
Metal. Mr. Vice-President?" he asked. “What if 1 don't give it to
you? I can choose my customers now and demand any price l please.
If this were a year ago. I would have demanded that you sleep with
me in exchange ''

“1 wish you had."

“Would you have done it?"

'Of course "

“As a matter ot business* As a sale?"

“It you were the buyer You would have liked that, wouldn't
vou?"

'Would you?"

"Yes . . " she whispered.

He approached her, he grasped her shoulders and pressed his
mouth to her breast through the thin cloth.

Then, holding her, he looked at her silently for a long moment.
“What did you do with that bracelet?" he asked.

They had never referred to it; she had to let a moment pass to
regain the steadiness of her voice. “I have it." she answered.

"I want you to wear it."

“It anyone guesses, it will be worse for you than for me."

"Weat it.'*

She brought out the bracelet of Rearden Metal. She extended it
to him without a word; looking straight at him, the green-blue chain
glittering across her palm. Holding her glance, he clasped the brace-
let on her wrist. In the moment when the clasp clicked shut under
his fingers, she bent her head down to them and kissed his hand.

* *

The earth went flowing under the hood of the car. Uncoiling from
among the curves of Wisconsin’s hills, the highway was the only
evidence of human labor, a precarious bridge stretched across a sea
of brush, weeds and trees. The sen rolled softly, in sprays of yellow
<ind orange, with a few red jets shooting up on the hillsides, with

2ft 1

pools of remnant green in the hollows, under a pure blue sky. Among
the colors of a picture post card, the car’s hood looked like the work
of a jeweler, with the sun sparkling on its chromium steel, and its
black enamel reflecting the sky.

Dagny leaned against the center of the side window, her legs
stretched forward; she liked the wide, comfortable space of the car’s
seat and the warmth of the sun on her shoulders; she thought that
the countryside was beautiful.

“What I’d like to see," said Rearden, “is a billboard."

She laughed: he had answered her silent thought “Selling what
and to whom? We haven't seen a car or a house for an hour."

“'I'hat’s what l don’t like about it." He bent forward a little, his
hands on the wheel; he was frowning. “Look at that road."

The long strip of concrete was bleached to the powdery gray ot
bones left on a desert, as if sun and snows had eaten away the traces
of tires, oil and carbon, the lustrous polish of motion. Green weeds
rose from the angular cracks of the concrete. No one had used the
road or repaired it for many years; but the cracks were few.

“It's a good road." said Rearden. “It was built to last. I he man
who built it must have had a good reason tor expecting it to cairv
a heavy traffic in the years ahead."

“Yes ..."

' [ don't like the looks of this."

“I don't either" Then she smiled “Hut think how often we’ve
heard people complain that billboards rum the appearance ot the
countryside. Welt, there's the unruined countryside for them to ad-
mire." She added. “They're the people I hate "

She did not want to feel the uneasiness which she tell like a thm
crack under her enjoyment of this day She had fell that uneasiness
at times, in the last three weeks, at the sight of the country streaming
past the wedge ot the car’s hood. She smiled: it was the hood that
had becnjthe immovable point in her field of vision, while the earth
had gone by, it was the hood that had been the center, the focus,
the security in a blurred, dissolving world the hood before her
and Rearden’s hands on the wheel by her side . . she smiled, think
ing that she was satisfied to let this be the shape of her world

After the first week of their wandering, wher. they had driven at
random, at the mercy of unknown crossroads, he had said to her
one morning as they started out, “Dagny, does resting have to be
purposeless?” She had laughed, answering, “No. What factory do
you want to see?" He had smiled— at the guilt he dul not have to
assume, at the explanations he did not have to give -and he had
answered, “It’s an abandoned ore mine around Saginaw Hay, that
I've heard about. They say it’s exhausted.”

They had driven across Michigan to the ore mine. They had
walked through the ledges of an empty pit. with the Remnants of a
crane like a skeleton bending above them against the sjty, and some-
one’s rusted lunchbox clattering away from under theirffeet. She had
felt a stab of uneasiness, sharper than sadness — but { Rearden had
said cheerfully, “Exhausted, hell! I’ll show them how many tons and
dollars I can draw out of this place!" On their way back to the air.

262

he had said, ‘if I could find the right man. Pd buy that mine for
him tomorrow morning and set him up to work it.”

The next day, when they were driving west and south, toward the
plains of Illinois, he had said suddenly, after a long silence, “No, Pll
have to wait till they junk the Bill. The man who could work that
mine wouldn’t need me to teach him. The man who’d need me,
wouldn’t be worth a damn.”

They could speak of their work, as they always had, with full
confidence in being understood. But they neve* spoke of each other.
He acted as if their passionate intimacy were a nameless physical
fact, not to be identified in the communication between two minds.
Each night, it was as if she lay in the arms of a stranger who let her
see every shudder of sensation that ran through his body, but would
never permit her to know whether the shocks reached any answering
tremor within him. She lay naked at his side, but on her wrist there
was the bracelet of Rearden Metal.

She knew that he hated the ordeal of signing the “Mr. and Mrs.
Smith” on the registers of squalid roadside hotels. There were eve-
nings when she noticed the faint contraction of anger in the tightness
of his mouth, as he signed the expected names of the expected fraud,
anger at those who made fraud necessary. She noticed, indifferently,
the air of knowing slyness in the manner of the hotel clerks, which
seemed to suggest that guests and clerks alike were accomplices in
a shameful guilt the guilt of seeking pleasure. But she knew that it
did not matter to him when they were alone, when he held her
against him for a moment and she saw his eyes look alive and
guiltless.

They drove through small towns, thiough obscure side roads,
through ths kind of places they had not seen for years, She fell
uneasiness at the sight of the towns Days passed before she realized
what it was that she missed most: a glimpse of fte.sh paint. The
houses stood like men in impressed suits, who had lost the desire to
stand straight: the cornices were like sagging shoulders, the crooked
porch steps like loin hem lines, the broken windows like patches,
mended with clapboard, fhe people in the streets stared at the new
cai, not as one stares at a rare sight, but as if the glittering black
shape were an impossible vision from anothet world There were
tew vehicles in the streets and too many of them were horsedrawn.
She had forgotten the literal shape and usage of horsepower; she did
not like to sec its return.

She did not laugh, that day at the grade crossing, when Rearden
chuckled, pointing, and she saw the tram of a small local railroad
come tottering from behind a hill, drawn by an ancient locomotive
i hat coughed black smoke through a tall slack.

“Oh Ciod, Hank, it's not funny!”

*‘l know,” he said.

They were seventy miles and an hour away from it, when she said.

Hank, do you see the Taggart Comet being pulled across the conti-
nent by a coal-burner of that kind?”

“What’s the matter with you? Pull yourself together.”

“Pm sorry . . . It’s just that l keep thinking it won't be any use,

263

ait my new track and all your new furnaces, if we don’t find someone
able to produce Diesel engines. If we don’t find him fast/’

“Ted NieLsen of Colorado is your man/’

“Yes, if he finds a way to open his new plant. He’s sunk more
money than he should into the bonds of the John Galt Line,"

“That’s turned out to be a pretty profitable investment, hasn't it?”

“YCvS. but it's held him up Now he's ready to go ahead, but he
can’t find the tools. There are no machine tools to buy, not any-
where, not at any price. He's getting nothing but promises and de-
lays. He's combing the country, looking for old junk to reclaim from
dosed factories. If he doesn’t start soon—”

“He will. Who’s going to stop him now?”

“Hank,” she said suddenly, “could we go to a place I'd like to
see?”

“Sure. Anywhere. Which place?”

“It’s in Wisconsin. There used to be a great motor company there,
in my father’s time. We had a branch line serving it, but we dosed
the line — about seven years ago— when they closed the factory. I
think it's one of those blighted areas now. Maybe there’s still some
machinery left there that fed Nielsen could use. It might have been
overlooked — the place is forgotten and there's no transportation to
it at all.”

“I’ll find it. What was the name of the factory?”

“The Twentieth Century Motor Company ”

“Oh, of course I Thai was one of the best motor firms in my youth,
perhaps the best. I seem to remember that there was something odd
about the way it went out of business . . can't recall what it was.”

It took them three days of inquiries, but they found the bleached,
abandoned road — and now they were driving through the yellow
leaves that glittered like a sea of gold coins, to the Twentieth Cen-
tury Motor Company.

“Hank,*what if anything happens to Ted Nielsen?” she asked sud-
denly, as they drove in silence

“Why should anything happen to him?”

“1 don’t know, but . . . well, there was Dwight Sanders. He van
ished. United Locomotives is done for now. And the other plants
are in no condition to produce Diesels. I’ve stopped listening to
promises. And . . . and of what use is a railroad without motive
power?”

“Of what use is anything, for that matter, without it?”

The leaves sparkled, swaying in the wind. They spread for miles,
from grass to brush to trees, with the motion and ail the colors of
fire: they seemed to celebrate an accomplished purpose, burning in
unchecked, untouched abundance.

Rearden smiled. “There’s something to be said for thjb wilderness
I’m beginning to like it. New country that nobody’s discovered.” She
nodded gaily. “It’s good soil — look at the way things gifow, I’d dear
that brush and I’d build a — ”

And then they stopped smiling. The corpse they saw in the weeds
by the roadside was a rusty cylinder with bits of glass— the remnant
of a gas-station pump.

264

It was the only thing left visible. The few charred posts, the slab
of concrete and the sparkle of glass dust — which had been a gas
station — were swallowed in the brush, not to be noticed except by a
careful glance, not to be seen at all in another year.

They looked away. They drove on, not wanting to know what else
lay hidden under the miles of weeds. They lelt the same wonder like
a weight in the silence between them: wondci as to how much the
weeds had swallowed and how fast.

The road ended abruptly behind the turn of a hill. What remained
was a few chunks ut concrete sticking out of a long, pitted stretch
ot tar and mud. The concrete had been smashed by someone and
carted away; even weeds could not grow in the strip of earth left
behind. On the crest ol a distant hill, a single telegraph pole stood
slanted against the sky, like a cioss over a vast grave

It took them three hours and a punctured tire to crawl in low gear
through trackless soil, through gullies, then down ruts left bv cart
wheels— to reach the settlement that lay in the valley beyond the
hill with the telegraph pole.

A few houses still stood within the skeleton of what had once
been an industrial town. Everything that could move, had moved
away; but some human beings had remained. The empty structures
were vertical rubble; they had been eaten, not by tune, but by men:
boards torn out at random, missing patches ol roofs, holes left in
gutted cellars. It looked as it blind hands had seized whatever fitted
the need of the moment, with no concept of remaining in existence
the next morning The inhabited houses wetc scattered at random
among the ruins; the smoke of their chimneys was the only move-
ment visible in town. A shell of concrete, which had been a school-
house, stood on the outskirts; it looked like a skull. w r ith the empty
sockets ot glassless windows, with a few strands of hair still clinging
to it, in the shape of broken wires

Beyond the town, on a distant hill, stood the factory of the Twenti-
eth C entury Motor C ompany. Its walls, roof lines and smokestacks
looked trim, impregnable like a fortress. H would have seemed intact
but for a silver water tank, the water lank was tipped sidewise.

They saw no trace of a road to the factory in the tangled miles of
trees and hillsides They drove to the door of the tirst house in sight
that showed a feeble signal of rising smoke. The door was open. An
old woman came shuffling oat at the sound of the motor. She was
bent and swollen, barefooted, dressed in a garment of flour sacking.
She looked at the car without astonishment, without curiosity; it was
the blank stare of a being who had lost the capacity to feel anything
but exhaustion,

“Can you tell me the way to the factory?" asked Rearden.

The woman did not answer at once; she looked as it she would
be unable to speak English. “What factory?" she asked.

Rearden pointed, “That one."

“it’s closed."

“1 know it’s dosed. But is there any way to get there?"

“I don't know. 1 '

“Is there any sort of road?"

265

’"There’s roads in the woods,"

“Any for a car to drive through?"

“Maybe."

“Well, which would be the best road to take?"

“I don’t know."

Through the open door, they could see the interior of her house.
There was a useless gas stove, its oven stuffed with rags, serving as
a chest of drawers, Ibere was a stove built of stones in a comer,
with a few logs burning under an old kettle, and long streaks of soot
rising up the wall. A white object lay propped against the legs of a
table: it was a porcelain washbowl, torn from the wall of some bath-
room, filled with wilted cabbages. A tallow candle stood in a bottle
on the table. There was no paint left on the floor; its boards were
scrubbed to a soggy gray that looked like the visual expression of
the pain in the bones of the person who had bent and scrubbed
and lost the battle against the grime now soaked into the grain of
the boards.

A brood of ragged childien had gathered at the dour behind the
woman, silently, one by one. They stared at the car. not with the
bright curiosity of children, but with the tension of savages ready to
vanish at the first sign of danger.

“How many miles is it to the factory?" asked Reardon.

“Ten miles,” said the woman, and added, “Maybe five ”

“How far is the next town?”

“There ain’t any next town."

“There are other towns somewhere. I mean, how far'*"

“Yeah, Somewhere.’ ’

In the vacant space by the side ot the house, they saw faded rags
hanging on a clothesline, which was a piece ot lelegtaph wire I hree
chickens pecked among the beds of a scraggly vegetable garden; a
fourth sat roosting on a bar which was a length of plumber's pipe
Two pigs waddled in a stictch of mud and refuse, the stepping stones
laid across the muck were pieces of the highway’s concrete.

They heard a screeching sound in the distance and saw a man
drawing water from a public well by means of a rope pulley 1'hcy
watched him as he came slowly down the street He carried two
buckets that seemed too heavy tor his thin arms. One could not tell
his age. He approached and stopped, looking at the car. His eyes
darted at the strangers, then away, suspicious and furtive.

Rearden took out a ten-dollar bill and extended it to him, asking,
“Would you please tell us the way to the factory?”

The man stared at the money with sullen indifference, not moving,
not lifting a hand for it. still clutching the two buckets If 6nc were
ever to see a man devoid of greed, thought Dagny. there foe was.

“We don’t need no money around here.” he said.

"Don’t you work for a living?”

“Yeah."

“Well, what do you use for money?"

The man put the buckets down, as it it had just occurred to him
that he did not have to stand straining under thetr weight, “We don’t
use no money," he said. “We just trade things amongst iw"

266

“How do you trade with people from other towns?’ 1
“We don’t go to no other towns.”

“You don’t seem to have it easy here.”

“What’s that to you?”

“Nothing, Just curiosity. Why do you people stay here?”

“My old man use to have a grocery store here. Only the factory
closed,”

“Why didn't you move?”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere.”

“What tor?”

Dagny was staring at the two buckets: they were square tins with
rope handles: they had been oil cans.

“l isten,” said Kearden. “can you tell us whether there's a road
to the factory?"

“There’s plenty of roads.”

“Is there one that a car can take?'

“I guess so ”

“Which one?”

The man weighed the problem earnestly for some moments. “Well,
now if you turn to the left by the schoolhouse,” he said, “and go on
till you come to the crooked oak, there’s a road up there that's Ime
when a don't ram toi a couple ot weeks.”

‘W hen did it ram last? '

“Yesterday, '

“Is there another road?”

‘ Well, you could go through Hanson's pasture and across the
woods and then there's a good, solid toad there, all the way down
to the deck ”

“In then* a budge across the creek?”

'No?

What are the other roads *

‘Well, il it’s a car road that you want, there's one the other side
ul Miller's patch, it’s paved. U s the best road for a ear. you just turn
U> the tight by the schoolhouse and-
“But that road doesn't go to the factory, does u””

“No, not to the factory

“All right,” said Rcarden. “tiuess we'll find our own way.”

He hail pressed the slat let, when a rock came smashing into the
windshield: The glass was shatterproof, but a sunburst of cracks
spread across it. They saw a tagged little hoodlum vanishing behind
,i comer with a scream ot laughter, and they heard the shrill laughter
ot children answering him I mm behind some windows or crevices,
Kearden suppressed a swear word. The man looked vapidly across
the street, frowning a little. I he old woman looked on. without reac-
tion, She had stood there silently, watching, without interest or pur
pose, like a chemical compound on a photographic plate, absorbing
visual shapes because they were there to be absorbed, but unable
ever to form any estimate of the objects of her vision,

Dagny had been studying her for some minutes. The swollen
shapelessness of the woman’s body did not look like the product of

267

age and neglect: it looked as if she was pregnant. This seemed impos-
sible, but glancing closer Dagny saw that her dust-colored hair was
not gray and that there were few wrinkles on her face; it was only
the vacant eyes, the stooped shoulders, the shuffling movements that
gave her the stamp of senility.

Dagny leaned out and asked, “How old are you?'*

The woman looked at her, not in resentment, but merely as one
looks at a pointless question. “Thirty-seven,” she answered.

They had driven five former blocks away, when Dagny spoke,

“Hank,” she said in terror, “that woman is only two years older
than 1!”

“Yes.”

“God, how did they ever come to such a state?”

He shrugged, “Who is John Galt?”

The last thing they saw, as they left the town, was a billboard. A
design was still visible on its peeling strips, imprinted in the dead
gray that had once been color. It advertised a washing machine.

In a distant field, beyond the town, they saw the figuie of a man
moving slowly, contorted by the ugliness of a physical effort beyond
the proper use of a human body: he was pushing a plow by hand.

They reached the factory of the Twentieth Century Motor Com-
pany two miles and two hours later. They knew, as they climbed the
hill, that their quest was useless. A rusted padlock hung on the door
of the main entrance, hut the huge windows were shattered and the
place was open to anyone, to the woodchucks, the rabbits and the
dried leaves that lay in drifts inside

The factory had been gutted long ago. The great pieces of machin-
ery' had been moved out by some civilized means — the neat holes of
their bases still remained in the concrete of the flooi. J he rest had
gone to random looters. There was nothing left, except refuse which
the neediest tramp had found worthless, piles of twisted, rusted
scraps, of boards, plaster and glass splinters — and the steel stairways,
built to last and lasting, rising in trim spiials to the roof.

They stopped in the great hall where a ray of light fell diagonally
from a gap in the ceiling, and the echoes of their steps rang around
them, dying far away in rows of empty rooms. A bird darted from
among the steel rafters and went in a hissing streak of wings out
into the sky.

“We’d better look through it. just in case.” said Dagny “You take
the shops and I’ll take the annexes. Let’s do it as fast as possible.”

“i don’t like to let you wander around alone. I don’t know how-
safe they are, any of those floors or stairways.”

“Oh, nonsense! 1 can find my way around a factory — or tn a wreck-
ing crew. Let’s get it over with. I want to get out of here.”'

When she walked through the silent yards—where steel, bridges
still hung overhead, tracing lines of geometrical perfection across the
sky — her only wish was not to see any of u, but she force a herself
to look. It was like having to perform an autopsy on the ?txxly of
one’s love. She moved her glance as an automatic searchlight, her
teeth damped tight together. She walked rapidly -there was no ne-
cessity to pause anywhere.

2m

It was in a room of what had been the laboratory that she slopped.
It was a coil of wire that made her stop. The coil protruded from a
pile of junk. She had never seen that particular arrangement of wires,
yet it seemed familiar, as if it touched the hint of some memory,
faint and very distant. She reached for the coil, but could not move
it: it seemed to be part of some object buried in the pile.

The room looked as if it had been an experimental laboratory —
if she was right in judging the purpose of the torn remnants she saw
on the walls: a great many electrical outlets, bits of heavy cable, lead
conduits, glass tubing, built-in cabinets without shelves or doors.
There was a great deal of glass, rubber, plastic and metal in the junk
pile, and dark gray splinters of slate that had been a blackboard.
Scraps ot paper rustled dryly all over the floor. There were also
remnants of things which had not been brought here by the owner
of that room: popcorn wrappers, a whiskey bottle, a confession
magazine.

She attempted to extricate the coil from the scrap pile. It would
not move; it was part of some large object. She knelt and began to
dig through the junk.

She had cut her hands, she was covered with dust by the time she
stood up to look at the object she had cleared. It was the broken
remnant of the model of a motor. Most of its parts were missing,
but enough was left to convey some idea of its former shape and
purpose.

She had never seen a motor of this kind or anything resembling
it. She could not understand the peculiar design of its parts or the
functions they were intended to perform.

She examined the tarnished tubes and odd-shaped connections.
She tried to guess their purpose, her mind going over every type of
motor she knew and every possible kind of work its parts could
perform None fitted the model. It looked like an electric motor, but
she could not tell what fuel it was intended to burn. It was not
designed for steam, ot oil, or anything she could name.

Her sudden gasp was not a sound, but a jolt that threw her at the
junk pile. She was on her hands and knees, crawling over the wreck-
age, seizing every piece of paper in sight, flinging it away, searching
further. Her hands were shaking.

She found part of what she hoped had remained in existence. It
was a thin sheaf of typewritten pages clamped together — the remnant
of a manuscript. Its beginning and end were gone; the bits of paper
left under the clamp showed the thick number of pages it had once
contained. The paper was yellowed and dry. The manuscript had
been a description of the motor.

From the empty enclosure of the plant’s powerhouse, Rcarden
heard her voice screaming, “HankP It sounded like a scream of
(error.

He ran in the direction of the voice. He found her standing in the
middle of a room, her hands bleeding, her stockings tom, her suit
smeared with dust, a bunch of papers clutched in her hand.

“Hank, what does this look like?” she asked, pointing at an odd
piece of wreckage at her feet; her voice had the intense, obsessed

269

lone of a person stunned by a shock, cut off from reality. “What
does it look like?*'

“Are you hurt? What happened?”

“No! . . . Oh, never mind, don't look at me! I’m all right. Look
at this. Do you know what that is?”

“What did you do to yourself?”

“I had to dig it out of there. I’m all right.”

“You’re shaking.”

“You will, too, in a moment. Hank! Look at it. Just look and tell
me what you think it is,”

He glanced down, then looked attentively— then he was sitting on
the floor, studying the object intently. “It’s a queer way to put a
motor together.” he said, frowning.

“Read this,” she said, extending the pages.

He read, looked up and said, “Good God!”

She was sitting on the lloor beside him, and for a moment they
could say nothing else.

it was the coil,” she said. She felt as if her mind were racing,
she could not keep up with all the things which a sudden blast had
opened to her vision, and her words came hurtling against one an-
other, “It was the coil that 1 noticed first — because 1 had seen draw-
ings like it, not quite, hut something like it, yeais ago. when 1 was
in school— it was in an old book, it was given up as impossible long,
long ago — but I liked to read everything 1 could find about railroad
motors. That book said that there was a time when men were think-
ing of it — they worked on il. they spent years on experiments, but
they couldn't solve it and they gave it up. It was forgotten for genera-
tions, 1 didn't, think that any living scientist ever thought of it now.
But someone did. Someone has solved it, now, today! . . Hank, do
you understand? Those men, long ago, tried to invent a motor that
would draw static electricity from the atmosphere, convert it and
create its own power as it went along. They couldn’t do it. They
gave it up ” She pointed at the broken shape. “But there it is."

He nodded He was not smiling. He vat looking at the remnant,
intent on some thought of his own; it did not seem to be a happy
thought.

“Hank 1 Don’t you understand what this means? It’s the greatest
revolution in power motors since the internal-combustion engine-
greater than that! It wipes everything out- and makes everything
possible. To hell with Dwight Sanders and all of them! Who'll want
to look at a Diesel? Who’ll want to worry about oil. coal or refueling
stations? Do you sec what I see? A brand-new locomotive half the
size of a single Diesel unit, and with ten times the pouter A self
generator, working on a few drops ot fuel, with no limit* to its en-
ergy. The cleanest, swiftest, cheapest means of motion evbr devised.
Do you see what this will do to our transportation systems and to
the country — m about one year?”

There was no spark of excitement in his (ace. He slowly.
“Who designed it? Why was it left here?”

“We’ll find out.”

He weighed the pages in his hand reflectively. “Dagny/* he asked,

270

“if you don’t find the man who made it* will you be able to recon-
struct that motor from what is left?”

She took a long moment, then the word fell with a sinking
sound: “No.”

“Nobody will. He had it all right* It worked —judging by what he
writes here. It is the greatest thing Pve ever laid eyes on. It was. We
can’t make it work again. To supply what’s missing would take a
mind as great as his.”

“I’ll find him — if I have to drop every other thing I’m doing.”

“ — and if he’s still alive.”

She heard the unstated guess in the tone of his voice. “Why do
you say it like that?”

“1 don't think he is. If he were, would he leave an invention of
this kind to rot on a junk pile? Would he abandon an achievement
of this si/e? If he were soil alive, you would have had the locomo-
tives with the self -generators years ago. And you wouldn’t have had
to look for him, because the whole world would know his name
by now.”

“I don't think this model was made so very long ago.”

Ho looked at the paper of the manuscript and at the rust) tarnish
of the motor. “About ten years ago. I'd guess. Maybe a little longer.”

“We've got to find him or somebody who knew him. This is more
important—”

“—than anything owned or manufactured by anyone today. I don’t
think we ll find him. And if we don’t, nobody will be able to repeat
his performance. Nobody will rebuild his motor. There's not enough
of it left. It’s only a lead, an invaluable lead, but it would take the
suit of mind that’s born once in a century, to complete it. Do you
see our present-day motor designers attempting it?”

“No.”

Theie’s not a first-rate designer left. There hasn't been a new
idea in motors for years. That’s one profession that seems to be
dying— or dead.”

“Hank, do you know what that motor would have meant, if built?”

He chuckled briefly. “Td say: about ten years added to the life of
every person in this country- -if you consider how many things it
would have made easier and cheaper to produce, how many hours
of human labor it would have released for other work, and how
much more anyone’s work would have brought him. Locomotives?
What about automobiles and ships and airplanes with a motor of
this kind? And tractors. And power plants* All hooked to an unlim-
ited supply of energy, with no fuel to pay for, except a few pennies’
woith to keep the converter going. ITiat motor could have set the
whole country in motion and on fire. It would have brought an elec-
tric light bulb into every home, even into the homes of those people
we saw down in the valley,”

“It would have? It will. I’m going to find the man who made it.”

“We’ll try.”

He rose abruptly, but stopped to glance down at the broken rem-
nant and said, with a chuckle that was not gay, “There was the motor
lor the John Galt Line.”

271

Then he spoke in the brusque manner of an executive. ‘"First, well
try to see if we can find their personnel office hero. We’ll look for
their records, if there’s any left. We want the names of their research
staff and their engineers. I don’t know who owns this place now,
and I suspect that the owners will be hard to find, or they wouldn’t
have let it come to this. Then we’ll go over every room in the labora-
tory, Later, we’H get a few engineers to fly here and comb (he rest
of the place.”

They started out, but she stopped for a moment on the threshold.
“Hank, that motor was the most valuable thing inside this factory,”
she said, her voice low. “It was more valuable than the whole factory
and everything it ever contained. Yet it was passed up and left in
the refuse. It was the one thing nobody found worth the trouble
of taking.”

‘That’s what frightens me about this,” he answered.

The personnel office did not take them long. They found it by the
sign which was left on the door, but it was the only thing left. There
was no furniture inside, no papers, nothing but the splinters of
smashed windows.

They went back to the room of the motor. Crawling on hands and
knees, they examined every scrap of the junk that littered the floor.
There was little to find. They put aside the papers that seemed to
contain laboratory notes, but none referred to the motor, and there
were no pages of the manuscript among them. The popcorn wrappers
and the whiskey bottle testified to the kind of invading hordes that
had rolled through the room, like waves washing the remnants of
destruction away to unknown bottoms.

They put aside a few bits of metal that could have belonged to
the motor, but these were too small to be of value. The motor looked
as if parts of it had been ripped off, perhaps by someone who
thought he could put them to some customary use. What had re-
mained was too unfamiliar to interest anybody.

On aching knees, her palms spread flat upon the gritty floor, she
felt the anger trembling within her, the hurting, helpless anger that
answers the sight of desecration. She wondered whether someone’s
diapers hung on a clothesline made ol the motor’s missing wires —
whether its wheels had become a rope pulley over a communal
well— whether its cylinder was now a pot containing geraniums on
the window sill of the sweetheart of the man with the whiskey bottle.

There was a remnant of light on the hill, but a blue haze was
moving in upon the valleys, and the red and gold of the leaves was
spreading to the sky in strips of sunset.

It was dark when they finished. She rose and leaned against the
empty frame of the window for a touch of cool air on her forehead.
The sky was dark blue. “It could have set the whole country )n motion
and on fire.” She looked down at the motor. She looked Out at the
country. She moaned suddenly, hit by a single long shudder, and
dropped her head on her arm, standing pressed to the fratne of the
window.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She did not answer.

272

He looked out. Far below, in the valley, in the gathering night, there
trembled a few pale smears which were the lights of tallow candles.

Chapter X WYATT'S TORCH

“God have mercy on us, ma’am!” said the clerk of the Halt of Re-
cords. "Nobody knows who owns that factory now. 1 guess nobody
will ever know it.”

The clerk sat at a desk in a ground-floor office, where dust lay
undisturbed on the files and few visitors ever called. He looked at the
shining automobile parked outside his window, in the muddy square
that had once been the center of a prosperous county seat: he looked
with a faint, wistful wonder at his two unknown visitors.

"Why?” asked Dagny.

He pointed helplessly at the mass of papers he had taken out of
the hies. ‘The court will have to decide who owns it, which 1 don’t
think any court can do. If a court ever gets to it. I don’t think it will”

"Why? What happened?”

"Well, it was sold out- -the Twentieth Century, I mean. 'Hie Twenti-
eth Century Motor Company. It was sold twice, at the same time and
to two different sets of owners That was sort of a big scandal at the
lime two years ago, and now it’s just”- - he pointed — "just a bunch
of paper lying around, waiting for a court hearing, I don’t see how
any judge will be able to untangle any property rights out of it— or
any right at all.”

"Would you tell me please just what happened'^”

"Well, the last legal owner of the factory was The People's Mort-
gage Company, of Rome, Wisconsin. That’s the town the other side
of the factory, thirty miles north. That Mortgage Company was a sort
of noisy outfit that did a lot of advertising about easy credit Mark
Yonts was the head of it. Nobody knew where he came from and
nobody knows where he’s gone to now. but what they discovered, the
morning after The People’s Mortgage Company collapsed, was that
Mark Yonts had sold the Twentieth Century Motor factory to a bunch
of suckers Irom South Dakota, and that he'd also given it as collateral
for a loan from a bank in Illinois. And when they took a look at the
factory, they discovered that he'd moved all the machinery' out and
sold it piece-meal, God only knows where and to whom. So it seems
like everybody owns the place— and nobody. That’s how it stands
now — the South Dakotans and the bank and the attorney for the
creditors of Ihe People's Mortgage Company all suing one another,
all claiming this factory, and nobody having the right to move a wheel
in it, except that there’s no wheels left to move.”

"Did Mark Yonts operate the factory before he sold it?”

"Lord, no, ma'am! He wasn’t the kind that ever operates anything.
He didn’t want to make money, only to get it. Guess he got it, too —
more than anyone could have made out of that factory.”

He wondered why the blond, hard-faced man, who sat with the
woman in front of his desk, looked grimly out the window at their

273

car, at a large object wrapped in canvas, roped tightly under the raised
cover of the car's luggage compartment.

“What happened to the factory records?”

“Which do you mean, ma'am?”

“Their production records. Their work records. Their . . . person-
nel files.”

“Oh, there's nothing left of that now. There’s been a lot of Uniting
going on. All the mixed owners grabbed what furniture or things they
could haul out of there, even if the sheriff did put a padlock on the
door. The papers and stuff like that — I guess it was all taken by the
scavengers from Starncsville, that’s the place down in the valley, where
they're having it patty tough these days. They burned the stuff for
kindling, most likely.”

“Is there anyone left here who used to work in the factory?”
asked Rearden.

“No, sir. Not around here. They all lived down in Starnesville.”

“All of them?” whispered Dagny; she was thinking ot the ruins
“The . . . engineers, too?”

“Yes, ma’am. That was the factory town. They’ve all gone, long
ago.”

“Do you happen to remember the names of any men who
worked there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What owner was the last to operate the factory?” asked Rearden.

“I couldn’t say. sir. There’s been so much trouble up theie and the
place has changed hands so many times, since old Jed Starnes died
He’s the man who built the factory'. He made thi^ whole part of the
country, I guess. He died twelve years ago.”

“Can you give us the names of all the owneis since?”

“No. sir. We had a fire in the old courthouse, about three years
ago, and all the old records are gone 1 don’t know where you could
trace them now ”

“You don't know how this Mark Yonls happened to acquire the
factory?”

“Yes, I know that. He bought it from Mayor Bascom ol Rome.
How Mayor Bascom happened to own it. 1 don't know.”

“Where is Mayor Bascom now 9 ”

“Soil there, in Rome ”

“Thank you very' much,” said Rearden. rising. “We’ll call on him ”

They were at the door when the clerk asked. “What is it you’re
looking for, sir?”

“We’re looking for a friend of ours,” said Rearden. “A friend we’ve
lost, who used to work in that factory.”

* *

Mayor Bascom of Rome. Wisconsin, leaned back in his chair; his
chest and stomach formed a pear-shaped outline under his soited shirt.
The air was a mixture of sun and dust, pressing heavily ujwn the
porch of his house. He waved his arm, the ring on his finger? flashing
a large topaz of poor quality.

“No use, no use, lady, absolutely no use ” he said. “Woul4 be just
a waste of your time, trying to question the folks around here. There's

274

no factory people left, and nobody that would remember much about
them. wSo many families have moved away that what’s left here is plain
no good, if l do say so myself, plain no goodt just being Mayor of a
bunch of trash.”

He had offered chairs to his two visitors, but he did not mind it if
the lady preferred to stand at the porch railing. He leaned back, study-
ing her long-lined figure; high-class merchandise, he thought; but then,
the man with her was obviously rich.

Dagny stood looking at the streets of Rome. There were houses,
sidewalks, lampposts, even a sign advertising soft drinks; but they
looked as if it were now only a matter of inches and hours before the
town would reach the stage of Slarnesville.

“Naw. there’s no factory records left.*’ said Mayor Bascom. “If
that's what you want to find, lady, give it up. It’s like chasing leaves
in a storm now. Just like leaves in a storm. Who cares about papers?
At a time like this, what people save is good, solid, material objects.
One's got to be practical.”

Through the dusty windowpanes, they could see the living room of
his house: there were Persian rugs on a buckled wooden fioor, a porta-
ble bar with chomium stops against a wall slamed by the seepage of
last year s rains, an expensive radio with an old kerosene lamp placed
on lop of it.

“Sure, it's me that sold the factory lo Mark Yonls. Mark was a nice
fellow, a nice, lively, energetic icllow Sure, he did trim a few corners,
but who doesn't? Of course, he went a bn too tar That, f didn't expect.

1 thought he was smart enough to stay within the law— whatever's left
of it nowadays.”

Mayor Bascom smiled, looking at them m a manner ol placid frank-
ness His eyes were shrewd without intelligence, his smile good-
natured without kindness.

“I don't think you folks are detectives.” he said, “but even if you
were, it wouldn't matter to me. 1 didn't get any rake-off from Mark,
he didn't let me in on any of his deals, 1 haven't any idea where he's
gone to now ” He sighed. ‘1 liked that fellow. Wish he’d stayed
around Never mind the Sunday sermons. He had to live, didn't he?
He was no woise than anybody, only smarter. Some get caught at it
and some don't- -that’s the only difference. . . Nope. 1 didn't know
what he was going to do with it. when he bought that factory. Sure,
lie paid me quite a bit more than the old booby trap was worth. Sure,
lie was doing me a favor when he bought it. Nope, I didn't put any
pressure on him to make him buy it Wasn't necessary. I'd done him
a few favors before. There’s plenty of laws that's sort of made of
rubber, and a mayor's in a position to stretch them a bit for a friend.
Well, what the hell? 1 hat's the only way anybody ever gets rich in
this world”-- -he glanced at the luxurious black car — “as you ought
to know.”

"You were telling us about the factory.” said Rear den, trying to
control himself.

“What 1 can't stand,” said Mayor Bascom, “is people who talk
about principles. No principle ever filled anybody's milk bottle. The
only thing that counts in life is solid, material assets. It's no time for

275

theories, when everything is falling to pieces around us. Well, me — l
don't aim to go under. Let them keep their ideas and I’ll take the
factory. I don’t want ideas, I just want my three square meals a day.”

“Why did you buy that factory?”

“Why does anybody buy any business? To squeeze whatever can
be squeezed out of it 1 know a good chance when l see it. It was a
bankruptcy sale and nobody much who’d want to bid on the old mess.
So I got the place for peanuts. Didn’t have to hold it long, either —
Mark took it off my hands in two-three months. Sure, it was a smart
deal, if I say so myself. No big business tycoon could have done any
better with it.”

'Was the factory operating when you took it over?”

"Naw. It was shut down.”

“Did you attempt to reopen it?”

"Not me. I’m a practical person.”

"Can you recall the names of any men who worked there?”

"No. Never met ’em.”

“Did you move anything out of the factor)' 7 ”

"Well. HI tell you. I took a look around— and what I liked was old
Jed’s desk. Old Jed Starnes He was a real big shot in his time. Won-
derful desk, solid mahogany. So 1 carted it home. And some executive,
don’t know who he was. had a stall shower in his bathroom, the like
of which I never saw, A glass door with a mermaid cut m the glass,
real art work, and hot stuff, too, hotter than any oil painting. So 1
had that shower lifted and moved here. What the hell, I owned it.
didn't I? I was entitled to get something valuable out of that factory.”

"Whose bankruptcy sale was it, when you bought the factory?”

"Oh, that was the big clash of the Community National Hank in
Madison. Boy, was that a crash! It just about finished the whole state
of Wisconsin —sure finished this part of it. Some say it was this motor
factory that broke the bank, but others say it was only the last drop
in a leaking bucket, because the Community National had bum invest-
ments all over three or four states. Eugene Lawson was the head of
it. The banker with a heart, they called him. He was quite famous in
these parts two-three years ago.”

“Did Lawson operate the factory > ”

“No. He merely lent an awful lot of money on it, more than he
could ever hope to get back out of the old dump. When the factory
busted, that was the last straw for Gene Lawson. The bank busted
three months later.” He sighed. "It hit the folks pretty hard around
here. They all had their life savings in the Community National.”

Mayor Bascom looked regretfully past his porch ratling at his town.
He jerked his thumb at a figure across the street: it was a white-hatred
charwoman, moving painfully on her knees, scrubbing the steps of
a house,

"See that woman, for instance? They used to be solid, respectable
folks. Her husband owned the dry-goods store. He worked jail his life
to provide for her in her old age, and he did, too, by thjc time he
died — only the money was m the Community National Ba(tk.”

“Who operated the factory when it failed?”

“Oh, that was some quicky corporation called Amalgamated Ser-

276

vice. Inc. Just a puff-ball. Came up out of nothing and went back
to it.”

“Where are its members?”

“Where are the pieces of a puff-ball when it bursts? Try and trace
them all over the United States. Try it.”

“Where is Eugene Lawson?”

“Oh. him? He’s done all right. He’s got a job in Washington — in
the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources.”

Reardcn rose too fast, thrown to his feet by a jolt of anger, then
said, controlling himself, “Thank you for the information. 11

“You’re welcome, friend, you’re welcome,” said Mayor Bascom
placidly. “1 don’t know what it is you’re after, but take my word for
it, give it up. There’s nothing more to be had out of that factory.”

“I told you that we arc looking for a friend of ours.”

“Well, have it your way. Must be a pretty good Iriend, if you'll go
to so much trouble to find him, you and the charming lady who is
not your wife ”

Dagny saw Reardens face go white, so that even his lips became
a sculptured feature, indistinguishable against his skin. “Keep your
dirty — ” he began, but she stepped between them.

“Why do you think that l am not his wife?” she asked calmly.

Mayor Bascom Ux>ked astonished by Rearden’s reaction: he had
made the remark without malice, merely like a fellow cheat displaying
his shrewdness to his partners in guilt.

“Lady. I’ve seen a lot in my lifetime.” he said good-naturedly.
“Married people don't look as if they have a bedroom on their minds
when they look at each other In this world, either you're virtuous or
you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.”

“I’ve asked him a question.” she said to Rcarden in time to silence
him. “He's given me an instructive explanation.”

“If you want a tip, lady,” said Mayor Bascom. “get yourself a wed-
ding ring from the dime store and wear it. It's not sure lire, but
it helps.”

' Thank you,” she said. “Good-bye ”

The stern, stressed calm of her manner was a command that made
Reardon follow her back to their car in silence.

They were miles beyond tin* town when he said, not looking at her,
his voice desperate and low. “Dagny, Dagny, Dagny . . . Lm sorry!”

‘Tm not.”

Moments later, when she saw the look of control returning U> his
face, she said, “Don’t ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.”

“Thai particular truth was none of his business.”

“His particular estimate of it was none of your concern or mine.”

He said through his teeth not as an answer, but as if the single
thought battering his brain turned into sounds against his will, “I
couldn’t protect you from that unspeakable little — “

“I didn’t need protection.’*

He remained silent, not looking at her

“Hank, when you’re able to keep down the anger, tomorrow or
next week, give some thought to that man’s explanation and see if
you recognize any part of it/’

277

He jerked his head to glance at her, hut said nothing.

When he spoke, a long time later, it was only to say in a tired,
even voice, “We can’t call New York and have our engineers come
here to search the factory. We can't meet them here. We can’t let it
be known that we found the motor together. ... 1 had forgotten all
that ... up there ... in the laboratory.”

“Let me call Eddie, when we find a telephone. I’ll have him send
two engineers from the Taggart staff. Em here alone, on my vacation,
for all they’ll know or have to know.”

They drove two hundred miles before they found a long-distance
telephone line. When she called Eddie Willers, he gasped, hearing
her voice.

“Dagny! For God’s sake, where arc you?”

“In Wisconsin. Why?”

“1 didn’t know where to reach you. You’d better come back at
once. As fast as you can.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing vet. But there arc things going on, which . . . You’d better
stop them now, if you can If anybody can.”

“What things 7 ”

“Haven’t you been reading the newspapers'*”

“No.”

“I can t tell you over the phone. I can’t give you all the details.
Dagny, you'll think I'm insane, but I think they're planning to kill
Colorado.”

‘Til come back at once,” she said.

* V

Cut into the granite ot Manhattan, under the Taggart Terminal,
there were tunnels which had once been used as sidings, at a time
when traftic ran in clicking currents through every artery of the Termi-
nal every hour of the day. ITie need for space had shrunk through
the years, with the shrinking ol the t rathe, and the side tunnels had
been abandoned, like dry river beds: a few lights remained as blue
patches on the granite over rails left to rust on the ground.

Dagny placed the remnant of the motor into a vault in one ot the
tunnels, the vault had once contained an emergency electric generator,
which had been removed long ago. She did not trust the useless young
men of the Taggart research staff; there were only two engineers of
talent among them who could appreciate her discovery. She had
shared her secret with the two and sent them to search the lactory in
Wisconsin. Then she had hidden the motor where no one else would
know of its existence.

When her workers carried the motor down to the vault and de-
parted. she was about to follow them and lock the steel dix*r, but she
stopped, key in hand, as if the silence and solitude had suddenly
thrown Iict at the problem she had been facing lor days, as if this
were the moment to make her decision.

Her office car was waiting for her at one of the Terminal platforms,
attached to the end of a train due to leave for Washington in a few
minutes. She had made an appointment to see Eugene l^son, but
she had told herself that she would cancel it and postpone her quest —

278

if she could think of some action to take against the things she had
found on her return to New York, the things Eddie begged her to
fight.

She had tried to think, but she couid see no way of fighting, no
rules of battle, no weapons. Helplessness was a strange experience,
new to her; she had never found it hard to face things and make
decisions; but she was not dealing with things— this was a fog without
shapes or definitions, m which something kept forming and shifting
before it could be seen, like semi-clots in a not-quiteTiquid — it was
as if her eyes were reduced to side-vision and she were sensing blurs
of disaster coiling toward her, but she could not move her glance, she
had no glance to move and focus.

The Union of Locomotive Engineers was demanding that the maxi-
mum speed of all trains on the John Galt Line be reduced to sixty
miles an hour. The Union of Railway Conductors and Brakemen was
demanding that the length of all freight trains on the John Galt Line
be reduced to sixty cars.

The states of Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona were de-
manding that the number of trains run m Colorado not exceed the
number of trains run in each of these neighboring states.

A group headed by Orren Boyle was demanding the passage of a
Preservation of Livelihood Law, which would limit the production of
Reardon Metal to an amount equal to the output of any other steel
mill of equal plant capacity.

A group headed by Mr. Mowen was demanding the passage of a
Pair Share Law to give every customer who wanted it an equal supply
of Reardon Metal.

A group headed bv Bertram Scudder was demanding the passage
of a iHiblic Stability Law, forbidding Eastern business firms to move
out of their states.

Wesley Mouch. Top Co-ordinator of the Bureau of Economic Plan-
ning and National Resources, was issuing a great many statements,
the content and purpose of which could not he defined, except that
I he words "emergency powers 1 ' and "unbalanced economy" kept ap-
pearing m the text every tew lines

"Dagny, by what right?" Eddie Willem had asked her, his voice
quiet, but the words sounding like a cry "By what right are they all
doing it? By what right?"

She had confronted James Taggart in his office and said, "Jim, this
is your battle. I've fought mine. You're supposed to he an expert at
dealing with the looters Stop them.”

Taggart had said, not looking at her, "You can’t expect to run the
national economy to suit your own convenience ”

"l don't want to run the national economy! I want your national
economy runners to leave me alone! 1 have a railroad to run — and 1
know what's going to happen to your national economy if my rail-
road collapses!”

“1 sec no necessity for panic? 1

"Jim, do I have to explain to you that the income from our Rio
Nortd Line is all we've got, to save us from collapsing? That we need
every penny of it, every fare, every carload of freight as fast as we

279

can get it?" He had not answered. “When we have to use every bit
of power in every one of our broken-down Diesels, when we don’t
have enough of them to give Colorado the service it needs— whafs
going to happen if we reduce the speed and the length of trains?"

"Well, there's something to be said for the unions’ viewpoint, too.
With so many railroads dosing and so many railroad men out of work,
they feel that those extra speeds you've established on the Rio Norte
Line are unfair— they feel that there should be more trams, instead,
so that the work would be divided around— they feel that it's not fair
for us to get all the benefit of that new rail, they want a share of
it. too."

"Who wants a share of it? In payment for what?" He had not
answered. "Who'll bear the cost of two trains doing the work of one?"
He had not answered. “Where are you going to get the cars and the
engines?" He had not answered. "What are those men going to do
after they’ve put Taggart Transcontinental out of existence 0 "

"I fully intend to protect the interests of Taggart Transcontinental."

"How?" He had not answered. “How — it you kill C olorado?"

“It seems to me that before we worry about giving some people a
chance to expand, we ought to give some consideration to the people
who need a chance of bare survival."

"If you kill Colorado, what is there going to be left for your damn
looters to survive on?"

“You have always been opposed to every progressive social mea-
sure. I seem to remember that you predicted disaster when we passed
the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule -but the disaster has not come."

"Because / saved you, you rotten fools! 1 won’t be able to save you
this time!" He had shrugged, not looking at her. "And if 1 don't, who
will?" He had not answered.

It did not seem real to her. here, under the ground. Thinking of it
here, she knew she could have no part in Jim's battle. There was no
action she could take against the men of undefined thought, of un-
named motives, of unstated purposes, of unspecified morality. There
was nothing she could say to them — nothing would be heard or am
swered. What were the weapons, she thought, in a realm where reason
was not a weapon any longer? It was a realm she could not enter
She had to leave it to Jim and count on his self-interest. Dimly, she fell
the chill of a thought telling her that self-interest was not Jim's motive.

She looked at the object before her, a glass case containing the
remnant of the motor The man who made the motor -she thought
suddenly, the thought coming bke a cry of despair. She felt a moment s
helpless longing to find him. to lean against him ami let him tell hei
what to do, A mind like his would know the way to win this battle.

She looked around her. In the clean, rational world of |he under-
ground tunnels, nothing was of so urgent an importance the task
of finding the man who made the motor. She thought; CoultJ she delay
it in order to argue with Orren Boyle? — to reason with Mr. Mowen?—
to plead with Bertram Scudder? She saw the motor, completed, built
into an engine that pulled a train of two hundred cars do*m a track
of Rearden Metal at tw o hundred miles an hour. When - the vision
was within her reach, within the possible, was she to give it up and

280

spend her time bargaining about sixty mites and sixty cars? She could
not descend to an existence where her brain would explode under the
pressure of forcing itself not to outdistance incompetence. She could
not function to the rule of: Pipe down — keep down — slow down —
don’t do your best, it is not wanted!

She turned resolutely and lett the vault, to take the tram for
Washington.

It seemed to her, as she locked the steel door, that she heard a
faint echo of steps. She glanced up and down the dark curve of the
tunnel. There was no one in sight; there was nothing but a siring of
blue lights glistening on walls ot damp granite.

Rcarden aiuld not fight the gangs who demanded the laws. The
choice was to tight them or to keep his mills open. He had lost his
supply of iron ore. He had to fight one battle or the other. There was
no time for both.

He had found, on his return, that a scheduled shipment of ore had
not been delivered. No word or explanation had been heard from
Larkin. When summoned to Rearden’s office, Larkin appeared three
days later than the appointment made, offering no apology. Lie said,
not looking at Reardcn, his mouth drawn tightly into an expression
of rancorous dignity:

“After all, you can’t order people to come running to your office
any tune you please ”

Rearden spoke slowly and carefully. “Why wasn't the oie delivered?”

“I won't take abuse, I simply won’t take any abuse for something
I couldn't help. I can run a mine just as well as you ran it. every bit
as well. 1 did everything you did — 1 don't know why something keeps
going wrong unexpectedly all the time. I can't be blamed for the
unexpected.”

“ I o whom did you ship your ore last month?”

“1 intended to ship you your share of it, I fully intended it, but l
couldn’t help it if we lost ten days of production last month on account
of the rainstorm in the whole of north Minnesota — I intended to ship
you the ore, so you can’t blame me, because my intention was com-
pletely honest.”

“If one of my blast furnaces goes down, will 1 be able to keep it
going by feeding your intention into a 4> "

“That's why nobody can deal with you or talk to you — because
you're inhuman.”

“1 have just learned that for the last three months, you have not
been shipping your ore by the lake boats, you have been shipping it
by tail. Why?”

“Well, after all, I have a right to run my business as l see fit.”

“Why are you willing to pay the extra cost?”

“What do you care? I'm not charging it to you.”

“What will you do when you find that you can't afford the rail rates
and that you have destroyed the lake shipping?”

“I am sure you wouldn't understand any consideration other than
dollars and cents, but some people do consider their social and patri-
otic responsibilities.”

281

“What responsibilities?”

“Welt, l think that a railroad like Taggart Transcontinental is essen-
tial to the national welfare and it is one’s public duty to support Jim’s
Minnesota branch tine, which is running at a deficit.”

Rearden leaned forward across the desk; he was beginning to see
the links of a sequence he had never understood. “To whom did you
ship your ore last month**” he asked evenly.

“Well, after all, that is my private business which—”

“To Orren Boyle, wasn't it?”

“You can't expect people to sacrifice the entire steel industry of
the nation to your selfish interests and — ”

“Get out of here.” said Rearden. He said it calmly. The sequence
was clear to him now.

“Don’t misunderstand me, l didn’t mean—”

“Get out.”

Larkin got out.

Then there followed the days and nights of searching a continent
by phone, by wire, by plane — of looking at abandoned mines and at
mines ready to be abandoned — of tense, rushed conferences held at
tables in the unlighted comers of disreputable restaurants. Looking
across the table. Rearden had to decide how much he could risk to
invest upon the sole evidence of a man’s face, manner and tone of
voice, hating the state of having to hope for honesty as for a favor,
but risking it, pouring money into unknown hands in exchange for
unsupported promises, into unsigned, unrecorded loans to dumm>
owners of failing mines— money handed and taken furtively, as an
exchange between criminals, m anonymous cash, money poured into
unenforceable contracts— both parties knowing that in ease of fraud,
the defrauded was to be punished, not the defrauder — but poured
that a stream of ore might continue flowing into furnaces, that the
furnaces might continue to pour a stream of white metal.

“Mr. Rearcjen,” asked the purchasing manager of his mills, “if you
keep that up, where will be your profit?”

“Well make it up on tonnage,” said Rearden wearily. “We have
an unlimited market for Rearden Metal “

The purchasing manager was an elderly man with graying hair, a
lean, dry face, and a heart which, people said, was given exclusively
to the task ot squeezing every last ounce of value out of a penny. He
stood in front of Rearden s desk, saying nothing else, merely looking
straight at Rearden, his cold eyes narrowed and grim, ft was a look
of the most profound sympathy that Rearden had ever seen.

There’s no other course open, thought Rearden, as he had thought
through days and nights. He knew no weapons but to pay for what
he wanted, to give value for value, to ask nothing of nature without
trading his effort in return, to ask nothing of men without trading the
product of his effort. What were the weapons, he thought, {if values
were not a weapon any longer?

“An unlimited market, Mr. Rearden?” the purchasing [manager
asked dryly.

Rearden glanced up at him. “I guess I’m not smart enough to make

282

the sort of deals needed nowadays/’ he said, in answer to the unspo-
ken thoughts that hung across his desk.

The purchasing manager shook his head. “No, Mr. Rearden, it’s
one or the other. The same kind of brain can’t do both. Either you’re
good at running the mills or you’re good at running to Washington.”

“Maybe l ought to team their method.”

“You couldn’t learn it and it wouldn’t do you any good. You
wouldn’t win in any of those deals. Don’t you understand? You’re
the one who’s got something to be tooted.”

When he was left atone, Rearden felt a jolt of blinding anger, as it
had come to him before, painful, single and sudden tike an electric
shock— the anger bursting out of the knowledge that one cannot deal
with pure evil, with the naked, full-conscious evil that neither has nor
seeks justification. But when he tett the wish to tight and kill in the
rightful cause of self-defense —he saw the fat, grinning face of Mayor
Bascom and heard the drawling voice saying, “ . . . you and the
charming lady who is not your wife.”

Ihen no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning
into the shameful pain of submission. He had no right to condemn
anyone— he thought -to denounce anything, to light and die joyously,
claiming the sanction of virtue, t he broken promises, the unconfessed
desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud — he was guilty of
them alt What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not
matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches ol evil.

He did not know- -as he sat slumped at his desk, thinking ot the
honesty he could claim no longer, of the sense of justice he had lost —
that it was his rigid honesty and ruthless sense of justice that were
now knocking his only weapon out of his hands. He would fight the
looters, but the wrath and the fire were gone. He would fight, but
only as one guilty wretch against the others. He did not pronounce
the words, but the pain was their equivalent, the ugly pain saying:
\Mio am I to east the first stone?

He let his body fail across the desk. . . Dagny , he thought. Dagny,
if this is the price I have to pay. I'll pay it. . . He was stilt the trader
who knew no code except that of full payment for his desires.

It was late when he came home and hurried m Mindlessly up the
stairs to his bedroom. He hated himself for being reduced to sneaking,
but he had done it on most of his evenings for months. 'The sight of
his family had become unbearable to him: he could not tell why. Don't
hate them for your own guilt, he had told himself, but knew dimly
that this was not the root of his hatred.

He closed the door of his bedioom like a fugitive winning a mo-
ment’s reprieve. He moved cautiously, undressing for bed: he wanted
no sound to betray his presence to his family, he wanted no contact
with them, not even in theit own minds.

He had put on his pajamas and stopped to light a cigarette, when
the door of his bedroom opened, the only person who could properly
enter his room without knocking had never volunteered to enter it,
so he stared blankly for a moment before he was able to believe that
it was Lillian who came in.

She wore an Empire garment of pale chartreuse, its pleated skirt

2#3

streaming gracefully from its high waistline; one could not tell at first
glance whether it was an evening gown or a negligee; it was a negligee.
She paused in the doorway, the lines of her body flowing into an
attractive silhouette against the light.

“I know I shouldn't introduce myself to a stranger," she said softly,
“but I'll have to: my name is Mrs. Reardon." He could not tell
whether it was sarcasm or a plea.

She entered and threw the door closed with a casual, imperious
gesture, the gesture of an owner.

“What is it, Lillian?" he asked quietly.

“My dear, you mustn’t confess so much so bluntly" — she moved in
a leisurely manner across the room, past his bed, and sat down in an
armchair — “and so unflatteringly. It’s an admission that I need to show
special cause for taking your time. Should I make an appointment
through your secretary?"

He stood in the middle of the room, holding the cigarette at his
lips, looking at her, volunteering no answer.

She laughed. "My reason is so unusual that 1 know it will never
occur to you; loneliness, darling. Do you mind throwing a few crumbs
of your expensive attention to a beggar? Do you mind if l stay here
without any formal reason at all?"

“No," he said quietly, “not if you wish to."

“1 have nothing weighty to discuss— no million-dollar orders, no
transcontinental deals, no rails, no bridges. Not even the political situa-
tion. 1 just want to chatter like a woman about perfectly unimport-
ant things."

“Go ahead.”

“Henry, there’s no better way to stop me, is there?" She had an air
of helpless, appealing sincerity. “What can I say after that? Suppose I
wanted to tell you about the new novel which Ralph Eubank is writ-
ing— he is dedicating it to me — would that interest you?"

“If it’s the truth you want —not in the least."

She laughed, “And if it’s not the truth that I want?"

“Then 1 wouldn’t know what to say," he answered— and tell a rush
of blood to his brain, tight as a slap, realizing suddenly the double
infamy of a lie uttered in protestation of honesty; he had said it sin-
cerely, but it implied a boast to which he had no right any longer.
“Why would you want it, if it’s not the truth?" he asked. “What for?"

“Now you see, that's the cruelty of conscientious people. You
wouldn’t understand it — would you? — if 1 answered that real devotion
consists of being willing to lie. cheat and fake in order to make an-
other person happy — to create for him the reality he wants, il he
doesn’t like the one that exists."

“No." he said slowly, “1 wouldn’t understand it." ;

“It’s really veiy simple. If you tell a beautiful woman th$t she is
beautiful, what have you given her? It’s no more than a fa^t and it
has cost you nothing. Rut if you tell an ugly woman that she $ beauti-
ful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of
beauty. To love a woman for her virtues is meaningless. Shei earned
it. it’s a payment, not a gift. But to love her for her vices Is a real
gift, unearned and undeserved. To love her for her vices is to defile

234

all virtue for her sake— and that is a real tribute of love, because you
sacrifice your conscience, your reason, your integrity and your invalu-
able self-esteem.”

He looked at her blankly. It sounded like some sort of monstrous
corruption that precluded the possibility of wondering whether anyone
could mean it; he wondered only what was the point of uttering it

“What's love, darling, if it’s not self-sacrifice?” she went on lightly,
in the tone of a drawing-room discussion. “What's self-sacrifice, unless
one sacrifices that which is one's most precious and most important?
But I don't expect you to understand it Not a stainless-steel Puritan
like you. That's the immense selfishness of the Puritan. You'd let the
whole world perish rather than soil that immaculate self of yours with
a single spot of which you’d have to be ashamed.”

He said slowly, his voice oddly strained and solemn, “1 have never
claimed to be immaculate.”

She laughed: “And what is it you're being right now? You’re giving
me an honest answer, aren't you?” She shrugged her naked shoulders,
“Oh, darling, don’t take me seriously! I'm just talking.”

He ground his cigarette into an ashtray: he did not answer,

“Darling.” she said. “I actually came here only because 1 kept think-
ing that l had a husband and 1 wanted to find out what he looked
like.”

She studied him as he stood across the room, the tall, straight,
taut lines of his body emphasized by the single color of the dark
blue pajamas.

“You're very attractive.” she said. “You look so much better —
these last few months. Younger. Should 1 say happier? You look less
tense. Oh, I know you’ic rushed more than ever and you act like a
commander in an air raid, but that's only the surface. You're less
tense — inside.”

He looked at her. astonished It was true; he had not known it. had
not admitted it to himseli. He wondered at her power of observation.
She had seen little of him, in these last few months. He had not
entered her bedroom since his return from Colorado. He had thought
that she would welcome then isolation from each other. Now he won-
dered what motive could have made her so sensitive to a change in
him— unless it was a feeling much greater than he had ever suspected
her of experiencing,

“1 was not aware of it/* he said.

“It's quite becoming, dear— and astonishing, since you've been hav-
ing such a terribly difficult time.”

He wondered whether this was intended as a question. She paused,
as if waiting for an answer, but she did not press it and went on gaily:

“I know you’re having all sorts of trouble at the mills— and then
the political situation is getting to be ominous, isn't it? If they pass
those laws they’re talking about, it will hit you pretty hard, won't it?”

“Yes. It will. But that is a subject which is of no interest to you,
Lillian, is it?”

“Oh, but U is!” She raised her head and looked straight at him; her
eyes had the blank, veiled took he had seen before, a look of deliber-
ate mystery and of confidence in his inability to solve it. “It is of great

285

interest to me . . . though not because of any possible financial losses/’
she added softly.

He wondered, for the first time, whether her spite, her sarcasm, the
cowardly manner of delivering insults under the protection of a smile,
were not the opposite of what he had always taken them to be — not
a method of torture, but a twisted form of despair, not a desire to
make him suffer, but a confession of her own pain, a defense tor the
pride of an unloved wife, a secret plea — so that the subtle, the hinted,
the evasive in her manner, the thing begging to be undersUXKi. was
not the open malice, but the hidden love. He thought of it, aghast. It
made hts guilt greater than he had ever contemplated.

"It we re talking polities, Henry, I had an amusing thought. The
side you represent — what is that slogan you all use so much, the motto
you’re supposed to stand for? ’The sanctity of contrail'— is that it?"

She saw his swift glance, the imentness of his eyes, the fn si response
of something she had struck, and she laughed aloud. *

“Go on," he said; his voice was low; it had the sound of a threat.

’‘Darling, what for?— since you undci stood me quite well."

"What was it you intended to say?" His voice was harshly pi ease
and without any color of feeling.

"Do you really wish to bring me to the humiliation ol complaining'’
It's so trite and such a common complaint- -although I did think 1
had a husband who prides himself on being different from lesser men
Do you want me to remind you that you once swore to make m>
happiness the aim of your lile’ > And that you can't reallv say in all
honesty whether i ni happy or unhappy, because you haven t even
inquired whether I exist? *

He fell them as a physical pain -all the things that came tearing at
him impossibly together Her words were a plea, he thought— and he
felt the dark, hot (low of guilt, fie felt pity the cold ugliness of pity
without affection. He felt a dim anger, like a voice he tried to choke,
a voice crying in revulsion- Why should I deal with her lottcn, twisted
lying? — why >hould 1 accept torture for the sake of pity? -why is it t
who should have to take the hopeless but den ol trying to spate a
feeling she won't admit, a feeling I can't know oi understand or trv
to guess? — it she loves me. why doesn't the damn coward say so and
Jet us both face it in the open? He heard another, louder voice, saying
evenly: Don't switch the blame to her. that’s the oldest trick ol all
cowards — you're guilty- no matter what she does, it’s nothing com
pared to your guilt -she's right - it makes you sick, doesn’t it. to know
it's she who’s right? -let it make you sick, you damn adulterer— it’s
she who’s right*

"What would make you happy, Lillian?" he asked His Voice was
toneless.

She smiled, leaning back in her chair, relaxing; she had been watch-
ing his face intently.

"Oh, dear!" she said, as in bored amusement. "That's t$e shyster
question. The loophole, I he escape clause."

She got up, letting her arms fall with a shrug, stretching? her body
in a limp, graceful gesture of helplessness,

"What would make me happy, Henry? That is what yoi| ought to

286

tell me. That is what you should have discovered for me. I don’t
know. You were to create it and offer it to me. That was your trust,
your obligation, your responsibility. But you won’t be the first man
to default on that promise. It’s the easiest of all debts to repudiate.
Oh, you’d never welsh on a payment for a load of iron ore delivered
to you. Only on a life.”

She was moving casually across the room, the green-yellow folds of
her skirt coiling in long waves about her.

“I know t hat claims of this kind are impractical,” she said. ”1 have
no mortgage on you, no collateral, no guns, no chains. I have no hold
on you at all, Henry— nothing hut your honor.”

Fie stood looking at her as if it look all of his effort to keep his
eyes directed at her face, to keep seeing her, to endure the sight.
“What do you want?” he asked.

“Darling, there are so many things you could guess by yourself, if
you really wished to know what 1 want. For instance, if you have
been avoiding me so blatantly for months, wouldn’t 1 want to know
the reason?”

“I have been very busy.”

She shrugged. “A wife expects to be the first concern ot her hus-
band's existence. I didn’t know that when you swore to forsake all
others, it didn't include blast furnaces.”

She came closer and, with an amused smile that seemed to mock
them both, she slipped her arms around him.

It was the swift, instinctive, ferocious gesture of a young bridegroom
at the unrequested contact of a whore— the gesture with which he
lore her arms off his body and threw her aside.

He stood, paralyzed, shocked by the brutality of his own reaction
She was staring at him. her face naked in bewilderment, with no
mystery, no piotense or protection; whatever calculations she had
made, this was a thing she had not expected.

Tm sorry, Lillian lie said, his voice low, a voice of sincerity
and of suffering.

She did not answer.

‘Tm sorry . . It’s just that l*m very tired.” he added, his voice
lifeless; he was broken by the triple lie, one part of which was a
disloyalty he could not bear to face; it was nol the disloyalty to I illian.

She gave a brief chuckle “Well, if that’s the effect your work has
on you. I may come to approve of it. Do forgive me, I was merely
trying to dom\ duty. I thought that you were a sensualist who Vi never
rise above the instincts of an animal in the gutter Lm not one of
those bitches who belong in if ” She was snapping the words dryly,
absently, without thinking. Her mind was on a question mark, racing
over every passible answer.

It was her last sentence that made him face her suddenly, face her
simply, directly, nol as one on the defensive any longer. “Lillian, what
purpose do you live for?” he asked.

“What a crude question! No enlightened person would ever ask it”

“Well, what is it that enlightened people do with their lives?”

“Perhaps they do not attempt to do anything. That is their
enlightenment.”

287

"What do they do with Jheir time?”

‘They certainly don't spend it on manufacturing plumbing pipes.”

"Tell me, why do you keep making those cracks? I know that you
feel contempt for the plumbing pipes. You've made that clear long
ago. Your contempt means nothing to me. Why keep repeating it?”

He wondered why this hit her; he did not know in what manner,
but he knew that it did He wondered why he ielt with absolute
certainty that that had been the right thing to say.

She asked, her voice dry, "What's the purpose of the sudden
questionnaire?”

He answered simply, T\1 like to know whether there's anything
that you really want, If there is, I'd like to give it to you, it I can *’

"You'd like to buy it? That’s all you know paying for things. You
get off easily, don’t you? No. it’s not as simple as that. What I want
is non-material.”

"What is it?”

"You.”

"How do you mean that, Lillian 7 You don’t mean it in the gutter
sense,”

"No, not in the gutter sense,”

"How. then?”

She was at the door, she turned, she raised her head to look at him
and smiled coldly.

"You wouldn’t understand it,” she said and walked out.

The torture remaining to him was the knowledge that she would
never want to leave him and lie would never have the right to leave— the
thought that he owed her a* least the feeble recognition of sympathy,
of respect for a feeling he could neither understand nor return - the
knowledge that he could summon nothing for her, except contempt,
a strange, total, unreasoning contempt, impervious to pity, to re-
proach. to his own pleas for justice — and, hardest to bear, the proud
revulsion against his own verdict, against his demand that he consider
himself lower, than this woman he despised.

Then it did not matter to him any longer, it ail receded into some
outer distance, leaving only the thought that he was willing to beai
anything — leaving him in a state which was both tension and peace -
because he lay in bed, his face pressed to the pillow, thinking of
Dagny, of her slender, sensitive body stretched beside him, trembling
under the touch of his fingers. He wished she were back in New York.
If she were, he would have gone there, now, at once, in the middle
of the night.

* *

Eugene Lawson sat at his desk as if it were the control panel of a
bomber plane commanding a continent below. But he iorgot it, at
times, and slouched down, his muscles going slack inside hjs suit, as
if he were pouting at the world. His mouth was the one pdrt of him
which he could not pull tight at any time; it was uncomfortably promi-
nent in his lean face, attracting the eyes ol any listener : } when he
spoke, the movement ran through his lower lip, twisting its ifcoist flesh
into extraneous contortions of its own.

"I am not ashamed of it,” said Eugene Lawson. "Miss Taggart* l

288

want you to know that I am not ashamed of my past career as presi-
dent of the Community National Bank of*Madison/*

“I haven't made any reference to shame/* said Dagny coldly.

“No moral guilt can be attached to me. inasmuch as I lost every-
thing I possessed in the crash of that bank. It seems to me that 1
would have the right to feel proud of such a sacrifice/*

“l merely wanted to ask you some questions about the Twentieth
(Century Motor Company which- -”

“I shall be glad to answer any questions I have nothing to hide. My
conscience is clear. If you thought that the subject w r as embarrassing to
rne, you were mistaken.”

“I wanted to inquire about the men who owned the factory at the
time when you made a loan to—”

“They were perfectly good men. They were a perfectly sound risk —
though, of course, I am speaking in human terms, not in the terms of
cold cash, which you are accustomed to expect from bankers. I granted
them the loan for the purchase of that factory, because they needed
the money. If people needed money, that was enough for me. Need
was my standard. Miss Taggart. Need not greed. My father and grand-
father built up the Community National Bank just to amass a fortune
for themselves. I placed their fortune in the service of a higher ideal.
I did not sit on piles of money and demand collateral from poor
people who needed loans. The heart was my collateral. Of course, I
do not expect anyone m this materialistic country to understand me.
The rewards 1 got were not of a kind that people of vour class, Mis.s
Taggart, would appreciate. The people who used to sit in front of mv
desk, at the bank, did not sit as you do, Miss Taggart. They were
humble, uncertain, worn with care, afraid to speak. My rewards were
the tears of gratitude in their eyes, the trembling voices, the blessings,
the woman who kissed my hand when l granted her a loan she had
begged tor in vain everywhere else.”

“Will you please tell me the names of the men who owned the
motor factory?*’

“That factory was essential to the region, absolutely essential. 1 was
perfectly justified in granting that loan. It provided employment for
thousands of workers who had no other means of livelihood/’

“Did you know any of the people who worked in the factory?”
“Certainly. I knew them all. It was men that interested me, not
machines, I was concerned with the human side of industry, not the
cash-register side/’

She leaned eagerly across the desk. “Did you know any of the
engineers who worked there?”

“I’he engineers? No, no. I was much more democratic than that.
It's the real workers that interested me. The common men. They all
knew me by sight. I used to come into the shops and they would
wave and shoqt, ‘Hello, Gene.' Thai’s what they called me — Gene.
But I’m sure this is of no interest to you. It’s past history. Now if you
really came to Washington in order to talk to me about your rail-
road *^ — he straightened up briskly, the bomber-plane pose returning —
“I don’t know whether 1 can promise you any special consideration,

289

inasmuch as I must hold the national welfare above any private privi-
leges or interests which — ”

“I didn’t come to talk to you about my railroad,” she said, looking
at him in bewilderment. "1 have no desire to talk to you about my
railroad,”

“No?” He sounded disappointed,

“No. 1 came for information about the motor factory. Could you
possibly recall the names of any of the engineers who worked there?”

“I don’t believe 1 ever inquired about their names. I wasn’t con-
cerned with the parasites of office and laboratory. I was concerned
with tire real workers — the men of call used hands who keep a factory
going. They were my friends.”

“Can you give me a tew of their names? Any names, ot anyone
who worked there?”

“My dear Miss Taggart, it was so long ago. there were thousands
of them, how can 1 remember?”

“Can’t you recall one, any one?”

“I certainly cannot. So many people have always filled my life that
I can’t be expected to recall individual drops in the ocean.”

“Were you familiar with the production of that factory? With the
kind of work they were doing -- or planning?”

“Certainly. I took a personal interest in all my investments I went
to inspect that factory very often. They were doing exceedingly well.
They were accomplishing wonders. The workers' housing conditions
were the best in the country. I saw lace curtains at every window and
flowers on the window sills. Every home had a plot of ground for a
garden. They had built a new schoolhouse for the children.”

“Did you know anything about the work of the factory’s research
laboratory?”

“Yes, yes, they had a wonderful research laboratory, very advanced,
very dynamic, with forward vision and great plans.”

“Do you . . . remember hearing anything about . . . any plans to
produce a new- type of motor?”

“Motor? What motor. Miss Taggart? 1 had no time for details. My
objective was social progress, universal prosperity, human brotherhood
and love. Love, Miss Taggart. That is the key to everything. If men
learned to love one another, it would solve all their problems.”

She turned away, not to see the damp movements of his mouth.

A chunk of stone with Egyptian hieroglyphs lay on a pedestal in a
corner of the office — the statue of a Hindu goddess with six spider
arms stood in a niche — and a huge graph of bewildering mathematical
detail, like the sales chart of a mail-order hoUsSe, hung on the wall.

“Therefore, if you’re thinking of your railroad. Miss Taggart — as,
of course, you are, in view of certain possible developmental must
point out to you that although the welfare of the country is kny first
consideration, to which l would not hesitate to sacrifice Anyone’s
profits, still, l have never closed my ears to a plea for mercyjland — ”

She looked at him and understood what it was that he wanted from
her, what sort of motive kept him going,

“I don’t wish to discuss my railroad,” $h** said, fighting to Ifeep her
voice monotonously flat, while she wanted to scream in revulsion.

290

“Anything you have to say on the subject, you will please say it to
my brother, Mr, James Taggart.”

‘Td think that at a time like this you wouldn't want to pass up a
rare opportunity to plead your case before — ”

“Have you preserved any records pertaining to the motor factory?”
She sat straight, her hands clasped tight together.

“What records? I believe I told you that I lost everything I owned
when the bank collapsed.” His body had gone slack once more, his
interest had vanished. “But 1 do not mind it What I lost was mere
material wealth. I am not the first man in history to suffer for an
ideal. I was defeated by the selfish greed of those around me. I
couldn't establish a system of brotherhood and love in just one small
state, amidst a nation of profit-seekers and dollar-grubbers. It was not
my fault. But I won't let them beat me. I am not to be stopped. I am
fighting— on a wider scale — lor the privilege of serving my fellow men.
Records, Miss Taggart? The record I left, when 1 departed from Madi-
son. is inscribed in the hearts of the poor, who had never had a
chance before."

She did not want to utter a single unnecessary word; but she could
not stop herself: she kept seeing the figure of the old charwoman
scrubbing the steps. “Have you seen that section of the country
since?" she asked.

“It’s not my fault!” he yelled. “It’s the lault of the rich who still
had money, but wouldn’t sacrifice it to save my bank and the people
of Wisconsin 1 You can t blame me! 1 lost everything!"

“Mr. I-awson,” she said with effort, “do you perhaps recall the
name of the man who headed the corporation that owned the factory?
lfic corporation to which you lent the money It was called Amalgam-
ated Service, wasn't it? Who was its president?”

“Oh, him? Yes, 1 remember him. His name was Lee Hunsacker. A
very worthwhile young man, who's taken a terrible beating.”

“Where is he now 7 Do you know his address?”

“Why — I believe he's somewhere in Oregon. Orangeville. Oregon.
My secretary can give you his address. But 1 don't see of what
interest . . , Miss Taggart, if what you have in mind is to try to see
Mr Wesley Mouch. let me tell you that Mr. Mouch attaches a great
deal ol weight to my opinion in matters affecting such issues as rail-
roads and other — ”

“l have no desire to see Mr. Mouch,” she said, rising.

“But then, I can't understand . . . What, really, was your purpose
in coining here?"

“I am trying to find a certain man who used to work for the Twenti-
eth Century Motor Company."

“Why do you wish to find him?”

“I want him to work for my railroad.”

He spread his arms wide, looking incredulous and slightly indignant.
“At such a moment, when crucial issues hang in the balance, you
choose to waste your time on looking for one employee? Believe me,
the fate of your railroad depends on Mr. Mouch much more than on
any ‘employee you ever find.”

“Good day,” she said.

291

She had turned to go, when he said, his voice jerky and high, “You
haven’t any right to despise me.”

She stopped to look at him. “I have expressed no opinion.”

“I am perfectly innocent, since I lost my money, since 1 lost all of
my own money for a good cause. My motives were pure. I wanted
nothing for myself. I’ve never sought anything for myself. Miss Tag-
gart, l can proudly say that in ail of my life I have never made a
profit!”

Her voice was quiet, steady and solemn:

“Mr, Lawson, I think I should let you know that of all the state-
ments a man can make, that is the one I consider most despicable.”

* *

“I never had a chance!” said Lee Hunsacker.

He sat in the middle of the kitchen: at a table cluttered with papers.
He needed a shave; his shirt needed laundering. It was hard to judge
his age: the swollen flesh of his face looked smooth and blank, un-
touched by experience; the graying hair and filmy eyes looked worn
by exhaustion; he was forty -two.

“Nobody ever gave me a chance. 1 hope they’re satisfied with what
they’ve made of me. But don’t think that I don’t know it. I know 1
was cheated out of my birthright. Don’t let them put on any airs
about how kind they are. They’re a stinking bunch of hypocrites.”

“Who?” asked Dagny.

“Everybody,” said Lee Hunsacker “People are bastards at heart
and it’s no use pretending otherwise. Justice” Huh! Look at it!” His
arm swept around him, “A man like me reduced to this!”

Beyond the window, the fight of noon looked like grayish dusk
among the bleak roofs and naked trees of a place that was not country
and could never quite become a town. Dusk and dampness seemed
soaked into the walls of the kitchen A pile of breakfast dishes lay in
the sink: a pot of stew simmered on the stove, emitting steam with
the greasy odor of cheap meat, a dusty typewriter stood among the
papers on the* table.

“The Twentieth Century Motor Company,” said Lee Hunsacker,
‘*was one of the most illustrious names in the history of American
industry. / was the president of that company. I owned that factory.
But they wouldn’t give me a chance.”

“You were not the president of the Twentieth Century Motor Com-
pany, were you? 1 believe you headed a corporation called Amalgam-
ated Service?”

“Yes, yes, but it’s the same thing. We took over their factory. We
were going to do just as well as they did, better. We were just as
important. Who the hell was Jed Starnes anyway? Nothing but a back-
woods garage mechanic — did you know that that’s how he stinted?—
without any background at all. My family once belonged to the New
York Four Hundred. My grandfather was a member of the! national
legislature. It’s not my fault that my father couldn’t afford to give me
a car of my own, when he sent me to school. All the other poys had
cars. My family name was just as good as any of theirs. Whdn 1 went
to college — ” He broke off abruptly. “What newspaper did you say
you’re from?”

292

She had given him her name; she did not know why she now felt
glad that he had not recognized it and why she preferred not to en-
lighten him. “I did not say I was from a newspaper,” she answered.
*T need some information on that motor factory for a private purpose
of my own, not for publication.”

“Oh.” He looked disappointed. He went on sullenly, as if she were
guilty of a deliberate offense against him. “I thought maybe you came
for an advance interview because I’m writing my autobiography.” He
pointed to the papers on the table. “And what 1 intend to tell is
plenty. I intend — Oh, hell!” he said suddenly, remembering something.

He rushed to the stove, lifted the lid off the pot and went through
the motions of stirring the stew, hatefully, paying no attention to his
performance. He (lung the wet spoon down on the stove, letting the
grease drip into the gas burners, and came back to the table.

“Yeah. I’ll write my autobiography // anybody ever gives me a
chance,” he said. “How can 1 concentrate on serious work when this
is the sort of thing I have to do?” He jerked his head at the stove.
"Friends, huh! Those people think that just because they took me in,
they can exploit me like a Chinese coolie! Just because I had no other
place to go. They have it easy, those good old friends of mine. He
never lifts a finger around the house, just sits in his store all day; a
lousy little two-bit stationery store-can it compute in importance with
the book I’m writing? And she goes out shopping and asks me to
watch her damn stew lor her. She knows that a writer needs peace
and concentration, but does she care about that? Do you know what
she did today?” He leaned confidentially across the table, pointing at
the dishes in the sdnk. She went to the market and left all the break-
last dishes there and said she'd do them later. I know what she
wanted. She expected me to do them. Well, I'll fool her. I'll leave
them just where they are.”

“Would you allow me to ask you a few questions about the motor
factoiy 0 ”

“Don’t imagine that that motor factory was the only thing in my
life. Fd held many important positions before. 1 was prominently con-
nected, at various times, with enterprises manufacturing surgical appli-
ances, paper containers, men’s hats and vacuum cleaners. Of course,
that sott ol stuff didn’t give me much scope. Bui the motor factory —
Ouit was my big chance. That was what Fd been waiting for.”

“How did you happen to acquire it?”

“It was meant for me. It was m> dream come Hue. Hie factory was
shut down— bankrupt. The heirs of Jed Starnes had run it into the
ground pretty fast. 1 don’t know exactly what it was. but there had
been something goofy going on up there, so the company went broke.
The railroad people closed their branch line. Nobody wanted the
place, nobody would bid on it. But there it was. this great factory,
with all the equipment, all the machinery', all the things that had made
miliums for Jed Starnes. That was the kind at setup I wanted, the
kind of opportunity l was entitled to. So l got a few friends together
and we formed the Amalgamated Service Corporation and we scraped
up a little money. But we didn't have enough, we needed a loan to
help us out and give us a start. It was n perfectly safe bet, we were

293

young men embarking on great careers, full of eagerness and hope
for the future. But do you think anybody gave us any encouragement?
They did not. Not those greedy, entrenched vultures of privilege! How
were we to succeed in life if nobody would give us a factory? We
couldn't compete against the little snots who inherit whole chains of
factories, could we? Weren't we entitled to the same break? Aw, don’t
let me hear anything about justice! I worked like a dog, trying to get
somebody to lend us the money. But that bastard Midas Mulligan put
me through the wringer.’"

She sat up straight. “Midas Mulligan?”

“Yeah — the banker who looked like a truck driver and acted it,
too!”

“Did you know Midas Mulligan?”

“Did 1 know him? Pm the only man who ever beat him -mot that
it did me any good!”

At odd moments, with a sudden sense of uneasiness, she had won-
dered— as she wondered about the stones of deserted ships found
floating at sea or of sourccless lights flashing in the sky— about the
disappearance of Midas Mulligan. There was no reason why she lelt
that she had to solve these riddles, except that they were mysteries
which had no business being mysteries, they could not )>e causeless,
yet no known cause could explain them.

Midas Mulligan had once been the richest and, consequently, the
most denounced man m the country. He had never taken a loss on
any investment he made; everything he touched turned into gold “It's
because 1 know what to touch,” he said. Nobody could grasp the
pattern of his investments: he rejected deals that were considered
flawlessly safe, and he put enormous amounts into ventures that no
other banker would handle. Through the years, he had been the trig-
ger that had sent unexpected, spectacular bullets ot industrial success
shooting over the country It was he who had invested in Kearden
Steel at its start, thus helping Reardon to complete the purchase of the
abandoned sttMd mills m Pennsylvania When an economist referred to
him once as an audacious gambler. Mulligan said. “The reason why
you’ll never get rich is because you think that what l do is gambling.”

It was rumored that one had to observe a certain unwritten rule
when dealing with Midas Mulligan: if an applicant for a loan ever
mentioned his peisonal need or any personal feeling whatever, the
interview ended and he was never given another chance to speak to
Mr. Mulligan.

“Why yes. I can,” said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether
he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed
to pity. “The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon.”

In his long career, he had ignored all the public attacks on him,
except one. His first name had been Michael; when a newspaper col-
umnist of the humanitarian clique nicknamed him Midas Mulligan and
the tag stuck to him as an insult. Mulligan appeared in erfurt and
petitioned for a legal change of his first name to “Midas.” The* petition
was granted.

In the eyes of his contemporaries, he was a man who had committed
the one unforgivable sin: he was proud of his wealth.

294

These were the things Dagny had heard about Midas Mulligan; she
had never met him. Seven years ago, Midas Mulligan had vanished.
He left his home one morning and was never heard from again. On
the next day, the depositors of the Mulligan Bank in Chicago received
notices requesting that they withdraw their funds, because the bank
was closing. In the investigations that followed, it was learned that
Mulligan had planned the closing in advance and in minute detail; his
employees were merely carrying out his instructions. It was the most
orderly run on a bank that the country ever witnessed. Every deposi-
tor received his money down to the last fraction of interest due. All
of the bank’s assets had been sold piecemeal to various financial insti-
tutions. When the books were balanced, it was found that they bal-
anced perfectly, to the penny; nothing was left over; the Mulligan
Bank had been wiped out.

No due was ever found to Mulligan’s motive, to his personal fate
or to the many millions of his personal fortune. Jlie man and the
fortune vanished as if they had never existed. No one had had any
warning about his decision, and no events could be traced to explain
it If he had wished to retire- - people wondered — why hadn’t he sold
his establishment at a huge profit, as he could have done, instead of
destroying it? There was nobody to give an answer. He had no tamily,
no friends. His servants knew nothing: he had left his home that morn-
ing as usual and did not come back; that was all

There was — Dagny had thought uneasily for years — a quality of the
impossible about Mulligan's disappear ance; it was as if a New York
skysciapcr had vanished one night, leaving nothing behind but a va-
cant lot on a street comer A man like Mulligan, and a fortune such
as he had taken along with him, could not stay hidden anywhere; a
skvsciaper could not get lost it would be seen rising above any plain
or lorest chosen fox its hiding place: were it destroyed, even its pile
of nibble could not remain unnoticed. But Mulligan had gone — and
in the seven years since, in the mass of rumors, guesses, theories,
Sunday supplement stones, and eyewitnesses who claimed to have
seen him in every part of the world, no due to a plausible explanation
had ever been discovered.

Among the stories, there was one so preposterously out of character
that Dagny believed it to be true: nothing in Mulligan’s nature could
have given anyone ground to invent it. It was said that the last person
to see him, on the spring morning of his disappearance, was an old
woman who sold flowers on a Chicago street comer by the Mulligan
Bank. She related that he stopped and bought a bunch of the year’s
first bluebells. His face was the happiest face she had ever seen; he
hail the look of a youth starting out into a great, unobstructed vision
ol life King open before him; the marks of pain and tension, the
sediment of years upon a human face, had been wiped off, and what
remained was only joyous eagerness and peace He picked up the
flowers as if on a sudden impulse, and he winked at the old woman,
as if he had some shining joke to share with her. He said, “Do you
know. how much I’ve always loved it — being alive?" She stared at
him, bewildered, and he walked away, tossing the flowers like a ball
in his hand — a broad, straight figure in a sedate, expensive, business-

295

man's overcoat, going oft into the distance against the straight cliffs
of office buildings with the spring sun sparkling on their windows.

“Midas Mulligan was a vicious bastard with a dollar sign stamped
on his heart/’ said Lee Hunsackcr. in the fumes of the acrid stew.
“My whole future depended upon a miserable half-million dollars,
which was just small change to him, but when l applied for a loan,
he turned me down flat— tor no better reason than that 1 had no
collateral to ofter. How could l have accumulated any collateral, when
nobody had ever given me a chance at anything big? Why did he lend
money to others, but not to me? It was plain discrimination. He didn’t
even care about my feelings— he said that my past recoid of failures
disqualified me foi ownership ot a vegetable pushcart, let alone a
motor factory. What failures? I couldn't help it if a lot of ignorant
grocers refused to co-operate with me about the paper containers. By
what right did he pass judgment on my ability? Why did my plans lor
my own future have to depend upon the arbitrary opinion of a selfish
monopolist? I wasn’t going to stand for that. I brought suit against
him.”

“You did w/inrT'

“Oh, yes,” he said proudly. “! brought suit. I’m sure it would seem
strange in some of your hidebound Eastern states, but the slate of
Illinois had a very' humane, very progressive law under which 1 could
sue him. 1 must say it was the first ease of its kind, but 1 had a very
smart, liberal lawyer who saw a way for us to do it. It was an economic
emergency law which said that people were forbidden to discriminate
for any reason whatever against any person in any matter involving
his livelihood. It was used to protect day laborers and such, but it
applied to me and my partners as well, didn’t it? So we went to court,
and we testified about the bad breaks we’d all had in the past, and I
quoted Mulligan saving that i couldn't even own a vegetable pushcart,
and we proved that all the members of the Amalgamated Service
Corporation had no prestige, no credit, no way to make a living- -
and. therefore, the purchase of the motor factory was our only chance
of livelihood — and, therefore. Midas Mulligan had no right to diserimr
nate against us — and, therefore, we were entitled to demand a loan
from him under the law. Oh, we had a perfect case all right, but the
man who presided at the trial was Judge Narraganscti, one of those
old-fashioned monks of the bench who thinks like a mathematician
and never feels the human side ot anything He just sat there all
through the trial like a marble statue— like one of those blindfolded
marble statues. At the end, he instructed the jury' to bring iri a verdict
in favor of Midas Mulligan — and he said some very harsh things about
me and my partners. But we appealed to a higher court fund the
higher court reversed the verdict and ordered Mulligan to give us the
loan on our terms. He had three months in which to antiply. but
before the three months were up. something happened thajt nobody
can figure out and he vanished into thin air, he and his batik. There
wasn’t an extra penny left of that bank, to collect our lawjfu) claim.
We wasted a lot of money on detectives, trying to find himr-as who
didn't? — but we gave it up.”

No — thought Dagny— no, apart from the sickening feeling it gave

2 %

her, this case was not much worse than any of the other things that
Midas Mulligan had borne for years. He had taken many losses under
laws of a similar justice, under rules and edicts that had cost him much
larger sums of money; he had borne them and fought and worked the
harder; it was not likely that this case had broken him.

“What happened to Judge Narragansetl?” she asked involuntarily,
and wondered what subconscious connection had made her ask it.
She knew little about Judge NarraganscU. but she had heard and
remembered his name, because it was a name that belonged so exclu-
sively to the North American continent. Now she realized suddenly
that she had heard nothing about him for years.

“Oh, he retired/’ said Lee Hunsacker.

“He did '" The question was almost a gasp.

“Yeah/*

“When 9 *’

“Oh, about six months later/*

“What did he do alter he retired?”

"\ don’t know-. I don’t think anybody's heard trom him since/’

He wondered why she looked tnghtened Part ot the tear she felt,
was that she could not name its reason, either. “Please tell me about
the motor factory,” she said with effort.

“Well, F.ugene Lawson ot the Community National Bank in Madi-
son finally gave us a loan to buy the factory— but he was just a messy
cheapskate, he didn't have enough money to see us through, he
couldn’t help us when we went bankrupt. It was not our fault. We
had everything against us from the stait How could we run a factory'
when we had no railroad 9 Weren't we entitled to a railroad? I tried
to get them to reopen their branch line, but those damn people at
Taggart Trans--*’ He stopped ‘Say, are you by any chance one of
those Taggarts?”

*i am the Operating Vice-President of Taggart Transcontinental.”

For a moment, he stared at her m blank stupor; she saw the struggle
of fear, obsequiousness and haired in his filmy eyes. The result was a
sudden snarl: “1 don’t need any of you big shots! Don’t think Pm
going to be afraid of you. Don't expect me to beg lor a job. Pm not
asking tavors of anybody. I bet you’re not used to hear people talk
to you this way. are you?”

“Mr. Hunsacker. I will appreciate it very much if you will give me
the information l need about the factory.”

“You’re a little late getting interested. What's the matter? Your
conscience bothering you? You people let Jed Starnes grow filthy rich
on that factory, but you wouldn't give us a break. It was the same
factory We did everything he did. We started right in manufacturing
the particular type of motor that had been his biggest moneymaker
for years. And then some newcomer nobody ever heard of opened a
two-bit factory down in Colorado, by the name of Nielsen Motors,
and put out a new motor of the same class as the Starnes model, at
half the price! We couldn’t help that, could we? It was all right for
Jed -Starnes, no destructive competitor happened to come up in his
time, but what were we to do? How could we fight this Nielsen, when
nobody had given us a motor to compete with his?”

297

“Did you take over the Starnes research laboratory?”

“Yes. yes. it was there. Everything was there.”

“His staff, too?”

“Oh, some of them. A lot of them had gone while the factory
was dosed.”

“His research staff?”

‘They were gone.”

“Did you hire any research men of your own?”

“Yes, yes, some — but let me tell you, I didn't have much money to
spend on such things as laboratories, when I never had enough funds
to give me a breathing spell. I couldn't even pay the bills I owed for
the absolutely essential modernizing and redecorating which I d had
to do — that factory was disgracefully old-fashioned from the stand-
point of human efficiency. The executive offices had bare plaster walls
and a dinky little washroom. Any modem psychologist will tell you
that nobody could do his best m such depressing surroundings. 1 had
to have a brighter color scheme in my office, and a decent modern
bathroom with a stall shower. Furthermore. 1 spent a lot of money
on a new cafeteria and a playroom and rest room for the workers.
We had to have morale, didn’t we? Any enlightened person knows
that man is made by the material factors of his background, and that
a man s mind is shaped by his tools of production. But people
wouldn't wait for the laws of economic determinism to operate upon
us. We never had a motor factory before. We had to let the tools
condition our minds, didn’t we? But nobody gave ns time.”

“Can you toll me about the work of your research staff*”

“Oh, l had 3 group of very promising young men, all ot them
guaranteed by diplomas from the best universities. But it didn't do
me any good, f don't know what they were doing. I think they were
just sitting around, eating up thuii salaries.”

“Who was in charge of your laboratory?”

“Hell, how can 1 remember that now?”

“Do you remember any of the names of your research staff?”

“Do you think I had time to meet every' hireling in person?”

“Did any of them ever mention to you any experiments with a . . .
with an entirely new kind of motor?”

“What motor? Let me tell you that an executive of my position
does not hang around laboratories. I spent most of my time in New
York and Chicago, trying to raise money to keep us going.”

“Who was the general manager of the factory?”

“A very able fellow by the name of Roy Cunningham. He died last
year in an auto accident. Drunk driving, they said.”

“Can you give me the names and addresses of any of, your associ-
ates? Anyone you remember?”

“I don't know what's become of them. I wasn't in a njood to keep
track of that”

“Have you preserved any of the factory records?”

“f certainly have.”

She sat eagerly. “Would you let me see them?”

“You bet!”

He seemed eager to comply; he rose at once and hUrned out of

298

the room. What he put down before her, when he returned, was a
thick album of clippings: it contained his newspaper interviews and
his press agent's releases.

i was one of the big industrialists, too,” he said proudly. “I was a
national figure as you can see. My life will make a book of deep,
humane significance. Ld have written it long ago. if 1 had the proper
tools of production.” He banged angrily upon his typewriter. “I can’t
work on this damn thing. It skips spaces, flow can I get any inspiration
and write a best seller with a typewriter that skips spaces?”

“Thank you. Mr. Hunsacker,” she said. “1 believe this is all you
can tell me — ” She rose. “You don’t happen to know what became
of the Starnes heirs?”

“Oh. they ran for cover after they'd wrecked the factory. There
were three of them, two sons and a daughter. l^ast I heard, they were
hiding their faces out in Durance, Louisiana.”

The last sight she caught of Lee Hunsacker, as she turned to go,
was his sudden leap to the strive: he sei/od the lid off the pot and
dropped it to the floor, scorching his fingers and cursing: the stew
was burned

+ ■>

Little was left of the Starnes fortune and less of the Starnes heirs.

“You won’t like having to see them. Miss Taggart,” said the chief
of police of Durance. I ouisiana: he was an elderly man with a slow,
firm manner and a look of bitterness acquired not m blind resentment,
hut in fidelity to clear-cut standards. “ There's all sorts of human beings
to see in the woik). there’s murderers and criminal maniacs- -but.
somehow. I think these Starnes poisons are what decent people
shouldn't have to see They’re a bad sort. Miss Taggart. Clammy and
bad . Yes, thev're still here in town— two of them, that is. The
third one is dead. Suicide. That was lour years ago It’s an ugly story.
He was the youngest of the three. Uric Starnes. He was one of those
chronic young men who go around whining about their sensitive feel-
ings, when they’re well past lorry. He needed love, was his line. He
was being kept by older women, when he could find them. Then he
started running aftei a girl ot sixteen, a nice gill who wouldn't have
anything to do with him. She married a boy she was engaged to. Uric
Starnes got into their house on the wedding day. and when they came
back from church after the ceremony, they found him in their bed-
rtHun, dead, messy dead, his wrists slashed. , . . Now l say there might
be forgiveness for a man who kills himself quietly. Who can pass
judgment on another man s suffering and on the limit ot what he c an
bear? Hut the man who kills himself, making a show of his death in
order to hurt somebody, the man who gives hts life for malice — there's
no forgiveness for him, no excuse, he’s rotten clear through, and what
he deserves is that people spit at his memory, instead of feelmg sorry
for him and hurl, as he wanted them to be. . . . Well, that was Brie
Starnes. I can tell you where to find the other two. if you wish.”

She found Gerald Starnes in the ward of a flophouse. He lay half-
twisted on a cot. His hair was still black, but the white stubble of hts
chin was like a mist of dead weeds over a vacant face. He was soggy

299

drunk. A pointless chuckle kept breaking his voice when he spoke,
the sound of a static, unfocused malevolence.

u It went bust, the great factory. That’s what happened to it. Just
went up and bust. Does that bother you, madame? The factory was
rotten. Everybody is rotten. I’m supposed to beg somebody’s pardon,
but I won’t, I don’t give a damn. People get fits trying to keep up the
show, when it’s all rot, black rot, the automobiles, the buildings and
the souls, and it doesn’t make any difference, one way or another.
You should’ve seen the kind of literati who turned flip-flops when 1
whistled, when I had the dough. The professors, the poets, the intellec-
tuals, the world-savers and the brother-lovers. Any way 1 whistled. I
had lots of fun. I wanted to do good, but now l don't There isn’t any
good. Not any goddamn good in the whole goddamn universe. 1 don’t
propose to take a bath if I don't feel like it, and that’s that. If you
want to know anything about the factory', ask my sister. My sweet
sister who had a trust fund they couldn't touch, so she got out of it
safe, even if she’s in the hamburger class now, not the diet mignon a
la Sauce Bearnaise, but would she give a penny of it to her brother?
The noble plan that busted was her idea as much as mine, but will
she give me a penny? Hah! Go take a look at the duchess, take a
look. What do I care about the factory? It was just a pile of greasy
machinery'. I’ll sell you all my rights, claims and title to it — foi a drink
I’m the last of the Starnes name. It used to be a great name --Starnes,
1*11 sell it to you. You think Pm a stinking bum, but that goes tor all
the rest of them and for rich ladies like you, too. I wanted to do good
for humanity. Hah! I wish they’d all boil in oil. Be lots of fun. I wish
they’d choke. What does it matter*’ What does anything matter 7 ”

On the next cot, a white-haired, shriveled little tiamp turned in his
sleep, moaning; a . nickel clattered to the floor out of his rags. Gerald
Starnes picked it up and slipped it into his own pocket. He glanced
at Dagny. The creases of his face were a malignant smile.

‘’Want to wake him up and start trouble?” he asked. “If you do.
HI say that you're lying.”

The ill-smelling bungalow, where she found Ivy Starnes, stood on
the edge of town, by the shore of the Mississippi. Hanging strands of
moss and dots of waxy foliage made the thick vegetation look as if
it were drooling; the too many draperies, hanging in the stagnant air
of a small room, had the same look. The smell came from undusted
corners and from incense burning in silver jars at the feet of contorted
Oriental deities. Ivy Starnes sat on a pillow like a baggy Buddha. Her
mouth was a tight little crescent, the petulant rnouth of a child de-
manding adulation — on the spreading, pallid face of a woman past
fifty. Her eyes were two lifeless puddles of water. Her voice had the
even, dripping monotone of rain:

“I can’t answer the kind of questions you’re asking, my gifl. Hie
research laboratory ? llte engineers? Why should I remember anything
about them? It was my father who was concerned with such it* alters,
not I. My father was an evil man who cared for nothing bul business.
He had no time for love, only for money. My brothers and 1 I wed on
a different plane. Our aim was not to produce gadgets, but to do
good. We brought a great, new plan into the factory. It was eleven

300

years ago. We were defeated by the greed, the selfishness and the
base, animal nature of men. It was the eternal conflict between spirit
and matter, between soul and body. They would not renounce their
bodies, which was all we asked of them. I do not remember any of
those men. 1 do not care to remember. . . . The engineers? I believe
it was they who started the hemophilia. ... Yes, that is what I said:
the hemophilia — the slow leak — the loss of blood that cannot be
stopped. They ran first. They deserted us, one after another . . * Our
plan? We put into practice that noble historical precept: From each
according to his ability, to each according to his need. Everybody in
the factory, from charwomen to president, received the same salary —
the barest minimum necessary. Twice a year, we all gathered in a
mass meeting, where every person presented his claim for what he
believed to be his needs. We voted on every claim, and the will of
the majority established every person’s need and every person’s abil-
ity. The income of the factory was distributed accordingly. Rewards
were based on need, and the penalties on ability. Those whose needs
were voted to be the greatest, received the most. Those who had not
produced as much as the vote said they could, were fined and had to
pay the fines by working overtime without pay. That was our plan. It
was based on the principle of selflessness. It required men to be moti-
vated, not by personal gain, but by love for their brothers."

Dagny heard a cold, implacable voice saying somewhere within her:
Remember it —remember it well — it is not often that one can see pure
evil — look at it— remember and some day you’ll find the words to
name its essence. . . . She heard it through the screaming of other
voices that cried in helpless violence: It’s nothing — I’ve heard it be-
fore — I’m hearing it everywhere -it s nothing but the same old tripe-
why ain’t I stand it? - 1 can't stand it — 1 can t stand it!

“What’s the matter with you, my girl? Why did you jump up like
that? Why are you shaking? . . . What? Do speak louder, I can’t hear
you. . . . How did the plan work out? 1 do not care to discuss it.
Things became very ugly indeed and went fouler every year. It has
cost me my faith in human nature. In four years, a plan conceived,
not by the cold calculations of the mind, but by the pure love of the
heart, was brought to an end in the sordid mess of policemen, lawyers
and bankruptcy proceedings. But I have seen my error and I am free
of it. I am through with the world of machines, manufacturers and
money, the world enslaved by matter. I am learning the emancipation
of the spirit, as revealed in the great secrets of India, the release from
bondage to flesh, the victory over physical nature, the triumph of the
spirit over matter."

Through the blinding white glare of anger, Dagny was seeing a long
strip of concrete that had been a road, with weeds rising from its
cracks, and the figure of a man contorted by a hand plow.

“But, my girl, I said that I do not remember. . . . But l do not
know their names, l do not know any names, I do not know what
sort of adventurers my father may have had in that laboratory! . . .
Don’t you hear me? ... I am not accustomed to being questioned in
such manner and . . . Don’t keep repeating it. Don’t you know any
words but ‘engineer’? . . . Don’t you hear me at all? . , . What’s the

301

matter with you? I — I don't like your face* you're . . . Leave me alone.
! don't know who you are. I’ve never hurt you* Lm an old woman,
don't look at me like that, 1 , . . Stand hack! Don’t come near me or
Pil call for help! Pll . . . Oh, yes, yes, 1 know that one! The chief
engineer. Yes. He was the head of the laboratory. Yes. William Has-
tings, That was his name — William Hastings. I remember. He went
off to Brandon, Wyoming. He quit the day after we introduced the
plan. He was the second man to quit us. . . . No. No, 1 don't remember
who was the first. He wasn't anybody important.”

* *

The woman who opened the door had graying hair and a poised,
distinguished look of grooming; it took Dagny a few seconds to realize
that her garment was only a simple cotton housedress.

“May 1 see Mr. William Hastings?” asked Dagny.

The woman looked at her for the briefest instant of a pause; it was
an odd glance, inquiring and grave. “May { ask your name?”

“I am Dagny Taggart, of Taggart Transcontinental.”

“Oh, Please come in. Miss Taggart, I am Mrs. William Hastings.”
The measured tone of gravity went through every syllable of her voice,
like a warning. Her manner was courteous, but she did not smile.

It was a modest home in the suburbs of an industrial town. Bare
tree branches cut across the bright, cold blue of the sky, on the top
of the rise that led to the house. The walls of the living room were
silver-gray; sunlight hit the crystal stand of a lamp with a white shade;
beyond an open d<x>r, a breakfast nook was papered m red-dotted
white.

“Were you acquainted with my husband in business. Miss Taggart?"

“No. I have never met Mr. Hastings. But l should like to speak to
him on a matter of business of crucial importance.”

“My husband died five years ago. Miss Taggart.”

Dagny closed her eyes; the dull, sinking shock contained the conclu-
sions she did, not have to make in words: Ibis, then, had been the
man she was seeking, and Rearden had been right; this was why the
motor had been left unclaimed on a junk pile.

“I'm sorry,” she said, both to Mrs. Hastings and to herself.

The suggestion of a smile or» Mrs. Hastings' face held sadness, but
the face had no imprint of tragedy, only a grave look of firmness,
acceptance and quiet serenity.

“Mrs. Hastings, would you permit me to ask you a few questions?”

“Certainly. Please sit down.”

“Did you have some knowledge of vour husband's scientific work?”

“Very little. None, really. He never discussed it at home.”

“He was, at one time, chief engineer of the Twentieth Century
Motor C ompany?”

“Yes. He had been employed by them for eighteen yeans}”

“I wanted to ask Mr. Hastings about his work there and the reason
why he gave it up. If you can tell me, I would like to Mow what
happened in that factory.”

The smile of sadness and humor appeared fully on Mrs. ^Hastings'
face, “That is what 1 would tike to know myself,” she said, “But I’m
afraid I shall never leam it now. 1 know why he left the factory. It

302

was because of an outrageous scheme which the heirs of Jed Starnes
established there. He would not work on such terms or for such peo-
ple. But there was something else. I’ve always felt that something
happened at Twentieth Century Motors, which he would not tell me.”

"i’m extremely anxious to know any due you may care to give me/’

“1 have no clue to it. I’ve tried to guess and given up. I cannot
understand or explain if. But 1 know that something happened. When
my husband left Twentieth Century, we came here and he took a job
as head of the engineering department of Anne Motors. It was a
growing, successful concern at the time. It gave my husband the kind
of work he liked. He was not a person prone to inner conflicts, he
had always been sure of his actions and at peace with himself. But
for a whole year after we left Wisconsin, he acted as if he were
tortured by something, as if he were struggling with a personal prob-
lem he could not solve. At the end of that year, he came to me one
morning and told me that he had resigned from Acme Motors, that
he was tetiring and would not work anywhere else. He loved his work;
it was his whole life. Yet he looked calm, self-confident and happy,
for the first time since we d come here. He asked me not to question
him about the reason of his decision. I didn't question him and I
didn't object. We had this house, we had our savings, we had enough
to live on modestly for the rest of our days. I never learned his reason.
We went on living here, quietly and very happily. He seemed to feel
n profound contentment. He had an odd serenity of spirit that l had
never seen in him before. There was nothing strange in his behavior
or activity- except that at times, very lareiy, he went out without
telling me where he went or whom he saw. In the last two years of
his life, he went away for vine month, each summer; he did not tell
me where. Otherwise, he lived as he always had. He studied a great
deal and he spent his time on engineering research of his own, working
in the basement of our house. 1 don't know what he did with his
notes and experimental models. I found no trace of them m the base-
ment. after his death. He died five years ago, of a heart ailment from
which he had suffered tor some time.”

Dagny asked hopelessly, “Did you know the nature of his experi-
ments?”

"No. I know very little about engineering.”

"Did you know any of his professional friends or co-workers, who
might have been acquainted with his research?”

"No. When he was at Twentieth Century Motors, he worked such
long hours that we had very little lime for ourselves and we spent it
together. We had no social life at all. He never brought his associates
to the house.”

"When he was at Twentieth ( entury, did he ever mention to you
a motor he had designed, an entirely new type of motor that could
have changed the course of ail industry?”

"A motor? Yes. Yt\s, he spoke of it several times. He said it was
an invention of incalculable importance. But it was not he who had
designed it It was the invention of a young assistant of his.”

She saw the expression on Dagny’s face, and added slowly, quizzi-
cally, without reproach, merely in sad amusement, "i see.”

303

"Oh, Pm sorry I’* said Dagny, realizing that her emotion had shot
to her face and become a smile as obvious as a cry of relief.

"it's quite aill right. I understand. It's the inventor of that motor
that you're interested in. 1 don't know whether he is still alive, but at
least I have no reason to think that he isn’t."

*Td give half my life to know that he is — and to find him. It's as
important as that, Mrs. Hastings. Who is he?"

"I don't know. I don’t know his name or anything about him. I
never knew any of the men on my husband's staff. He told me only
that he had a young engineer who. some day, would up-tum the world.
My husband did not care for anything in people except ability. I think
this was the only man he ever loved. He didn't say so. but I could
tell it, just by the way he spoke of this young assistant. I remember—
the day he told me that the motor was completed — how his voice
sounded when he said. And he's only twenty-six!’ Ibis was about a
month before the death of Jed Starnes. He never mentioned the motor
or the young engineer, after that."

"You don't know what became of the young engineer?"

"No."

"You can't suggest any way to find him?"

“No."

"You have no clue, no lead to help me learn his name?”

"None. Tell me. was that motor extremely valuable?"

"More valuable than any estimate 1 could give you."

"It’s strange, because, you see, I thought of it once, some years
after we’d left Wisconsin, and 1 asked my husband what had become
of that invention he'd said was so great, what would be done with it.
He looked at me very oddly and answered, ‘Nothing.’ "

"Why?"

"He wouldn't tell me."

"Can you remember anyone at all who worked at Twentieth Cen-
tury? Anyone .who knew that young engineer? Any friend of his?"

"No, 1 , . . Wait! Wait, I think I can give you a lead. 1 can tell you
where to find one friend of his. I don’t even know that friend’s name,
either, but 1 know his address. It's an odd story. I'd better explain
how it happened. One evening — about two years after we’d come
•here — my husband was going out and I needed our car that night, so
he asked me to pick him up after dinner at the restaurant of the
railroad station. He did not tell me with whom he was having dinner.
When I drove up to the station, l saw him standing outside the restau-
rant with two men. One of them was young and tall. The other was
elderly; he looked very distinguished. I would still recognize those
men anywhere; they had the kind of faces one doesn't forget. My
husband saw me and left them. They walked away toward the station
platform: there was a train coming. My husband pointed kfter the
young man and said, "Did you see him? That’s the boy I $old you
about.' 'The one who’s the great maker of motors?’ Ibe bne who
was.' "

"And he told you nothing else?"

"Nothing else. This was nine years ago. Last spring, I weitt to visit
my brother who lives in Cheyenne. One afternoon, he took the family

m

out tor a long drive. We went up into pretty wild country, high in the
Rockies, and we stopped at a roadside diner. There was a distin-
guished, gray-haired man behind the counter. 1 kept staring at him
while he fixed our sandwiches and coffee, because 1 knew that 1 had
seen his face before, but could not remember where. We drove on,
we were miles away Irom the dmei, when I remembered. You'd better
go there. Its on Route 86, in the mountains, west of Cheyenne, near
a small industrial settlement by the Lennox Copper Foundry. It seems
strange, but I'm certain of it the cook in that diner is the man 1 saw
at the railroad station with my husband's young idol/’

* *

The diner stood on the summit of a long, hard climb. Its glass wails
spread a coal of polish over the view of rocks and pines descending
m broken ledges to the sunset. It was dark below, but an even, glowing
light still remained in the diner, as in a small pool left behind by a
receding tide.

Dagny sat at the end of the counter, eating a hamburger sandwich.
It was the best-cooked food she had ever tasted, the product of simple
ingredients and of an unusual skill. Two workers were finishing their
dinner: she was watting for them to depart.

She studied the man behind the counter. He was slender and tall,
he had an air of distinction that belonged to an ancient castle or in
the inner office of a bank: but his peculiar quality came from the fact
that he made the distinction seem appropriate here, behind the
counter of a diner. He wore a cook’s white jacket as if it were a full-
dress suit. There was an expert competence in his manner of working;
his movements were easy, intelligently economical He had a lean face
and gray hair that blended in tone with the add blue of his eyes;
somewhere beyond his look of courteous sternness, there was a note
of humor, so taint that it vanished if one tried to discern it.

Vhe two workers finished, paid and departed, each leaving a dime
for a tip .She watched the man as he removed their dishes, put the
dimes into the pocket of his white jacket, wiped the counter, working
with swift precision. Then he turned and looked at her It was an
impersonal glance, not intended to invite conversation; but she felt
certain that he had long since noted her New York suit, her high-
heeled pumps, her air of being a woman who did not waste her time;
his cold, observant eyes seemed to tell her that he knew she did not
belong here and that he was waiting to discover her purpose

‘How is business?" she asked.

‘Pretty bad. They’re going to close the Lennox Foundry next week,
so 1 11 have to dose soon, loo, and move on." His voice was clear,
impersonally cordial.

“Where to?"

"I haven't decided."

"What sort of thing do you have in mind?"

*1 don’t know. Frn thinking ot opening a garage, if 1 can find the
right spot in some town.’*

"Oh no! You’re too good at your job to change it. You shouldn't
want to be anything but a cook.”

305

A strange, fine smile moved the curve of his mouth. “No?” he
asked courteously.

“No! How would you like a job in New York?" He looked at her,
astonished. *Tm serious. I can give you a job on a big railroad, in
charge of the dining-car department."

"May I ask why you should want to?"

She raised the hamburger sandwich in its white paper napkin.
“There’s one of the reasons."

“Thank you. What arc the others?"

"I don’t suppose you’ve lived in a big city, or you'd know how
miserably difficult it is to find any competent men for any job
whatever.”

“I know a little about that "

“Well? How about it, then? Would you like a job in New York at
ten thousand dollars a year?”

"No”

She had been carried away by the joy of discovering and rewarding
ability. She looked at him silently, shocked. “1 don’t think you under-
stood me," she said.

"I did."

"You’re refusing an opportunity of this kind?"

"Yes."

"But why**"

“That is a personal matter.’'

"Why should you work like this, when you can have a bettei job?"

"I am not looking for a better job."

“You don’t want a chance to rise and make money?"

"No. Why do you insist?"

"Because i hate to see ability being wasted!"

He said slowly, intently, "So do I."

Something in the way ho said it made her tec! the bond of some
profound emotion which they held in common, it broke the discipline
that forbade her ever to call for help. "I’m so sick of them!" Hei
voice startled her. it was an involuntary cry. "I’m so hungry for any
sight of anyone who’s able to do whatever it is he’s doing’"

She pressed the back of her hand to her eyes, trying to dam the
outbreak of a despair she had not permitted herself to acknowledge:
she had not known the extent of it, nor how little of her endurance
the quest had left her.

*Tm sorry," he said, his voice low. It sounded, not as an apology,
but as a statement of compassion.

She glanced up at him. He smiled, and she knew that the smile was
intended to break the bond which he, too, had felt: the smile had a
trace of courteous mockery. He said, "But I don’t believe that you
came all the way from New York just to hunt for railroad books in
the Rockies."

"No. 1 came for something else." She leaned forward both forearms
braced firmly against the counter, feeling calm and in tight control
again, sensing a dangerous adversary. "Did you know, about ten years
ago, a young engineer who worked for the Twentieth Century Motor
Company?"

306

She counted the seconds of a pause; she could not define the nature
of the way he looked at her. except that it was the look of some
special attentiveness.

"Yes, I did," be answered.

"Could you give me his name and address?”

"What for?"

"It s crucially important that 1 find him."

“That man? Of what importance is he?"

"He is the most important man in the world."

"Really? Why?"

"Did you know anything about his work?"

"Yes."

"Did you know that he hit upon an idea of the most tremendous
consequence?"

He let a moment pass. ‘‘May 1 ask who you are?"

“Dagny Taggart. I’m the Vice-Pres--"

"Yes, Miss Taggart. I know who you are."

He said it with impersonal deference. But he looked as if he had
found the answer to some special question m his mind and was not
astonished any longer.

"Then you know that rny interest is not kite,” she said, "I'm in a
position to give him the chance he needs and Tm prepared to pay
anything he asks."

"May 1 ask what has aroused your interest m him?"

“His motor."

How did you happen to know about his motor?"

"I found a broken remnant ol U m the rums of the Twentieth
Century factors. Not enough to reconstruct jt or to leant how it
worked. But enough to know that it did work and that it's an invention
which can save my railroad, the country and the economy of the whole
world. Don’t ask me to tell you now what trail Tve followed, trying
to trace that motor and to find its inventor. That's not of any impor-
tance, even my life and work are not ol any importance to me right
now. nothing is of any importance; except that 1 must find hint. Don’t
ask me how 1 happened to come to you. You're the end of the trail.
I ell me his name."

He had listened without moving, looking straight at her; the atten-
tiveness of his eyes seemed to take hold of every word and store it
carefully away, giving her n > due to his purpose. He did not move
for a long time. Then he said, "Give it up, Miss Taggart. You won’t
find him."

"What is his name?"

“I can tell you nothing about him."

“Is he still alive?"

"I can tell you nothing."

"What is your name?”

"Hugh Akston."

Through the blank seconds of recapturing her mind, she kept telling
herself: You’re hysterical . . . don’t be preposterous . . . it’s just a
coincidence of names —while she knew, in certainty and numb, inexpli-
cable terror, that this was the Hugh Akston.

307

“Hugh Akston?” she stammered. “The philosopher? . . . The last
of the advocates of reason?”

“Why, yes,” he answered pleasantly. “Or the first of their return.”

He did not seem startled by her shock, but he seemed to find it
unnecessary. His manner was simple, almost friendly, as if he felt no
need to hide his identity and no resentment at its being discovered.

“I didn't think that any young person would recognize my name or
attach any significance to it, nowadays,” he said.

“But . . . but what are you doing here?” Her arm swept at the
room. “This doesn’t make sense!”

“Are you sure?”

“What is it? A stunt? An experiment? A secret mission? Are you
studying something for some special purpose?”

“No, Miss Taggart. I’m earning my living.” The words and the voice
had the genuine simplicity of truth.

“Dr. Akston, l . . . it’s inconceivable, it’s . . . You're . . . you're a
philosopher ... the greatest philosopher living ... an immortal
name , . , why would you do thisT*

“Because I am a philosopher. Miss Taggart.”

She knew with certainty— even though she felt as if her capacity
for certainty and for understanding were gone - that she would obtain
no help from him, that questions were useless, that he would give her
no explanation: neither of the inventor’s fate nor of his own.

“Give it up. Miss Taggart,” he said quietly, as if giving proof that
he could guess her thoughts, as she had known he would, ‘It is a
hopeless quest, the more hopeless because you have no inkling of
what an impossible task you have chosen to undertake. I would like
to spare you the strain of trying to devise some argument, trick or
plea that would make me give you the information you are seeking.
Take my word for it: it can’t be done. You said I'm the end of your
trail. It’s a blind alley. Miss Taggart. Do not attempt to waste your
money and effort on other, more conventional methods of inquiry: do
not hire detectives. They will learn nothing. You mav choose to ignore
my warning, bdt I think that you are a person of high intelligence,
able to know that I know what I am saying. Give it up. Tfie secret
you are trying to solve involves something greater — much greater—
than the invention of a motor run by atmospheric electricity, rhea"
is only one helpful suggestion that I can give you: By the essence
and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it
inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among
ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a
diner — check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

She started: she remembered that she had heard this before and
that it was Francisco who had said it. And then she remembered that
this man had been one of Francisco's teachers.

“As you wish. Dr Akston,” she said. “1 won’t attempt to question
you about it. But would you permit me to ask you a quesliod on an
entirely different subject?”

“Certainly.”

“Dr. Robert Stadler once told me that when you were at the Patrick
Henry University, you had three students who were your favorites

308

and his, three brilliant minds from whom you expected a great future.
One of them was Francisco d’Anconia.”

“Yes. Another was Ragnar DanneskjOld/’

“Incidentally — this is not my question — who was the third?”

“His name would mean nothing to you. He is not famous.”

“Dr. Stadler said that you and he were rivals over these three stu-
dents, because you both regarded them as your sons.”

“Rivals? He lost them.”

“Tell me, are you proud of the way these three have turned out?”

He looked off, into the distance, at the dying fire of the sunset on
the iarthest rocks; his face had the look of a father who watches his
sons bleeding on a battlefield. He answered:

“More proud than I had ever hoped to be.”

It was almost dark. He turned sharply, took a package of cigarettes
from his pocket, pulled out one cigarette, but stopped, remembering
her presence, as if he had forgotten it for a moment, and extended
the package to her. She took a cigarette and he struck the brief flare
of a match, then shook it out. leaving only two small points of fire in
the darkness of a glass room and of miles of mountains beyond it

She rose, paid her bill, and said, “Thank you. Dr. Akston. I will
not molest you with tricks or pleas. 1 will not hire detectives. But 1
think I should tell you that I will not give up. 1 must find the inventor
of that motor. 1 will find him."

‘Not until the day when he chooses to find you— as he will.”

When she walked to her car, he switched on the lights in the diner,
she saw the mailbox by the side of the road and noted the incredible
fact that the name “Hugh Akston” stood written openly across if

She had driven far down the winding road, and the lights of the
diner were long since out of sight, when she noticed that she was
enjoying the taste of the cigarette he had given her: it was different
from any she had ever smoked before. She held the small remnant to
the light of the dashboard, looking for the name of the brand. There
was no name, only a trademark. Stamped in gold on the thin, white
paper there stood the sign of the dollar.

She examined it curiously: she had never heard of that brand before.
Then she remembered the old man at the cigar stand of the Taggart
Terminal, and smiled, thinking that this was a specimen for his collec-
tion. She stamped out the fire and dropped the butt into her handbag.

Train Number 57 was lined along the track, ready to leave for
Wyatt Junction, when she reached Cheyenne, left her car at the garage
where she had rented it, and walked out on the platform of the Tag-
gart station. She had half an hour to wait for the east-bound main
liner to New York. She walked to the end of the platform and leaned
wearily against a lamppost; she did not want to be seen and recognized
by the station employees, she did not want to talk to anyone, she
needed rest. A few people stood in dusters on the half-deserted plat-
form; animated conversations seemed to be going on, and newspapers
were more prominently in evidence than usual.

She looked at the lighted windows of Train Number 57 — for a mo-
ment’s relief in the sight of a victorious achievement Train Number
57 was about to start down the track of the John Galt Line, through

309

the town* through the curves of the mountains, past the green signals
where people had stood cheering and the valleys where rockets had
risen to the summer sky. Twisted remnants of leaves now hung on
the branches beyond the train’s roof line* and the passengers wore
furs and mufflers, as they climbed aboard. They moved with the casual
manner of a daily event, with the security of expecting a performance
long since taken for granted. . . . We've done it — she thought — this
much, at least, is done.

It was the chance conversation of two men somewhere behind her
that came beating suddenly against her closed attention.

“But laws shouldn’t be passed that way, so quickly.”

‘•They’re not laws, theyVe directives."

'Then it's illegal."

“It's not illegal, because the Legislature passed a law last month
giving him the power to issue directives."

“I don't think directives should be sprung on people that way, out
of the blue, like a punch in the nose."

“Well, there's no time to palaver when it's a national emergency."

“But I don’t think it’s right and it doesn't jibe. How is Reardon
going to do it, when it says here—"

"Why should you worry about Reardon ’ He’s neh enough. He can
find a way to do anything."

Then she leaped to the first newsstand in sight and seized a copy
of the evening paper.

It was on the front page. Wesley Mouch, Top Co-ordinator of the
Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. 'in a surprise
move," said the paper, ‘and in the name of the national emergency."
had issued a set of directives, which were strung in a column down
the page:

The railroads of the country were ordered to reduce the maximum
speed of all trams to sixty miles per hour — to reduce the maximum
length of all trams to sixty cars— and to run the same number of trains
in every state of a zone composed of five neighboring slates, the
country being divided into such zones for the purpose.

The steel mills of the country were ordered to limit the maximum
production of any metal alloy to an amount equal to the production
of other metal alloys by other mills placed in the same classification
of plant capacity — and to supply a fair share of any metal alloy to all
consumers who might desire to obtain it.

All the manufacturing establishments of the country, of any size
and nature, were forbidden to move from their present locations, ex-
cept when granted a special permission to do so by the Bureau of
Economic Planning and National Resources.

To compensate the railroads of the country for the extra costs in-
volved and “to cushion the process of readjustment." a moratorium
on payments of interest and principal on all railroad bonds|~ secured
and unsecured, convertible and non-convertible — was declared for a
period of five years.

To provide the funds for the personnel to enforce these directives,
a special tax was imposed on the state of Colorado, “as the istate best
able to assist the needier states to bear the brunt of the national

310

emergency,” sufch tax to consist of five per cent of the gross sales of
Colorado’s industrial concerns.

The cry she uttered was one she had never permitted herself before,
because she made it her pride always to answer it herself — but she
saw a man standing a few steps away, she did not see that he was a
ragged bum, and she uttered the cry because it was the plea of reason
and he was a human figure:

“What are we going to do?”

The bum grinned mirthlessly and shrugged:

“Who is John Galt?”

It was not Taggart Transcontinental that stood as the focus of terror
in her mind, it was not the thought of Hank Rearden tied to a rack
pulled in opposite directions— it was Eliis Wyatt. Wiping out the rest,
filling her consciousness, leaving no room for words, no time for won-
der, as a flaring answer to the questions she had not begun to ask,
stoixl two pictures: Ellis Wyatt’s implacable figure in front of her desk,
saying, “It is now in your power to destroy me; I may have to go;
but if 1 go. I'll make sure that 1 take all the rest of you along with
me” —and the circling violence of Ellis Wyatt’s body when he flung
a glass to shatter against the wall.

The only consciousness the pictures left her was the feeling of the
approach of some unthinkable disaster, and the feeling that she had
to outrun it. She had to reach Ellis Wyatt and stop him. She did not
know what it was that she had to prevent. She knew only that she
had to stop him.

And because, were she lying crushed under the ruins ot a building,
were she tom by the bomb of an air raid, so long as she was still in
existence she would know that action is man's foremost obligation,
regal dless of anything he feels— she wms able to run down the plat-
form and to see the face of the stationm aster when she found him —
she was able to order: “Hold Number 57 for me!" — then to run to
the privacy of a telephone booth in the darkness beyond the end of
the platform, and to give the long-distance operator the number of
Elhs Wyatt's house.

She stood, propped up by the walls of the booth, her eyes closed,
and listened to the dead whirl of metal which was the sound of a bell
ringing somewhere. It brought no answer, lire bell kept coming in
sudden spasms, like a drill going thiough her ear. through her body.
She clutched the receiver as if. unheeded, it were still a form of con-
tact.. She wished the bell were louder. She forgot that the sound she
heard was not the one ringing in his house. She did not know that
she was screaming, “Ellis, don't! Don't! Don't !” —until she heard the
cold, reproving voice of the operator sav, ‘‘Your party does not
answer,”

She sat at the window of a coach of Tram Number 57, and listened
to the clicking of the wheels on the rails of Rearden Metal. She sat,
unresisting, swaying with the motion of the train. The black luster of
the window hid the countryside she did not want to see. It was her
second run on the John Galt I.inc, and she tried not to think of
the first.

The bondholders, she thought, the bondholders of the John Galt

311

Line— -if was to her honor that they had entrusted their money, the
saving and achievement of years, it was on her ability that they had
staked it, it was on her work that they had relied and on their own—
and she had been made to betray them into a looters’ trap: there
would be no trains and no life-blood of freight, the John Galt Lint-
had been only a drainpipe that had permitted Jim Taggart to make a
deal and to drain their wealth, unearned, into his pocket, in exchange
for letting others drain his railroad — the bonds of the John Galt Line,
which, this morning, had been the proud guardians of their owners’
security and future, had become in the space of an hour, scraps of
paper that no one would buy. with no value, no future, no power,
save the power to close the doors and stop the wheels of the last
hope of the country — and Taggart Transcontinental was not a living
plant, fed by blood it had worked to produce, but a cannibal of the
moment, devouring the unborn children of greatness.

The tax on Colorado, she thought, the tax collected from Ellis Wyatt
to pay for the livelihood of those whose job was to tie him and make
him unable to live, those who would stand on guard to see that he got
no trains, no tank cars, no pipeline of Rearden Metal — Ellis Wyatt,
stripped of the right of self-detense, left without voice, without weap-
ons, and worse: made to be the tool of his own destruction, the
supporter of his own destroyers, the provider of their food and of
their weapons — Ellis Wyatt being choked, with his own bright energy
turned against him as the noose — Ellis Wyatt, who had wanted to
tap an unlimited source of shale oil and who spoke of a second
Renaissance. . . .

She sat bent over, her head on her arms, slumped at the ledge of
the window — while the great curves of the green-blue rail, the moun-
tains, the valleys, the new towns of Colorado went by in the dark-
ness, unseen.

The sudden jolt of brakes on wheels threw her upright. It was an
unscheduled stop, and the platform of the small station was crowded
with people, .all looking off in the same direction. Ihe passengers
around her were pressing to the windows, staring. She leaped to her
feet, she ran down the aisle, down the steps, into the cold wind
sweeping the platform.

Jn the instant before she saw it and her scream cut the voices of
the crowd, she knew that she had known that which she was to see.
In a break between mountains, lighting the sky, throwing a glow that
swayed on the roofs and walls of the station, the hill of Wyatt Oil
was a solid sheet of flame.

Later, when they told her that Ellis Wyatt had vanished, leaving
nothing behind but a board he had nailed to a post at the foot of
the hill, when she looked at his handwriting on the board, she felt
as if she had almost known that these would be the words:

*T am leaving it as f found it. Take over It’s yours.” -

312

PART TWO

EITHEMR

Chapter 1 THE MAN WHO BELONGED ON EARTH

Dr. Robert Startler paced his office, wishing he would not feel the
cold.

Spring had been late in coming. Beyond the window, the dead
gray of the hills looked like the smeared transition from the soiled
while of the sky to the leaden black of the river. Once in a while,
a distant patch of hillside flared into a silver-yellow that was almost
green, then vanished. The clouds kept cracking foi the width of a
single sunray, then oozing dosed again. It was not cold in the office,
thought Dr Sladler, it was that view that froze the place.

It was not cold today, the chill was in his bones -he thought'— the
stored accumulation of the winter months, when he had had to be
distracted from his work by an awareness of such a matter as inade-
quate heating and people had talked about conserving fuel ll was
preposterous, he thought, this growing intrusion of the accidents of
nature into the affairs of men: tt had never mattered before, if a
winter happened to be unusually severe; if a flood washed out a
section of railroad track, one did not spend two weeks eating canned
\egetables; if an electric storm struck some power station, an estab-
lishment such as the Slate Science Institute was not left without
electricity for five days. Five days of stillness this winter, he thought,
with the great laboratory motors slopped and irretrievable hours
wiped out, when his staff had been working on problems that in-
volved the heart of the universe. He turned angrily away from the
window- -but stopped and turned back to it again. He did not want
to see the book that lay on his desk.

He wished Dr. Ferris would come. He glanced at his watch: Dr.
Fen is was late— an astonishing matter— late for an appointment with
him -Dr, Floyd Ferris, the valet of science, who had always faced
him in a manner that suggested an apology for having but one hat
to take oft

lTiis was outrageous weather for the month of May. he thought,
looking down at the river; it was certainly the weather that made
him feel as he did, not the book. He had placed the book in plain
view on his desk, when he had noted that his reluctance to see it
was more than mere revulsion, that it contained the element of an
emotion never to be admitted, He told himself that he had risen

315

from his desk, not because the book lay there, but merely because
he had wanted to move, feeling cold. He paced the room, trapped
between the desk and the window. He would throw that book in the
ash can where it belonged, he thought, just as soon as he had spoken
to Dr. Ferris.

He watched the patch of green and sunlight on the distant hill,
the promise of spring in a world that looked as if no grass or bud
would ever function again. He smiled eagerly— and when the patch
vanished, he felt a stab of humiliation, at his own eagerness, at the
desperate way he had wanted to hold it. It reminded him of that
interview with the eminent novelist, last winter. The novelist had
come from Europe to write an article about him — and he, who had
once despised interviews, had talked eagerly, lengthily, too lengthily,
seeing a promise of intelligence in the novelist's face, feeling a cause-
less, desperate need to be understood. The article had come out as
a collection of sentences that gave hint exorbitant praise and garbled
every thought he had expressed, (losing the magazine, he had felt
what he was feeling now at the desertion of a sunray.

All right — he thought, turning away from the window— he would
concede that attacks of loneliness had begun to strike him at times;
but it was a loneliness to which he was entitled, it was hunger lor
the response of some living, thinking mind. He was so tired of all
those people, he thought in contemptuous bitterness; he dealt with
cosmic rays, while they were unable to deal with an electric storm.

He felt the sudden contraction of his mouth, like a slap denying
him the right to pursue this course of thought. He was looking at
the book on his desk. Its glossy jacket was glaring and new; it had
been published two weeks ago. But I had nothing to do with it’—
he screamed to himself; the scream seemed wasted on a merciless
silence; nothing answered it, no echo of forgiveness. The title on the
book's jacket was Why Do You Hunk You Think?

There was no sound in that courtroom silence within him, no pity,
no voice <}f defense —nothing but the paragraphs which his great
memory had reprinted on his brain:

“Thought is a primitive superstition. Reason is an irrational idea.
The childish notion that we are able to think has been mankind's
costliest error.’’

“What you think you think is an illusion created by your glands,
your emotions and, in the last analysis, by the content of your
stomach."

“That gray matter you’re so proud of is like a mirror in an amuse-
ment park which transmits to you nothing but distorted signals from
a reality forever beyond your grasp,"

"The more certain you feel of your rational conclusions, the more
certain you are to be wrong. Your brain being an instrument of
distortion, the more active the brain the greater the distortion."

“The giants of the intellect, whom you admire so $nuch, once
taught you that the earth was Hat and that the atom was the smallest
particle of matter. The entire history of science is a progression of
exploded fallacies, not of achievements."

“The more we know, the more we learn that we know nothing."

316

“Only the crassest ignoramus can still hold to the old-fashioned
notion that seeing is believing. That which you see is the first thing
to disbelieve."

“A scientist knows that a stone is not a stone at all. It is, in fact,
identical with a feather pillow. Both are only a cloud formation of
the same invisible, whirling particles. But, you say, you can’t use a
stone for a pillow? Well, that merely proves your helplessness in the
face of actual reality.”

“The latest scientific discoveries — such as the tremendous achieve-
ments of Dr. Robert Stadler— have demonstrated conclusively that
our reason is incapable of dealing with the nature of the universe.
These discoveries have led scientists to contradictions which are im-
possible, according to the human mind, but which exist in reality
nonetheless. If you have not yet heard it, my dear old-fashioned
friends, it has now been proved that the rational is the insane.”

“Do not expect consistency. Everything is a contradiction of every-
thing else. Nothing exists but contradictions.”

“Do not look for ‘common sense.’ To demand 'sense' is the hall-
mark of nonsense. Natures does not make sense. Nothing makes
sense. The only crusaders for sense’ are the studious type of adoles-
cent old maid who can’t find a boy friend, and the old-fashioned
shopkeeper who thinks that the universe is as simple as his neat little
inventory and beloved cash register.”

“Let us break the chains of the prejudice oalled Logic. Are we
going to be stopped by a syllogism?”

“So you think you’re sure of your opinions? You cannot be sure
of anything. Are you going to endanger the harmony of your commu-
nity, your fellowship with your neighbors, your standing, reputation,
good name and financial security — for the sake of an illusion? For
the sake of the mirage of thinking that you think? Are you going to
run risks and court disasters -at a precarious time like ours— -by
opposing the existing social order in the name of those imaginary
notions of yours which you call your convictions? You say that you’re
sure you’re right? Nobody is right, or ever can be. You feel that the
world around you is wrong? You have no means to know it. Every-
thing is wrong in human eyes— so why fight it? Don’t argue. Accept.
Adjust yourself. Obey.”

fhc book was written by Dr Floyd Ferris and published by the
State Science Institute.

“1 had nothing to do with it!” said Dr, Robert Stadler. He stood
still by the side of his desk, with the uncomfortable feeling of having
missed some beat of time, of not knowing how long the preceding
moment had lasted. He had pronounced the words aloud, in a tone
of rancorous sarcasm directed at whoever had made him say it.

He shrugged Resting on the belief that self-mockery is an act of
virtue, the shrug was the emotional equivalent of the sentence:
You’re Robert Stadler, don't act like a high-school neurotic. He sat
down at his desk and pushed the book aside with the back of his
hand.

Dr. 'Floyd Ferris arrived half an hour late. “Sorry,” he said, “but
my car broke down again on the way from Washington and I had a

317

hell of a time trying to find somebody to fix it — there’s getting to
be so damn few cars out on the road that half the service stations
are closed.”

There was more annoyance than apology in his voice. He sat down
without waiting for an invitation to do so.

Dr. Floyd Ferris would not have been noticed as particularly hand-
some in any other profession, but in the one he had chosen he was
always described as “that good-looking scientist/’ He was six feet
tall and forty-five years old, but he managed to look taller and
younger. He had an air ot immaculate grooming and a ballroom
grace ot motion, but his clothes were severe, his suits being usually
black or midnight blue. He had a finely traced mustache, and his
smooth black hair made the Institute boys say that he used the same
shoe polish on both ends of him. He did not mind repeating, in the
tone of a joke on himself, that a movie producer once said he would
cast him for the part of a titled European gigolo He had begun his
career as a biologist, but that was forgotten long ago; he was famous
as the Top C'o-otdinator of the State Science Institute.

Dr. Sladler glanced at him with astonishment -the lack ot apology
was unprecedented — and said drylv, “It seems to me that you are
spending a gteal deal of your time in Washington "

“But, Dr. Sladler. wasn't it you who once paid me the compliment
ol calling me the watchdog of this Institute?” said Dr. Ferris pleas
antly “Isn't that my most essential duty?”

“A lew ot \our duties seem to be accumulating right aiound this
place. Before I forget it. would you mind telling nte what's going on
here about that oil shortage mess?”

He could not understand why l>r. Fonts tacc tightened into an
injured look “You will permit me to say that this is unexpected and
unwarranted/’ said Dr. Feins in that tone ol formality which con
coals p;un and reveals martyrdom “None of the authorities involved
have found cause tor criticism. Wc have just submitted a detailed
report on the progress ol the work to date to the Bureau ol F.co
nomic Planning and National Resources, and Mr. Weslev Moueh has
expressed himself as satisfied We have done our best on that project
We have heard no one else describe U as a mess Considering the
difficulties of the terrain, the hazards of the fire and the tact that it
has been only six months since we ”

“What are you talking about?” asked Dr Sladler
"The Wvatt Reclamation Project. Isn’t that what you asked mc r
"No,” said Dr. Stadler. “no. I , . Wait a moment. Ket me gel
this straight. 1 seem to recall something about this Institute taking
charge of a reclamation project. What is n that you're reclaiming?”
"Oil,” said Dr Ferris. “The Wyatt oil fields”

“That was a lire, wasn't it? In Colorado? I hat was y . . wait a
moment . . that was the man who set fire to his own ejil wells/*

*Tm inclined to believe that that's a rurnor created by public hys
tcria/’ said Dr. Ferris dryly. “A rumor with some undc.sifable, unpa-
triotic implications. I wouldn’t put too much faith in thos$ newspaper
stories. Personally. I believe that it was an accident arid that Fllis
Wyatt perished in the fire.”

318

“Well* who owns those fields now?”

“Nobody — at the moment. There being no will or heirs, the gov-
ernment has taken charge of operating the fields — as a measure of
public necessity — for seven years. If Ellis Wyatt does not return
within that time, he will be considered officially dead.”

“Well, why did they come to you — to us, for such an unlikely
assignment as oil pumping?"

“because it is a problem of great technological difficulty, requiring
the services of the best scientific talent available. You see, it is a
matter of reconstructing the special method of oil extraction that
Wyatt had employed. His equipment is still there, though in a dread-
ful condition; some of his processes are known, but somehow there
is no full record of the complete operation or the basic principle
involved. That is what we have to rediscover.”

“And how is it going?"

“The progress is most gratifying. We have just been granted a new
and larger appropriation. Mr. Wesley Mouch is pleased with our
work. So are Mr. Balch of the Emergency Commission, Mr. Ander-
son of Crucial Supplies and Mr. Pettibone of Consumers' Protection.

I do not see what more could be expected of us. The project is
fully successful."

"Have you produced any oil?"

“No, but we have succeeded in forcing a (low from one of the
wells, to the extent of six and a half gallons, This, of course, is merely
of experimental significance, but you must take into consideration
I he fact that we had to spend three full months just to put out the
lire, which has r.ow been totally— almost totally— extinguished. We
have a much tougher problem than Wyatt ever had, because he
started from scratch while we have to deal with the disfigured wreck-
age of an act of vicious, anti-social sabotage which . . 1 mean to
say, it is a difficult problem, but there is no doubt that we will be
able to solve it."

"Well, what 1 really asked you about was the oil shortage here,
in the Institute. The level of temperature maintained in this building
all winter was outrageous. They told me that they had to conserve
oil. Surely you could have seen to it that the matter of keeping
this place adequately supplied with such things as oil was handled
more efficiently."

"Oh, is that what you had in mind. Dr, Stadlcr? Oh, but 1 am so
sorry!" The words came with a bright smile of relief on Dr. Ferris’
face; his solicitous manner returned. "Do you mean that the temper-
ature was low enough to cause you discomfort?"

"I mean that I nearly froze to death."

But that is unforgivable! Why didn’t they tell me? Please accept
my personal apology. Dr. Stadlcr, and rest assured that you will
never be inconvenienced again. The only excuse ! can offer for our
maintenance department is that the shortage of fuel was not due to
their negligence, it was -* oh, 1 realize that you would not know about
•I and such matters should not take up your invaluable attention—
hut, you see, the oil shortage last winter was a nationwide crisis."

319

“Why? For heaven's sake, don’t tell me that those Wyatt fields
were the only source of oil in the country?”

"No. no. hut the sudden disappearance of a major supply wrought
havoc in the enliie oil maiket, So the government had to assume
control and impose oil rationing on the country, in order to ptotecl
the essential enterprises. 1 did obtain an unusually large quota for
the Institute — and only by the special fa\or of some very special
connections -but I feel abjectly guilty if this proved insulfieient. Rest
assured that it will not happen again. It is only a temporary emer-
gency By neat winter, we shall ha\e the Wyatt fields back in produc-
tion, and conditions will rctuin to normal Besides, as fai as this
Institute is concerned, 1 made all the arrangements to convett our
furnaces to coal, and it was to be done next month, only the Stockton
Foundry in Colorado closed down suddenly, without notice they
were casting parts for our furnaces, but Andrew Stockton retired
quite unexpectedly, and now we have to wait till lus nephew reopens
the plant/'

“I see. Well, I trust that you will take care oi it among all your
other activities.” Dr Stadlei shrugged with annoyance "It is becom-
ing a little ridiculous— the nunthci ot technological ventures that an
institution of science has to handle for the government."

"But, Dr. Stadler — "

"I know. I know it can’t be avoided. By the way, what is Proj-
ect X?"

Dr. Ferris' eyes shot to him swiftly- -an odd, bright glance o( aleit-
ness, that seemed startled, but not frightened. “Where did you hcai
about Project X. Dr Stadler?"

“Oh, I heard a couple of vour younger boys saying something
about it with an air of mystery you'd expect from amateur detectives
TTiey told me it was something very secret/'

"That's right, Dr. Stadler. It is an extremely secret lesearch project
which the government has entrusted to us. And il is of utmost impor-
tance that the newspapers get no word about it."

“What's the X r *

“Xylophone. Project Xylophone That is a axle name, of course.
The work has to do with sound. But I am sure that it would not
interest you. It is a purely technological undertaking."

“Yes, do spare me the story. I have no time for your technologi-
cal undertakings."

“May I suggest that it would be advisable to refrain from men
tioning the words 'Project X’ to anyone. Dr. Stadler?"

“Oh, all right, all right. I must say l do not enjoy discussions of
that kind."

“But of course! And I wouldn’t forgive myself if I allowed your
time to be taken up by such concerns. Please feel certain thal you
may safely leave it to me." He made a movement to risf. “Now if
this was the reason you wanted to see me please believe /that I--"

“No," said Dr. Stadler slowly. “This was not the reason I wanted
to see you."

Dr. Ferris volunteered no questions, no eager offers of Service; he
remained seated, merely waiting.

320

Dr. Stadler reached over and made the hook slide from the comer
to the center of his desk, with a contemptuous flick of one hand.
“Will you tell me, please,” he asked, “what is this piece of in-
decency?”

Dr. Ferris did not glance at the book, but kept his eyes fixed on
Siadler’s for an inexplicable moment; then he leaned back and said
with an odd smile, “1 feel honored that you chose to make such an
exception for my sake as reading a popular book, litis little piece
has sold twenty thousand copies in two weeks.”

“1 have read it.”

“And?”

“I expect an explanation.”

“Did you And the text contusing?”

Dr. Stadler looked at him in bewilderment. “Do you realize what
theme you chose to treat and in what manner? The style alone, the
style, the gutter kind of attitude — for a subject of this nature!”

“Do you think, then, that the content deserved a more dignified
form of presentation?” The voice was so innocently smooth that Dr.
Stadler could not decide whether this was mockery.

“Do you realize what you're preaching in this book?”

“Since you do not seem to approve of it. Dr. Stadler, I'd rather
have you think that 1 wrote it innocently.”

This was it, thought Dr. Stadler, this was the incomprehensible
element in Ferris" manner: he had supposed that an indication of his
disapproval would be sulticicnt, but Ferris seemed tu remain un-
touched by it.

“If a drunken lout could find the power to express himself on
paper,” said Dr. Stadler. “if he could give voice to his essence — the
eternal savage, leering his hatred of the mind- -this is the sort of
book I would expect him to write. Hut to see it come from a scientist,
under the imprint of this Institute!”

“But, Dr. Stadler. this book was not intended to be read by scien-
tists. It was written for that drunken lout.”

“What do you mean?”

“For the genet al public.”

“But, good God! The feeblest imbecile should be able to see the
dlaring contradictions in every one of your statements.”

“Let us put it this way. Dr Stadler. The man who doesn't see
that, deserves to believe all my statements.”

“But you've given the prestige of science to that unspeakable stuff!
It was all right for a disreputable mediocrity like Simon Pritchett to
drool it as some sort of woozy mysticism — nobody listened to him.
But you’ve made them think il*s science. Science! You’ve taken the
achievements of the mind to destroy the mind. By what right did
you use my work to make an unwarranted, preposterous switch into
another field, pull an inapplicable metaphor and draw a monstrous
generalization out of what is merely a mathematical problem? By
what right did you make it sound as if I — //—gave my sanction to
that book?”

Dr. Ferris did nothing, he merely looked at Dr. Stadler calmly;
hut the calm gave him an air that was almost patronizing. “Now,

321

you see, Dr. Stadler, you’re speaking as if this book were addressed
to a thinking audience. If it were, one would have to be concerned
with such matters as accuracy, validity, logic and the prestige of
science. But it isn’t. It’s addressed to the public. And you have ah
ways been first to believe that the public does not think.” He paused,
but Dr. Stadler said nothing. “This book may have no philosophical
value whatever, but it has a great psychological value.”

‘'Just what is that?”

‘ You see. Dr. Stadler, people don’t want to think. And the deeper
they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort
of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty.
So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for
not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue — a highly intellectual vir-
tue — out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and
their guilt.”

“And you propose to pander to that?”

'That is the road to popularity.”

“Why should you seek popularity?”

Dr. Ferris' eyes moved casually to Dr. Sladler’s face, as if by pure
accident. “We are a public institution,” he answered evenly, “sup-
ported by public funds.”

“So you tell people that science is a futile fraud which ought to
be abolished!”

“That is a conclusion which could be drawn, in logic, from m\
book. But that is not the conclusion they will draw.”

“And what about the disgrace to the Institute in the eyes of the
men of intelligence, wherever such may be left?”

“Why should we worry about them?”

Dr. Stadler could have regarded the sentence as conceivable, had
it been uttered with hatred, envy or malice; but the absence of any
such emotion, the casual ease of the voice, an ease suggesting a
chuckle, hit him like a moment’s glimpse of a icalm that could not
be taken as part of reality; the thing spreading down to his stomach
was cold terror.

‘•Did you observe the reactions to my book. Dr. Stadia? It was
received with considerable favor.”

“Yes — and that is what I find impossible to believe.” He had to
speak, he had to speak as if this were a civilized discussion, he could
not allow himself time to know what it was he had felt for a moment
“1 am unable to understand the attention voti received in all the
reputable academic magazines and how they could permit themselves
to discuss your book seriously. If Hugh Akston were around, no
academic publication would have dared to treat this as a work admis-
sible into the realm of philosophy.”

“He is not around.”

Dr. Stadler felt that there were words which he was J now called
upon to pronounce — and he wished he could end this conversation
before he discovered what they were.

“On the other hand,” said Dr. Ferris, “the ads for mj£ book— oh,
Tm sure you wouldn’t notice such things as ads — quotd a letter of
high praise which I received from Mr, Wesley Mouch.”

322

“Who the hell is Mr. Wesley Mouch?”

Dr. Ferris smiled. “In another year even you won’t ask that ques-
tion, Dr. Stadler. Let us put it this way: Mr, Mouch is the man who
is rationing oil — for the time being.”

“Then 1 suggest that you stick to your job. Deal with Mr. Mouch
and leave him the realm of oil furnaces, but leave the realm of ideas
to me.”

“!t would be curious to try to formulate the line of demarcation,”
said Dr. Ferris, in the tone of an idle academic remark. “But if we’re
talking about my hook, why, then we’re talking about the realm of
public relations.” He turned to point solicitously at the mathematical
formulas chalked on the blackboard. “Dr. Stadler, it would be disas-
trous if you allowed the realm of public relations to distract you
from the work which you alone on earth are capable of doing.”

It was said with obsequious deference, and Dr. Stadler could not
tell what made him hear in it the sentence. “Slick to your black-
board!” He felt a biting irritation and he switched it against himself,
thinking angrily that he had to get rid of these suspicions.

“Public relations?” he said contemptuously. “1 don’t see any prac-
tical purpose in your book. I don't see what it’s intended to accom-
plish.”

“Don’t you?” Dr. Fen is* eyes flickered briefly to his face; the
sparkle of insolence was too swift to be identified with certainty.

”1 cannot permit myself to consider certain things as possible in
a civilized society,” Dr Stadler said sternly.

“That is admirably exact.” said Dr. Perris cheerfully. “You cannot
permit yourself.”

Dr. Ferris rose, being first to indicate that the interview was ended.
“Please call for me whenever anything occurs in this Institute to
cause you discomfort. Dr. Stadler,” he said. “It is my privilege always
to be at your service,”

Knowing that he had to assert his authority, smothering the shame-
ful realization of the sort of substitute he was choosing. Dr. Stadler
said imperiously, in a tone of sarcastic rudeness, “The next time 1
call for you, you’d better do something about that car of yours.”

“Yes. Dr. Stadler, I shall make certain never to be late again, and
l beg you to forgive me.” Dr. Ferris responded as if playing a pari
on cue; as if he were pleased that Dr. Stadler had learned, at last,
the modern method ol communication. “My car has been causing
me a great deal of trouble, it’s falling to pieces, and 1 had ordered
a new one some time ago. the best one on the market, a Hammond
convertible —but Lawrence Hammond went out of business last
week, without reason or warning, so now I’m stuck. Those bastards
seem to be vanishing somewhere. Something will have to be done
about it.”

When Ferris had gone, Dr. Stadler sat at his desk, his shoulders
shrinking together, conscious only of a desperate wish not to be seen
by anyone. In the fog of the pain which he would not define, there
*as also the desperate feeling that no one — no one of those he
valued— would ever wish to sec him again.

He knew the words which he had not uttered. He had not said

323

that he would denounce the book in public and repudiate it in the
name of the institute. He had not said it, because he had been afraid
to discover that the threat would leave Ferris unmoved, that Ferris
was safe, that the word of Dr. Robert Stadter had no power any
longer. And while he told himself that he would consider later the
question of making a public protest, he knew that he would not
make it.

He picked up the book and let it drop into the wastebasket
A face came to his mind, suddenly and clearly, as if he were seeing
the purity of its every line, a young face he had not permitted himself
to recall for years. He thought: No, he has not read this book, he
won't see it, he's dead, he must have died long ago ... 1 he sharp
pain was the shock of discovering simultaneously that this was the
man he longed to see more than any other being in the world — and
that he had to hope that this man was dead.

He did not know why --when the telephone King and his secretary
told him that Miss Dagny laggait was on the line- why he seized
the receiver with eagerness and noticed that his hand was trembling.
She would never want to see him again, he had thought for over a
year. He heard her clear, impersonal voice asking for an appointment
to see him, "Yes. Miss Taggart, certainly, yes, indeed. . . . Monday
morning? Yes— look. Miss Taggart, 1 have an engagement in New
York today. I could drop m at your office this afternoon, if you
wish. . . . No, no— no trouble at all, I'll be delighted. . This
afternoon. Miss Taggart, about two 1 mean, about four o’clock."

He had no engagement in New Yoik. He did not give himself
time to know what had prompted him to do it. He was smiling
eagerly, looking at a patch of sunlight on a distant lull

♦ *

Dagny drew a black line across Train Number M3 on the schedule,
and felt a moment’s desolate satisfaction in noting that she did it
calmly. It was an action which she had had to perform many times
in the test, six months It had been hard, at first: it was becoming
easier. The day would come, she thought, when she would be able
to deliver that death stroke even without the small salute of an effort.
Train Number <J3 was a freight that had earned its living by cany mg
supplies to Hammondsville. Odor ado
She knew what steps would come next: first, the death of the
special freights — then the shrinking in the number of boxcars for
Hammondsville. attached, like poor relatives, to the rear end of
freights bound for other towns — then the gradual cutting of the stops
at Hammondsville Station from the schedules of the passenger
trains— -then the day when she would strike Hammondsville. C olo
rado, off the map. That had been the progression of Wyatt Junction
and of the town called Stockton *

She knew — once word was received that L awrence Hammond had
retired — that it was useless to wait, to hope and to wontJjer whether
his cousin, his lawyer or a committee of local citizens would reopen
the plant. She knew it was time to start cutting the schedules.

It had lasted less than six months after Ellis Wyatt lad gone—
that period which a columnist had gleefully called ‘ the field day of

324

the little fellow.” Every oil operator in the country, who owned three
wells and whined that Ellis Wyatt left him no chance of livelihood,
had rushed to fill the hole which Wyatt had left wide open. They
formed leagues, cooperatives, associations; they pooled their re-
sources and their letterheads. “The little fellow’s day in the sun,”
the columnist had said. Their sun had been the flames that twisted
through the derricks ot Wyatt Oil. In its glare, they made the kind
of fortunes they had dreamed about, fortunes requiring no compe-
tence or effort. Then their biggest customers, such as power compa-
nies, who drank oil by the trainful and would make no allowances
for human frailty, began to convert to coal — and the smaller custom-
ers, who were more tolerant, began to go out of business— the boys
in Washington imposed rationing on oil and an emergency tax on
employers to support the unemployed oil field workers — then a few
of the big oil companies closed down— then the little fellows in the
sun discovered that a drilling bit which had cost a hundred dollars,
now cost them live hundred, there being no market for oil field
equipment, and the suppliers having to earn on one drill what they
had earned on five, or perish — then the pipe lines began to close,
there being no one able to pay tor their upkeep — then the railroads
were granted permission to raise their freight rates, there being little
oil to carry and the cost of running tank trains having crushed two
small lines out of existence — and when the sun went down, they saw
that the operating costs, which had once permitted them to exist on
their sixty-acre fields, had been made possible by the miles of Wyatt’s
hillside and had gone in the same coils of smoke. Not until their
fortunes had vanished and their pumps had stopped, did the little
fellows realize that no business in the country could afford to buy
ml at the price it would now lake them to produce it. Then the boys
in Washington granted subsidies to the oil operators, but not all of
the oil operators had friends in Washington, and there followed a
situation which no one cared to examine too closely or to discuss.

Andrew Stockton had been m the sort of position which most of
the businessmen envied. The rush to convert to coal had descended
upon his shoulders like a weight of gold he had kept his plant work-
ing around the clock, running a race with next winter’s blizzards,
casting parts for coal-burning stoves and furnaces. There were not
many dependable foundries left; he had become one of the main
pillars supporting the cellars and kitchens of the country. The pillar
collapsed without warning. Andrew Stockton announced that he was
retiring, closed his plant and vanished. He left no word on what he
wished to be done with the plant or whether his relatives had the
right to reopen it.

There still were cars on the roads of the country, but they moved
bke travelers in the desert, who ride past the warning skeletons of
horses bleached by the sun: they moved past the skeletons of cars
that had collapsed on duty and had been left in the ditches by the
Mde of the road. People were not buying cars any longer, and the
automobile factories were closing. But there were men still able to
get oil,' by means of friendships that nobody cared to question. These
men bought cars at any price demanded. Lights flooded the moun-

325

tains of Colorado from the great windows of the plant, where the
assembly belts of Lawrence Hammond poured trucks and cars to
the sidings of Taggart Transcontinental. The word that Lawrence
Hammond had retired came when least expected, brief and sudden
like the single stroke of a bell in a heavy stillness. A committee of
local citizens was now broadcasting appeals on the radio, begging
Lawrence Hammond, wherever he was, to give them permission to
reopen his plant. There was no answer.

She had screamed when Ellis Wyatt went; she had gasped when
Andrew Stockton retired; when she heard that Lawrence Hammond
had quit, she asked impassively, “Who's next?”

“No, Miss Taggart, l can’t explain it,” the sister of Andrew Stock-
ton had told her on her last trip to Colorado, two months ago. “He
never said a word to me and 1 don't even know whether he’s dead
or living, same as Ellis Wyatt. No, nothing special had happened the
day before he quit. 1 remember only that some man came to see
him on that last evening. A stranger I’d never seen before. They
talked late into the night— when l went to sleep, the light was still
burning in Andrew's study ”

People were silent in the towns of Colorado. Dagny had seen the
way they walked in the streets, past their small drugstores, hardware
stores and grocery markets: as if they hoped that the motions ot
their jobs would save them from looking ahead at the future She.
too, had walked through those streets, trying not to lift her head,
not to see the ledges of sooted rock and twisted steel, which had
been the Wvatl oil fields. They could be seen from many of the
towns; when she had looked ahead, she had seen them in the
distance.

One well. .on the crest of the hill, was still burning. Nobody had
been able to extinguish it. She had seen it from the sheets- a spurt
of fire twisting convulsively against the sky, as if trying to tear loose.
She had seen it at night, across the distance ot a hundred clear, black
miles, from the window of a train; a small, violent flame, waving in
the wind. People called it Wyatt’s I'orch.

Hie longest train on the John Galt Line had forty ears; the lastest
ran at fifty miles an hour. The engines had to be spared: they were
coal-burning engines, long past theii age of retirement. Jim obtained
the oil for the Diesels that pulled the Comet and a few of their
transcontinental freights. ITie only source ot fuel she could count on
and deal with was Ken Danagger of Danagger C oal in Pennsylvania

Empty trains clattered through the four states that were tied, as
neighbors, to the throat of Colorado. They carried a few carloads of
sheep, some corn, some melons and an occasional farmer with an
overdressed family, who had friends in Washington. Jpn hail ob
tamed a subsidy from Washington for every train that Was run, not
as a profit-making carrier, but as a service of “public equality ”

It took every scrap of her energy to keep trains running through
the sections where they were still needed, in the areas that were still
producing. But on the balance sheets of Taggart Transcontinental,
the checks of Jim’s subsidies for empty trains bore larger figures

326

than the profit brought by the best freight train of the busiest indus-
trial division.

Jim boasted that this had been the most prosperous six months in
Taggart history. Listed as profit, on the glossy pages of his report to
the stockholders, was the money he had not earned— the subsidies
for empty trains; and the money he did not own— the sums that
should have gone to pay the interest and the retirement of Taggart
bonds, the debt which, by the will of Wesley Mouch, he had been
permitted not to pay. He boasted about the greater volume of freight
carried by Taggart trains in Arizona — where Dan Conway had closed
the last of the Phoenix-Durango and retired; and in Minnesota —
where Paul Larkin was shipping iron ore by rail, and the last of the
ore boats on the Great Lakes had gone out of existence.

‘'You have always considered money-making as such an important
virtue,” Jim had said to her with an odd half-smile. “Well, it seems
to me that Pm better at it than you are.”

Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen rail-
road bonds; perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At
first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of
a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch had
issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their
bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government
would purchase the bonds, if it found the proof of the need satisfac-
tory. There were three questions that no one answered or asked:
“What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential—
to whom?”

1 hen it became bad manners to discuss why one man received the
grant defreezing his money, while another had been refused. People
turned away in mouth-pinched silence, if anybody asked a “why?”
One was supposed to describe, not to explain, to catalogue facts, not
lo evaluate them: Mr. Smith had been defro/en, Mr Jones had not;
that was all. And when Mr. Jones committed suicide, people said,
'Well, l don't know, if he’d really needed his money, the government
would have given it to him, but some men are just greedy.”

One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been
refused, sold their bonds lor one-third of the value to other men
who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen
cents melt into a whole dollar; or about a new profession practiced
by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves
“defree/ers” and offered their services “to help you draft your appli-
cation in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Wash-
ington

Looking at the Taggart rail from the platform of some country
station, she had found herself feeling, not the brilliant pride she had
once felt, but a foggy, guilty shame, as if some foul kind of rust had
crown on the metal, and worse: as if the rust had a tinge of blood.
Hut then, in the concourse of the Terminal, she looked at the statue
of Nat Taggart and thought: ft was your rail, you made it, you fought
for it, you were not stopped by fear or by loathing— I won't surren-
der it to the men of blood and rust— and Pm the only one left to
guard it.

327

She had not given up her quest for the man who invented the
motor. It was the only part of hei work that made her able to hear
the rest. It was the only goal in sight that gave meaning to her
struggle. There were times when she wondered why she wanted to
rebuild the motor. What for? — some voice seemed to ask her Be-
cause I'm still alive, she answered. But her quest had remained futile.
Her two engineers had found nothing m Wisconsin She had sent
them to search through the count* v tor men who had worked tor
Twentieth Century, to learn the name of the inventor. They had
learned nothing. She had sent them to search through the hies of
the Patent Olftce; no patent tor the motor had ever been registered

The only temnant of her personal quest was the stuh of the ciga-
rette with the dollar sign. She had forgotten it, until a i event evening,
when she had found it in a drawer of het desk and given it to her
triend at the cigar counter of the eoncouise The old man had been
very astonished, as he examined the stub, holding it cautiously be-
tween two tinge is; he had never heard of such a brand and wondered
how he could haw missed it. "Was it of good quality. Miss Taggart?"
" The best I’\e ever smoked.*” He had shaken his head, puzzled He
had promised to discover where those cigarettes were made and to
get her a carton.

She had tried to find a scientist able to attempt the tcconst ruction
of the motor. She had interviewed the men recommended to her as
the best in their field. The first one, after studying the remnants of
the motor and of the manuscript, had declared, in the tone of a drill
sergeant, that the thing could not work, had ncvei worked and he
would prove that no such motor could ever be made to work The
second one had drawled, in the tone of an answer to a boring imposi-
tion, that he did not know whether it could be done or not and did
not care to find out. The third had said, his voice belligerently inso-
lent, that he would attempt the task on a ten year contract at twenty-
five thousand dollars a year -"After all. Miss Taggart, if you expect
to make huge profits on that motor, it’s you who should pay for the
gamble of my time.” The fourth, who was the youngest, had looked
at her silently for a moment and the lines of his face had slithered
from blankness into a suggestion of contempt. "You know. Miss
Taggart, I don’t think that such a motor should ever be made, even
if somebody did learn how to make it. It would be so superior to
anything we’ve got that it would be unfair to lesser scientists, because
it would leave no field for their achievements and abilities. I don't
thmk that the strong should have the right to wound the self-esteem
of the weak." She had ordered him out of her office, and had sat in
incredulous horror before the fact that the most vicious statement
she had ever heard had been uttered in a tone of moral
righteousness.

The decision to speak to Dr. Robert Stadler had been her last
recourse.

She had forced herself to call him, against the resistance of some
immovable point within her that felt like brakes s)arnme|) tight. She
had argued against herself. She had thought: I deal with men like
Jim and Orren Boyle — his guilt is less than theirs— why can't I speak

328

to him? Shu had found no answer, only a stubborn sense of reluc-
tance, only the feeling that of all the men on earth. Dr Robert
Sladler was the one she must not call.

As she sal at her desk, over the schedules of the John Galt lane,
waiting tor Dr Sladler to come, she wondered why no first-rate
talent had risen in the held of science lor years She was unable to
look lor an answer. She was looking at the black line which was the
corpse of I rani Number 93 on the schedule before her

\ train has the two great attributes of hie. she thought, motion
and purpose: this had been like a living entity, but now it was only
a number ol dead freight cars and engines. Don't give yourself time
to led, she thought, dismember the carcass as fast as possible, the
engines are needed all over the system. Ken Danagger in Pennsylva-
nia needs trains, more trams if only--

"Dr. Robert Sladler,' said the voice of the inter otficc communica-
tor on her desk.

He came in. smiling; the smile seemed to underscore his words:
"Miss Taggart, would you wue to believe how helplessly glad l am
to see you again 7 ''

She did not smile, she looked gravely courteous as she answered,
"It was very kind of you to come here." She bowed, her slender
figure standing taully straight but tor the stow, formal movement of
her head.

' Whm il 1 confessed that all 1 needed was some plausible excuse
m order to come 7 Would it astonish you?”

“1 would try not to overtax \oui courtesy ’* She did not smile.
"Please sit down. Dr. Sladler."

He looked brightly around him. "I've never seen the office of a
railroad executive. I didn’t know it would be so . . . so solemn a
place. Is that in the naluie of the job 7 **

"The mattei on which I'd like to ask your advice is far removed
ftom the field of your interests. Dr. Sladler. You may think it odd
that l should call on vou. Please allow me to explain my reason."

“ The fact that you wished to call on me is a fully sufficient reason.
If I can be of anv service to you. any service whatever, I don't know
what would please me mote at this moment." His smile had an
attractive quality, the smile of a man of the world who used it, not
to cover his words, but to stress the audacity of expressing a sin-
cere emotion.

'My problem is a matter of technology/' she said, in the dear,
expressionless tone of a young mechanic discussing a difficult assign-
ment. ‘i fully realize your contempt tor that branch of science. I do
not expect you to solve my problem — it is not the kind of work
which you do or care about. 1 should like only to submit the problem
to you. and then Pll have just two questions to ask you. I had to
call on you, because it is a matter that involves someone's mind, a
very great mind, and" —she spoke impersonally, in the manner of
rendering exact justice— “and you arc the only great mind left in
this field.”

She could not tell why her words hit him as they did, She saw the
stillness of his face, the sudden earnestness of the eyes, a strange

329

earnestness that seemed eager and almost pleading, then she heard
his voice come gravely, as if from under the pressure of some emo-
tion that made it sound simple and humble;

u What is your problem. Miss Taggart?”

She told him about the motor and the place where she had found
it: she told him that it had proved impossible to learn the name of
the inventor; she did not mention the details of her quest. She
handed him photographs of the motor and the remnant of the
manuscript.

She watched him as he read. She saw the professional assurance
in the swift, scanning motion of his eyes, at first, then the pause,
then the growing intentness, then a movement of his lips which, from
another man, would have been a whistle or a gasp. She saw him stop
for long minutes and look off; as if his mind were racing over count*
less sudden trails, trying to follow them alt— she saw him leaf back
through the pages, then stop, then force himself to read on, as if he
were torn between his eagerness to continue and his eagerness to
seize all the possibilities breaking open before his vision. She saw
his silent excitement, she knew that he had forgotten her office, her
existence, everything but the sight of an achievement — and in tribute
to his being capable of such reaction, she wished it were possible for
her to like Dr Robert Stadler.

They had been silent for over an hour, when he finished and
looked up at her. “Rut this is extraordinary!” he said in the joyous,
astonished tone of announcing some news she had not expected.

She wished she could smile in answer and grant him the comrade-
ship of a joy celebrated together, but she merely nodded and said
coldly. “Yes ”

“But, Miss Taggart, this is tremendous!”

"Yes.”

“Did you say it's a matter of technology? It's more, much, much
more than # that. The pages where he writes about his eonvertei
you can see what premise he’s speaking from. He arrived at some
new concept of energy. He discarded all our standard assumptions,
according to which his motor would have been impossible. He formu-
lated a new premise of his own and he solved the secret of converting
static energy into kinetic power. Do you know what that means? Do
you realize what a feat of pure, abstract science he had to perform
before he could make his motor?”

“Who?” she asked quietly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“That was the first of the two questions l wanted to ask you. Dr.
Stadler: can you think of any young scientist you might have known
ten years ago. who would have been able to do this 7 ”

He paused, astonished; he had not had time to wondet* about that
question. “No,” he said slowly, frowning, “no, I cWt think of
anyone. . . . And that’s odd . . . because an ability df this kind
couldn’t have passed unnoticed anywhere . * . somebody Ifcvould have
called him to my attention . . they always sent promising young
physicists to me, . > . Did you say you found this in the research
laboratory' of a plain, commercial motor factory?”

330

"Yes.”

"That’s odd. Whal was he doing in such a place?”

"Designing a motor.”

“That’s what 1 mean. A man with the genius of a great scientist,
who chose lo be a commercial inventor? 1 find it outrageous. He
wanted a motor, and he quietly performed a major revolution in the
science of energy, just as a means to an end, and he didn't bother
to publish his findings, but went right on making his motor. Why did
he want to waste his mind on practical appliances?”

"Perhaps because he liked living on this earth.” she said invol-
untarily.

“I beg your pardon?”

"No, l . . . I'm sorry. Dr Stadler. 1 did not intend to discuss
any . . , irrelevant subject ”

lie was looking off, pursuing his own course of thought. “Why
didn't he come to me” Why wasn't he in some great scientific estab-
lishment where he belonged? If he had the brains to achieve this,
surely he had the brains to know the importance ol what he had
done Why didn't he publish a paper on his definition of energy? 1
can see the geneial direction he'd taken, but God damn him! — the
most important pages aie missing, the statement isn't here! Surely
somebody around him should have known enough to announce his
work to the whole world of science. Why didn't they 7 How could
iluv abandon, just abandon a thing of this kind?”

’ These are the questions to which 1 lound no answers ”

“And besides, from the puiely. practical aspeU, why was that
motor left in a pink pile' >ou d think any greed) loot of an industri-
alist would have giabbcd it m order to make a fortune. No. intelli-
gence was needed to see ns commercial value.”

She smiled foi the first time a smile uglv with bitterness: she
said nothing

“You tound it impossible to Pace the inventor 1 ” he asked

'Completely impossible so tar.”

Do you think that he is still alive?”

1 have icason lo think that he is But I can’t be sure.”

“Suppose l tried to advertise tor him?”

"No. Don’t.”

’ But, it I were to place ads in scientific publications and have Dr,
Terns” -he stopped; he saw her glance at him as swiftly as he
glanced at hei, she said nothing, but she held Ins glance; he looked
away and finished the sentence coldly and firmly' “and have Dr.
Terris broadcast on the radio that 1 wish to see him. would he refuse
to come?”

"Yes. Dr. Stadler, I think he would refuse.”

He was not looking at her. She saw the faint tightening of his
facial muscles and, simultaneously, the look of something going slack
m the lines of his face; she could not tell what sort of light was dying
within him nor what made her think of the death of a light.

He tossed the manuscript down on the desk with a casual, con-
temptuous movement of his wrist. 'Those men who do not mind

331

being practical enough to sell their brains for money, ought to ac-
quire a little knowledge of the conditions of practical reality.”

He looked at her with a touch of defiance, as if watting for an
angry answer. But her answer was worse than anger: her face re-
mained expressionless, as if the truth or falsehood of his convictions
were of no concern to her any longer. She said politely, “The second
question I wanted to ask you was whether you would be kind enough
to tell me the name of any physicist you know who, in your judg-
ment, would possess the ability to attempt the reconstruction of
this motor.”

He looked at her and chuckled: it was a sound of pain. “Have
you been tortured by it, too. Miss Taggart? By the impossibility of
finding any sort of intelligence anywhere?”

‘T have interviewed some physicists who were highly recom-
mended to me and i have found them to be hopeless.”

He leaned forward eagerly. “Miss Taggart,” he asked, “did you
call on me because you trusted the integrity of my scientific judg-
ment?” The question was a naked pica.

“Yes.” she answered evenly, “I trusted the integrity of your scien-
tific judgment/'

He leaned back; he looked as if some hidden smile were smoothing
the tension away from his face. “J wish 1 could help you/' he said,
as to a comrade. “I most selfishly wish 1 could help you. because,
you see. this has been my hardest problem — trying to find men of
talent for my own staff. Talent, hell! I'd be satisfied with just a
semblance of promise — but the men they send me couldn't be hon-
estly said to possess the potentiality of developing into decent garage
mechanics. 1 don't know whether I am getting older and more de-
manding, or Whether the human race is degenerating, but the world
didn't seem to be so barren of intelligence in my youth. Today, if
you saw the kind of men I've had to interview, you’d — ”

He stopped abruptly, as if at a sudden recollection. He remained
silent; he seemed to be considering something he knew, but did not
wish to tell her; she became certain of it, when he concluded
brusquely, in that tone of resentment which conceals an evasion,
“No, 1 don't know anyone I’d care to recommend to you.”

“This was all 1 wanted to ask you. Dr. Stadler.” she said. “Thank
you for giving me your lime.”

He sat silently still for a moment, as if he could not bring himsell
to leave.

“Miss Taggart,” he asked, “could you show me the actual motor
itself?”

She looked at him, astonished. “Why, yes ... if you wish. But it’s
in an underground vault, down in our Terminal tunnels/'

“1 don't mind, if you wouldn’t mind taking me down t|cre. 1 ha\e
no special motive. It’s only my personal curiosity. 1 wijuld like to
see it — that’s all.”

When they stood in the granite vault, over a glass case containing
a shape of broken metal, he Ux>k off his hat with a staw, absent
movement-— and she could not tell whether it was the routine gesture

332

of remembering that he was in a room with a lady, or the gesture of
baring one's head over a coffin.

They stood in silence, in the glare of a single light refracted from
the glass surface to their faces. Train wheels were clicking in the
distance, and it seemed at times as it a sudden, sharper jolt of vibra-
tion were about to awaken an answer from the corpse in the glass
case.

‘It's so wonderful," said Dr. Stadler, his voice tow. “It's so won-
derful to see a great, new, crucial idea which is not mine!"

She looked at him, wishing she could believe that she understood
him correctly. He spoke, in passionate sincerity, discarding conven-
tion. discarding concern for whether it was proper to let her hear
the confession of his pain, seeing nothing but the face of a woman
who was able to understand:

“Miss Taggart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? ft’s
resentment of another man's achievement. 1 hose touchy mediocrities
who sit trembling lest someone’s work prove greater than their
own- -they have no inkling of the loneliness that comes when you
reach the top. The loneliness for an equal —for a mind to respect
and an achievement to admire They bare their teeth at you from
out of their rat holes, thinking that you take pleasure in letting your
brilliance dim them —while you'd give a year of your life to see a
flicker of talent anywhere among them. They envy achievement, and
their dream of greatness is a world where all men have become their
acknowledged inferiors They don't know that that dream is the infalli-
ble proof ot mediocrity, because that sort of world is what the man of
achievement would not be able to bear. 1 bey have no way of know-
ing what he feels when surrounded by inferiors- hatred? no, not
hatred, but boredom— the terrible, hopeless, draining, paralyzing
boredom. Of what account are praise and adulation from men whom
you don't respect? Have you ever felt the longing for someone you
could admire? For something, not to took down at, but up to?"

“I’ve fe*t it all my life," she said. It was an answer she could not
refuse him.

“I know," he said- and there was beauty in the impersonal gentle-
ness of lus voice - i knew it the first time 1 spoke to you. That w^as
why 1 came today--" He stopped for the briefest instant, but she
did not answer the appeal and he finished with the same quiet gentle-
ness. “Well, that was why I wanted to see the motor "

“I understand," she said softly; the tone of her voice was the only
torm of acknowledgment she could grant him

“Miss Taggait," he said, his eyes lowered, looking at the glass ease,

l know a man who might be able to undertake the reconstruction of
that motor. He would not work for me -so he is probably the kind
ot man you want."

But by the time he raised his head — and before he saw the look
of admiration in her eyes, the open look he had begged for, the
look of forgiveness— he destroyed his single moment’s atonement by
adding in a voice of drawing-room sarcasm, “Apparently, the young
man Had no desire to work for the good of society or the welfare
of science. He told me that he would not take a government job. I

333

presume he wanted the bigger salary he could hope to obtain from
a private employer/’

He turned away, not to see the look that was fading from her
face, not to let himself know its meaning. “Yes," she said, her voice
hard, “he is probably the kind of man l want."

“He’s a young physicist from the Utah Institute of Technology/'
he said dryly. “His name is Quentin Daniels. A friend of mine sent
him to me a few months ago. He came to see me, but he would not
take the job 1 offered. I wanted him on my staff. He had the mind
of a scientist. I don't know whether he can succeed with your motor,
but at least he has the ability to attempt it. I believe you can still
reach him at the Utah Institute of Technology. I don't know what
he’s doing there now — they closed the Institute a year ago/’

“Thank you. Dr. Stadler. 1 shall get in touch with him.”

“If ... if you want me to. 111 be glad to help him with the
theoretical part of it. I'm going to do some work myself, starting
from the leads of that manuscript. I’d like to find the cardinal secret
of energy that its author had found. It's his basic principle that we
must discover. If we succeed, Mr. Daniels may finish the job. as fai
as your motor is concerned/’

“I will appreciate any help you may care to give me, Dr. Stadler/'

’They walked silently through the dead tunnels of the Terminal,
down the ties of a rusted track under a string of blue lights, to the
distant glow of the platforms.

At the mouth of the tunnel, they saw a man kneeling on the
track, hammering at a switch with the unrhythmical exasperation of
uncertainty. Another man stood watching him impatiently.

“Well, what’s the matter with the damn thing' 1 ’* asked the watcher.

“Don't know/’

“You’ve been at it for an hour “

“Yeah/*

“How long is it going to take? ’

“Who is John Galt?”

Dr. Stadler winced. They had gone past the men, when he said,
“I don't like that expiession."

“1 don't, either/' she answered.

“Where did it come from? ’

“Nobody knows ’’

They were silent, then he said, “l knew a John Cialt once. Only
he died long ago.”

“Who was he?"

“1 used to think that he was still alive. But now I'm certain that
he must have died. He had such a mind that, had he lived, the whole
world would have been talking of him by now/’

“But the whole world tv talking of him/'

He stopped still. “Yes . . /* he said slowly, staring atf a thought
that had never struck him before, “yes . . . Why?" Th*i word was
heavy with the sound of terror.

“Who was he, Dr. Stadler?”

“Why are they talking of him?”

“Who was he?”

334

He shook his head with a shudder and said sharply, “It's just a
coincidence. The name is not uncommon at all. It’s a meaningless
coincidence. It has no connection with the man t knew. That man
is dead.”

He did not permit himself to know the full meaning of the words
he added:

“He has to be dead.”

* *

Ihe order that lay on his desk was marked 'Confidential . . .
Emergency . . Priority . . . Essential need certified by office of I'op
Co-ordinator . . . for the account of Project X” — and demanded that
he sell ten thousand tons of Rearden Metal to the State Science
Institute

Rcarden read it and glanced up at the superintendent of his mills
who stood before him without moving. The superintendent had come
in and put the order down on his desk without a word.

“1 thought you'd want to see it,” he said, in answer to Rear-
den’s glance.

Reardon pressed a button, summoning Miss Ives. He handed the
order to her and s:ud T “Send this back to wherever it came from.
Tel) them that 1 will not sell any Rearden Metal to the State Sci-
ence Institute.”

Gwen Ives and the superintendent looked at him. at each other
and back at him again, what he saw in their eyes was congratulation.

"Yes, Mr Rearden,” Gwen Ives said formally, taking the slip as
if it were any other kind of business paper She bowed and left the
room. I he superintendent followed.

Rearden smiled faintly, in greeting to what they felt. He felt noth-
ing about that paper or its possible consequences.

By a sort of inner convulsion— which had been like tearing a plug
out to cut off the current of his emotions — he had told himself six
months ago. Act first, keep the mills going, feel later, it had made
him able to watch dispassionately the working of the Fair Share Law.

Nobody had known how that law was to be observed. First, he
had been told that he could not priKluce Rearden Metal in an
amount greater than the tonnage of the best special alloy, other than
steel, produced by Orren Boyle But Orren Boyle's best special alloy
was some cracking mixture that no one cared to buy. Then he had
been told that he could produce Rcarden Metal in the amount that
Orren Boyle could have produced, if he could have produced it.
Nobody had known how this was to be determined. Somebody in
Washington had announced a figure, naming a number of tons per
year, giving no reasons. Everybody had lei it go at that

He had not known how to give every consumer who demanded it
an equal share of Rcarden Metal. The waiting list of orders could
not be filled in three years, even had he been permitted to work at
full capacity. New orders were coming in daily. They were not orders
imy longer, in the old. honorable sense of trade; they were demands.
The law provided that he could be sued by any consumer who failed
to receive his fair share of Rearden Metal.

Nobody had known how to determine what constituted a fair share

335

of what amount. Then a bright young boy just out of college had
been sent to him from Washington, as Deputy Director of Distribu-
tion. After many telephone conferences with the capital, the boy
announced that customers would gel five hundred tons of the Metal
each, in the order of the dates of their applications. Nobody had
argued against his figure. There was no way to form an argument;
the figure could have been one pound or one million tons, with the
same validity. The boy had established an office at the Reardcn mills,
where four girls took applications for shares of Reardcn Metal. At
the present rate of the mills’ production, the applications extended
well into the next century.

Five hundred tons of Rearden Metal could not provide three miles
of rail for Taggart Transcontinental: it could not provide the bracing
for one of Ken Danagger’s coal mines. The largest industries. Rear-
den's best customers, were denied the use of his Metal. But golf clubs
made of Rearden Metal were suddenly appearing on the market, as
well as coffee pots, garden tools and bathroom faucets. Ken Danag-
ger, who had seen the value of the Metal and had dared to order it
against a fury of public opinion, was not permitted to obtain it: his
order had been left unfilled, cut off without warning hv the new
laws. Mr. Mowen, who had betrayed Taggart Transcontinental in its
most dangerous hour, was now making switches of Rearden Metal
and selling them to the Atlantic Southern. Rearden looked on, his
emotions plugged out.

He turned away, without a word, when anybody mentioned to him
what everybody knew; the quick fortunes that were being made on
Rearden Metal. “Well, no," people said in drawing rooms, “you
mustn’t call it black market, because it isn’t, really. Nobody is selling
the Metal illegally. They’re just selling their right to it. Not selling
really, just pooling their shares.” He did not want to know the insect
intricacy of the deals, through which the “shares” were sold and
pooled — nor how a manufacturer in Virginia had produced, in two
months, five thousand tons of castings made of Rearden Metal — nor
what man in Washington was that manufacturer’s unlisted partner.
He knew that their profit on a ton of Rearden Metal was five times
larger than his own. He said nothing. Everybody had a right to the
Metal, except himself.

The young boy from Washington — whom the steel workers had
nicknamed the Wet Nurse — hung around Rearden with a primitive,
astonished curiosity which, incredibly, was a form of admiration.
Rearden watched him with disgusted amusement. The boy had no
inkling of any concept of morality: it had been bred out of him by
his college; this had left him an odd frankness, naive and cynical at
once, like the innocence of a savage.

“You despise me, Mr. Rearden,” he had declared once* suddenly
and without any resentment. “That’s impractical.”

“Why is it impractical?” Rearden had asked.

The boy had looked puzzled and had found no answer He never
had an answer to any “why?” He spoke in flat assertions; He would
say about people, “He's old-fashioned,” “He's unreconstructed,”
”He*s unadjusted ” without hesitation or explanation; he [would also

336

say, while being a graduate in metallurgy, “Iron smelting, I think,
seems to require a high temperature/’ He uttered nothing but uncer-
tain opinions about physical nature- - and nothing but categorical im-
pel atives about men.

“Mi Rearden/' he had said once, “if you feel you’d like to hand
out more of the Metal to Iriends of yours I mean, in bigger hauls —
it could be at ranged, you know. Why don’t we apply for a special
permission on the ground of essential need? I’ve got a few friends
in Washington Your Iriends arc pretty important people, big busi-
nessmen. \o it wouldn’t be difficult to get away with the essential
need dodge. Of course, there would be a tew/ expenses For things in
Washington. You know how it is. things always occasion expenses.”

“What tilings?”

'You understand what 1 mean.”

“No.” Rearden had said, ”1 don’t Why don’t you explain it to
me?”

The boy had looked at him uncertainly, weighed it in his mind,
then come out with: “It's bad psychology/’

“What is*’

“You know. Mr. Rearden, it's not necessary to use such words
as that.”

“As what } "

“Words are relative. They're only symbols. If we don’t use uglv
symbols, we won't have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say
things one wav, when I've already said them another*'”

“Which wav do I want you to say them’ 1 ”

“Why do you want me to?”

“Foi the simo reason that you don't. '

The boy had remained silent for a moment, then had said, “You
know. Mi. Rearden, there are no absolute standards. We can’t go
hv rigid principles, we’ve got to be flexible, we've got to adjust to
the reality of the dnv and act on the expediency of the moment/'

“Run along, punk (io and try to pour a ton ot steel without rigid
principles, on the expediency of the moment/*

A strange sense, which was almost a sense ot style, made Rearden
feel contempt lor the bov. but no resentment. The boy seemed to
Ot the spirit of the events around them. It was as if they were being
carried back across a tong span of centuries to the age where the
boy had belonged, but he. Rearden, had not instead of building new
furnaces, thought Rearden, he was now running a losing race to keep
the old ones going; instead of starting new ventures, new research,
new experiments in the use of Rearden Metal, he w*as spending the
whole of his energy on a quest for sources of iron ore: like the men
at the dawn of the Iron Age —he thought— but with less hope.

He tried to avoid these thoughts. He had to stand on guard against
his own feeling- -as if some part of him had become a stranger that
had to be kept numb, and his will had to be its constant, watchful
a aesthetic. That part was an unknown ot which he knew only that
he must never see its root and never give it voice. He had lived
through one dangerous moment which he could not allow to return.

It was the moment when — alone in his office, on a winter evening,

337

held paralyzed by a newspaper spread on his desk with a long column
of directives on the front page — he had heard on the radio the news
of EUis Wyatt’s flaming oil fields. Then, his first reaction— before
any thought of the future, any sense of disaster, any shock, terror
or protest — had been to burst out laughing. He had laughed in tri-
umph, in deliverance, in a spurting, living exultation— and the words
which he had not pronounced, but felt, were: God bless you. Elhs,
whatever you're doing!

When he had grasped the implications of his laughter, he had
known that he was now condemned to constant vigilance against
himself. Like the survivor of a heart attack, he knew that he had
had a warning and that he carried within him a danger that could
strike him at any moment.

He had held it off, since then. He had kept an even, cautious,
severely controlled pace in his inner steps. But it had come close to
him for a moment, once again. When he had looked at the order of
the State Science Institute on his desk, it had seemed to him that
the glow moving over the paper did not come from the furnaces
outside, but from the flames of a burning oil field.

“Mr Rearden.” said the Wet Nurse, when he heard about the
rejected order, “you shouldn't have done that.”

“Why not?”

“There’s going to be trouble.**

“What kind of trouble?”

“It’s a government order. You can't reject a government order.”

“Why can’t 1?”

“it's an Essential Need project, and secret, too It's vets impor-
tant”

“What kind of a project is it?”

“1 don't know It’s secret ”

“Then how do you know it's important?”

“It said so.”

“Who said so?”

“You can t doubt such a thing as that, Mr. Rearden!”

“Why can’t I?”

“But you ain’t.”

“If 1 can’t, then that would make it an absolute and you said there
aren’t any absolutes.”

“That’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“It’s the government.”

“You mean, there aren't any absolutes except the government?”

“I mean, if they say it’s important, then it is.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble, Mr. Rearden. and $ou re going
to, sure as hell. You ask too many why's. Now why do y<fu do that?”

Rearden glanced at him and chuckled. The boy noti<|ed his own
words and grinned sheepishly, but he looked unhappy.

The man who came to see Rearden a week later wjSs youngish
and slenderish, but neither as young nor as slender as -he tried to
make himself appear. He wore civilian clothes and the feather leg-

338

gings of a traffic cop. Rearden could not quite get it clear whether
he came from the State Science Institute or from Washington.

“I understand that you refused to sell metal to the State Science
Institute, Mr. Rearden,” he said in a soft, confidential lone of voice.

“That’s right,” said Rearden.

“But wouldn’t that constitute a willful disobedience of the law?”

“It s for you to interpret.”

‘May 1 ask your reason?”

“My reason is of no interest to you.”

“Oh. but of course it is! We are not your enemies, Mr. Rearden.
We want to be fair to you. You mustn’t be afraid of the fact that
you are a big industrialist. We won’t hold it against you. We actually
want to be as fair to you as to the lowest day laborer. We would
like to know your reason ”

“Print my refusal in the newspapers, and any reader will tell you
my reason. It appeared in all the newspapets a little over a year ago.”

“Oh, no. no, no! Why talk oi newspapers? Can t we settle this as
a friendly, private matter?”

‘That's up to you.”

“We don't want this in the newspapers “

“No?”

“No. We wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

Rearden glanced at him and asked, “Why does the State Science
institute need ten thousand tons ot metal” What is Project X?”

“Oh, that” It’s a very important project of scientific research, an
undertaking of great social value that may prove of inestimable pub-
lie benefit, but. unfortunately, the regulations ol top policy do not
permit me to tell vou ns nature m fuller detail.”

“You know,” said Rearden, “1 could tell you —as my reason -that
I do not wish to sell my Metal to those whose purpose is kept secret
horn me I created that Metal. It is my moral rcsjx'nsibility to know
lor what put pose l permit it to be used ”

“Oh, but you don't have to worry about that. Mr. Rearden! We
teheve vou of the responsibility. ”

“Suppose I don't wish to be relieved of it””

“But . . hut that is an old-fashioned and . . . and purely theoreti-
cal attitude.”

T said l could name it as my reason. But 1 won’t- - because, in
tins case. I have another, inclusive reason l would not sell any Rear-
den Metal to the State Science Institute tor any purpose whatever,
good or bad, secret or open.”

Bui why””

“Listen,” said Rearden slowly, “there might he some sort of justi-
fication tor the savage societies in which a man had to expect that
enemies could murder him at any moment and had to defend himself
as best he could. But there can be no justification for a society it*
which a man is expected to manufacture the weapons for his own
murderers.”

T don’t think it's advisable to use such words. Mr. Rearden. I
don’t think it’s practical to think in such terms. After all, the
government cannot— -in the pursuit of wide, national policies— take

purpose but his own pleasure?” he asked, “This is the way I want
you to wear it. Only for me. I like to look at it. It's beautiful."

She laughed; it was a soft, low, breathless sound. She could not
speak or move, only nod silently in acceptance and obedience; she
nodded several times, her hair swaying with the wide, circular move-
ment of her head, then hanging still as she kept her head bowed
to him.

She dropped down on the bed. She lay stretched lazily, her head
thrown back, her arms at her sides, palms pressed to the rough tex-
ture of the bedspread, one leg bent, the long line of the other ex-
tended across the dark blue linen of the spread, the stone glowing
like a wound in the semi-darkness, throwing a star of rays against
her skin.

Her eyes were half-closed in the mocking, conscious triumph of
being admired, but her mouth was half-open in helpless, begging
expectation. He stood across the room, looking at her, at her Hat
stomach drawn in, as her breath was drawn, at the sensitive body of
a sensitive consciousness. He said, his voice low, intent and oddly
quiet:

"Dagny, if some artist painted you as you are now. men would
come to look at the painting to experience a moment that nothing
could give them in their own lives. They would call it great art. They
would not know the nature of what they felt, but the painting would
show them everything — even that you’re not some classical Venus,
but the Vice-President of a railroad, because that’s part of u- even
what I am, because that’s part of it. too. Dagnv, they’d feel it and
go away and sleep with the first barmaid in sight — and they’d never
try to reach what they had felt. I wouldn’t want to seek it from a
painting. I’d "want it real. I'd take no pride in any hopeless longing.
I wouldn’t hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make
it, to live it. Do you understand?"

"Oh yet* Hank, / understand!” she said. Do you, my darling? —
do you understand it fully? — she thought, but did not say it aloud.

On the evening oi a blizzard, she came home to find an enormous
spread of tropical flowets standing in her living room against the
dark glass of windows battered by snowflakes. They were stems of
Hawaiian Torch Ginger, three feet tall, their large heads were cones
of petals that had the sensual texture of soft leather and the color
of blood. "I saw them in a florist’s window,” he told her when he
came, that night, "I liked seeing them through a blizzard. But there’s
nothing as wasted as an object in a public window."

She began to find flowers in her apartment at unpredictable times,
flowers sent without a card, but with the signature of the sender in
their fantastic shapes, in the violent colors, in the extravagant cost.
He brought her a gold necklace made of small hinged squares that
formed a spread of solid gold to cover her neck and shbulders. like
the color of a knight’s armor— "Wear it with a blacg dress,” he
ordered. He brought her a set of glasses that w'ere tall, slander blocks
of square-cut crystal, made by a famous jeweler. She patched the
way he held one of the glasses when she served him a drink— as if
the touch of the texture under his fingers, the taste of the drink and

342

the sight of her face were the single form of an indivisible moment
of enjoyment. “I used to see things I liked," he said, “but I never
bought them. There didn’t seem to be much meaning in it. There
is, now."

He telephoned her at the office, one winter morning, and said, not
in the tone of an invitation, but in the tone of an executive’s order.
"We’re going to have dinner together tonight. I want you to dress.
Do you have any sort of blue evening gown? Wear it."

The dress she wore was a slender tunic of dusty blue that gave
her a look of unprotected simplicity, the look of a statue in the blue
shadows of a gaidcn under the summer sun. What he brought and
put over her shoulders was a cape oi blue fox that swallowed her
from the curve of her chin to the tips of her sandals. “Hank, that’s
preposterous" — she laughed — "it's not my kind of thing?" “No?” he
asked, drawing her to a mirror.

The huge blanket of fur made her look like a child bundled for a
snowstorm: the luxurious texture transformed the innocence of the
awkward bundle into the elegance of a perversely intentional con-
trast: into a look of stressed sensuality. The fur was a soft brown,
dimmed hy an aura of blue that could not be seen, only felt like an
enveloping mist, like a suggestion of color grasped not by one's eyes
but hv one’s hands, as if one felt, without contact, the sensation of
sinking one's palms into the fur’s softness. The cape left nothing to
be seen of hei, except the brown of her hair, the blue-gray of her
eyes, the shape of her mouth

She turned to him. her smile startled and helpless. "1 ... 1 didn't
know it would look like that."

“I did."

She sat beside him m his air as he drove through the dark streets
of the city. A sparkling net oi snow flashed into sight once m a
while, when they went past the lights on the corners. She did not
ask where they were going She sat low in the seat, leaning back,
looking up at the snowflakes. Hie fur cape was wrapped tightly about
her, within it, her dress felt as light as a nightgown and the feel of
the cape was like an embrace.

She looked at the angular tiers of lights rising through the snowy
curtain, and -glancing at him, at the grip of his gloved hands on the
wheel, at the austere, fastidious elegance of the figure in black over-
coat and white muffler -she thought that he belonged in a great city,
among polished sidewalks and sculptured stone.

The car went down into a tunnel, streaked through an echoing
tube of tile under the river and rose to the coils of an elevated
highway under an open black sky. The fights were below them now,
spread in fiat miles of bluish windows, of smokestacks, slanting
cranes, red gusts of fire, and long, dim rays silhouetting the contorted
shapes of an industrial district. She thought that she had seen him
once, at his mills, with smudges of soot on his forehead, dressed m
acid-eaten overalls: he had worn them as naturally well as he wore
his formal clothes. He belonged here, too— she thought, looking
down at the flats of New Jersey— among the cranes, the fires and
the grinding clatter of gears.

343

When they sped down a dark road through an empty countryside,
with the strands of snow glittering across their headlights — she re-
membered how he had looked in the summer of their vacation,
dressed in slacks, stretched on the ground of a lonely ravine, with
the grass under his body and the sun on his bare arms. He belonged
in the countryside, she thought — he belonged everywhere — he was a
man who belonged on earth — and then she thought of the words
which were more exact: he was a man to whom the earth belonged,
the man at home on earth and in control. Why, then — she won-
dered — should he have had to carry a burden of tragedy which, in
silent endurance, he had accepted so completely that he had barely
known he carried it? She knew part of the answer; she felt as if the
whole answer were close and she would grasp it on some ap-
proaching day. But she did not want to think of it now, because they
were moving away from the burdens, because within the space of a
speeding car they held the stillness of full happiness. She moved her
head imperceptibly to let it touch his shoulder for a moment.

The car left the highway and turned toward the lighted squares of
distant windows, that hung above the snow beyond a grillwork of
bare branches. Then, in a soft, dim light, they sat at a table by a
window facing darkness and trees. The inn stood on a knoll in the
woods; it had the luxury of high cost and privacy, and an air of
beautiful taste suggesting that it had not been discovered by those
who sought high cost and notice. She was barely aware of the dining
room: it blended away into a sense of superlative comfort, and the
only ornament that caught her attention was the glitter of iced
branches beyond the glass of the window.

She sat, looking out, the blue fur half-slipping off her naked arms
and shoulders. He watched her through narrowed eyes, with the
satisfaction of a man studying his own workmanship.

“I like giving things to you,” he said, “because you don't need
them.”

“No?”

“And it’s not that I want you to have them. I want you to have
them from me. "

“That is the way I do need them. Hank. From you.”

“Do you understand that it’s nothing but vicious self-indulgence
on my part? I’m not doing it for your pleasure, but for mine.”

“Hank!” The cry was involuntary; it held amusement, despair,
indignation and pity, “if you’d given me those things just for my
pleasure, not yours, I would have thrown them in your lace.”

“Yes . . . Yes, then you would — and should.”

“Did you call it your vicious self-indulgence?”

“That’s what they call it.”

“Oh, yes! That’s what they call it. What do you call it, |fank ?”

“I don’t know,” he said indifferently, and went on intently. “1
know only that if it's vicious, then let me be damned for it, but that’s
what I want to do more than anything else on earth.”

She did not answer; she sat looking straight at him with a faint
smile, as if asking him to listen to the meaning of his own; words.

“Fve always wanted to enjoy my wealth,” he said. “I didn’t know

344

how to do it. 1 didn’t even have time to know how much I wanted
to. But I knew that all the steel I poured came back to me as liquid
gold, and the gold was meant to harden into any shape I wished, and
it was 1 who had to enjoy it. Only I couldn’t. 1 couldn’t find any purpose
for it. I’ve found it, now. It’s I who’vc produced that wealth and it’s
I who am going to let it buy for me every kind of pleasure l want —
including the pleasure of seeing how much I’m able to pay for —
including the preposterous feat of turning you into a luxury object.”

“But I’m a luxury object that you’ve paid for long ago,” she said;
she was not smiling.

“How?”

“By means of the same values with which you paid for your mills.”

She did not know whether he understood it with that full, luminous
finality which is a thought named in words; but she knew that what
he felt in that moment was understanding: She saw the relaxation of
an invisible smile in his eyes.

“I’ve never despised luxury,” he said, “yet I've always despised
those who enjoyed it. I looked at what they called their pleasures
and it seemed so miserably senseless to me — after what 1 fell at the
mills. I used to watch steel being poured, tons of liquid steel running
as I wanted it to, where 1 wanted it. And then I’d go to a banquet
and I’d see people who sat trembling in awe before their own gold
dishes and lace tablecloths, as if their dining room were the master
and they were just objects serving it. objects created by their dia-
mond shirt studs and necklaces, not the other way around. Then I’d
run to the site of the first slag heap I could find — and they’d say
that 1 didn't know how to enjoy life, because I cared for nothing
but business.*’

He looked at the dim, sculptured beauty of the room and at the
people who sat at the tables. They sat in a manner of self-conscious
display, as if the enormous cost of their clothes and the enormous
care of their grooming should have fused into splendor, but didn’t.
Their faces had a look of rancorous anxiety.

“Dagny. look at those people. They're supposed to be the playboys
of life; the amusement -seekers and luxury-lovers. They sit theie,
waiting for this place to give them meaning, not the other way
around. But they’re always shown to us as the enjovers of material
pleasures- and then we’re taught that enjoyment of material plea-
sures is evil. Enjoyment? Are they enjoying it? Is there some sort
of perversion in what we're taught, some error that’s vicious and
very important?”

“Yes, Hank— very vicious and very, very important.”

“They are the playboys, while we’re just tradesmen, you and 1.
Do you realize that we’re much more capable of enjoying this place
than they can ever hope to be?”

“Yes,”

He said slowly, in the tone of a quotation, “Why have we left it
all to fools? It should have been ours.” She looked at him, startled.
He smiled. “I remember every word you said to me at that party, I
didn't answer you then, because the only answer l had, the only
thing your words meant to me, was an answer that you would hate

345

me for, I thought: it was that I wanted you." He looked at her:
"Dagny, you didn’t intend it then, but what you were saying was
that you wanted to sleep with me, wasn’t it?”

"Yes. Hank. Of course."

He held her eyes, then looked away, They were silent for a long
time. He glanced at the soft twilight around them, then at the sparkle
of two wine glasses on their table. "Dagny, in my youth, when I was
working in the ore mines in Minnesota, 1 thought that I wanted to
reach an evening like this. No, that was not what 1 was working for,
and I didn’t think of it often. But once in a while, on a winter night,
when the stars were out and it was very cold, when 1 was tired,
because 1 had worked two shifts, and wanted nothing on earth except
to he down and fall asleep right there, on the mine ledge-- 1 thought
that some day I would sit m a place like this, where one drink ot
wine would cost more than my day's wages, and i would have earned
the price of every minute of it and of every drop and of every flower
on the table, and l would sit there tor no purpose but my own
amusement."

She asked, smiling. "With your mistress?"

She saw the shot of pain in his eyes and wished desperately that
she had not said it.

"With ... a woman," he answered. She knew the word he had
not pronounced. He went on. his voice soft and steady: "When l
became rich and saw what the rich did for their amusement. I
thought that the place 1 had imagined, did not exist. I had not even
imagined it too clearly. I did not know what it would he like, only
what I would feel. I gave up expecting it years ago. But- I feel
it tonight."

He raised his glass, looking at her.

"Hank, I . . . I'd give up anything I’ve ever had in mv life, except
my being a ... a luxury object of youi amusement."

He saw her hand trembling as she held her glass. He said evenly,
"l know it, dearest."

She sat shocked and still: he had never used that woid before. He
threw his head back and smiled the most brilliantly gay smile she
had ever seen on his face.

"Your first moment of weakness, Dagny," he said.

She laughed and shook her head. He stretched his arm across the
table and closed his hand over her naked shoulder, as if giving her
an instant s support. Laughing softly, and as if by accident, she let
her mouth brush against his fingers; it kept her face down for the
one moment when he could have seen the brilliance of her eyes
was tears.

When she looked up at him, her smile matched his — and the rest
of the evening was their celebration— for all his years since the nights
on the mine ledges — for all her years since the night of her jrst ball
when, in desolate longing for an uncaptured vision of gaiety, tehe had
wondered about the people who expected the lights and ihef flowers
to make them brilliant

"Isn't there ... in what we’re taught . . . some error that’$ vicious
and very important?" She thought of his words, as she lay in an

346

armchair of her living room, on a dismal evening of spring, waiting
for him to come. . . . Just a little farther, my darling — she thought —
look a little farther and you’ll be free of that error and of all the
wasted pain you never should have had to carry. . . . But she felt
that she, too, had not seen the whole of the distance, and she worn
dered what were the steps left for her to discover. . . .

Walking through the darkness of the streets, on his way to her
apartment, Rearden kept his hands in his coat pockets and his arms
pressed to his sides, because he felt that he did not want to touch
anything or brush against anyone. He had never experienced it be-
fore — this sense of revulsion that was not aroused by any particular
object, but seemed to flood everything around him, making the city
seem sodden. He could understand disgust for any one thing, and
he could fight that thing with the healthy indignation of knowing
that it did not belong in the world; but this was new to him — this
feeling that the world was a loathsome place where he did not want
to belong.

He had held a conference with the producers of copper, who had
just been garroted by a set of directives that would put them out of
existence in another year. He had had no advice to give them, no
solution to offer; his ingenuity, which had made him famous as the
man who would always find a way to keep production going, had
not been able to discover a way to save them. But they had all
known that there was no way; ingenuity was a virtue of the mind—
and in the issue confionting them, the mind had been discarded as
irrelevant long ago "it’s a deal between the boys in Washington
and the importers of copper,'* one of the men had said, “mainly
d’ Anconia Copper,*’

This was only a small, extraneous stab of pain, he thought, a feel-
ing of disappointment ijj, an expectation he had never had the right
to expect; he should have known that this was just what a man like
Francisco d’Anconia would do — and he wondered angrily why he
telt as if a bright, brief flame had died somewhere in a lightless world.

He diil not know whether the impossibility of acting had given
him this sense of loathing, or whether the loathing had made him
lose the desire to act. It's both, he thought; a desire presupposes the
possibility of action to achieve it; action presupposes a goal wrtiich is
worth achieving. If the only goal possible was to wheedle a precari-
ous moment’s favor from men who held guns, then neither action
nor desire could exist any longer.

Then could life?-— he asked himself indifferently. 1 ife, he thought,
had been defined as motion; man’s life was purposeful motion; what
was the state of a being to whom purpose and motion were denied,
a being held in chains but left to breathe and to see all the magnifi-
cence of the possibilities he could have reached, left to scream
'Why?*' and to be shown the muzzle of a gun as sole explanation?
I le shrugged, walking on; he did not care even to find an answer.

He observed, indifferently, lhe devastation wrought by his own
indifference. No matter how hard a struggle he had lived through in
the past, he had never reached the ultimate ugtiness of abandoning
the will to act. In moments of suffering, he had never let pain win

Ml

its one permanent victory; he had never allowed it to make him lose
the desire for joy. He had never doubted the nature of the world or
man’s greatness as its motive power and its core. Years ago, he had
wondered with contemptuous incredulity about the fanatical sects
that appeared among men in the dark corners of history, the sects
who believed that man was trapped in a malevolent universe ruled
by evil for the sole purpose of his torture. Tonight, he knew what
their vision of the world and their feel of it had been. If what he
now saw around him was the world in which he lived, then he did
not want to touch any part of it. ho did not want to fight it, he was
an outsider with nothing at stake and no concern for remaining alive
much longer.

Dagny and his wish to see her were the only exception left to him.
The wish remained. But in a sudden shock, he realized that he felt
no desire to sleep with her tonight. That desire— which had never
given him a moment’s rest, which had been growing, feeding on its
own satisfaction — was wiped out. It was an odd impotence, neither
of his mind nor of his body. He felt, as passionately as he had ever
felt it, (hat she was the most desirable woman on earth; but what
came from it was only a desire to desire het, a wish to feel, not a
feeling. The sense of numbness seemed impersonal, as if its root
were neither in him nor in her; as if it were the act of sex that now
belonged to a realm which he had left.

‘"Don’t get up — stay there- -it’s so obvious that you’ve been wait-
ing for me that 1 want to look at it longer ’’

He said it, from the doorway of her apartment, seeing her
stretched in an armchair, seeing the eager little jolt that threw her
shoulders forward as she was about to rise; he was smiling.

He noted -as if some part of him were watching his icactions with
detached curiosity— that his smile and his sudden sense of gaiety
were real. He grasped a feeling that he had always experienced, but
never identified because it had always been absolute and immediate
a feeling that forbade him ever to face her in pam. It was much
more than the pride of wishing to conceal his suffering: it was the
feeling that suffering must not be granted recognition in her pies-
ence, that no form of claim between them should ever be motivated
by pain and aimed at pity. It was not pity that he brought here or
came here to find.

“Do you still need proof that I’m always waiting for you?” she
asked, leaning obediently back in her chair, her voice was neither
tender nor pleading, but bright and mocking.

“Dagny, why is it that most women would never admit that, hut
you do?”

“Because they’re never sure that they ought to be wanted. I am.”

“I do admire self-confidence.” [

“Self-confidence was only one part of what I said. Hank.”

“What’s the whole?” ;

“Confidence of my value — and yours.” He glanced at 'her as if
catching the spark of a sudden thought, and she laughed adding. “1
wouldn’t be sure of holding a man like Orren Boyle, for' instance.
He wouldn’t want me at all. You would.”

348

“Are you saying/’ he asked slowly* “that l rose in your estimation
when you found that I wanted you?”

“Of course.”

“That’s not the reaction of most people of being wanted.”

“It isn’t.”

“Most people feel that they rise in their own eyes, if others
want them.”

“I feel that others live up to me, if they want me. And that is
the way you feel, too, Hank, about yourself — whether you admit it
or not,”

That’s not what I said to you then, on that first morning — he
thought, looking down at her. She lay stretched out lazily, her face
blank, but her eyes bright with amusement. He knew that she was
thinking of it and that she knew' he was. He smiled, but said noth-
ing else.

As he sat half-stretched on the couch, watching her across the
room, he felt at peace — as if some temporary wall had risen between
him and the things he had fell on his way here. He told her about
his encounter with the man from the State Science Institute, because,
even though he knew that the event held danger, an odd, glowing
sense of satisfaction still remained from it in his mind.

He chuckled at her look of indignation. "Don’t bother being angry
at them.” he said. “It’s no worse than all the rest of what they’re
doing every day,”

“Hank, do you want me to speak to Dr. Stadier about it?”

“Certainly not!”

“He ought to stop it. He could at least do that much.”

“I’d rather go to jail. Dr. Stadier? You’re not having anything to
do with him, are you?”

“I saw him a few days ago.”

“Why?”

“In regard to the motor.”

“The motor , . . ?” He said it slowly, in a strange way, as if the
thought of the motor had suddenly brought back to him a realm he
had forgotten. “Dagny . . . the man who invented that motor . . .
he did exist, didn’t he?”

“Why . . of course. What do you mean?”

“I mean only that . . that it’s a pleasant thought, isn’t it? Even

if he's dead now, he was alive once ... so alive that he designed
that motor. . .

“What’s the matter, Hank?”

“Nothing. Tell me about the motor.”

She told him about her meeting with Dr. Stadier. She got up and
paced the room, while speaking; she could not lie still, she always
felt a surge of hope and of eagerness for action when she dealt with
the subject of the motor.

The first thing he noticed were the fights of the city beyond the
window: he felt as if they were being turned on, one by one, forming
the great skyline he loved; he felt it, even though he knew that the
lights had been there all the time. Then he understood that the thing
which was returning was within him; the shape coming back drop by

349

drop was his love for the city. Then he knew that it had come back
because he was looking at the city past the taut, slender figure of a
woman whose head was lilted eagerly as at a sight of distance, whose
steps were a restless substitute for flight. He was looking at her as
at a stranger, he was barely aware that she was a woman, but the
sight was flowing into a feeling the words for which were: This is
the world and the core of it, this is what made the city — they go
together, the angular shapes of the buildings and the angular lines
of a face stripped of everything but purpose - the rising steps of
steel and the steps of a being intent upon his goal — this is what
they had been, all the men who had lived to invent the lights, the
steel, the furnaces, the motors — they were the world, they, not the
men who crouched in dark corners, half-begging, half-threatening,
boastfully displaying their open sores as their only claim on life and
virtue — so long as he knew that there existed one man with the
bright courage of a new thought, could he give up the woild to those
others? — so long as he could find a single sight to give him a life-
restoring shot of admiration, could he believe that the woild be-
longed to the sores, the moans and the guns? — the men who invented
motors did exist, he would never doubt their reality, it was his vision
of them that had made the contrast unbearable, so that even the
loathing was the tribute ol his loyalty to them and to that world
which was theirs and his

“Dailing . he said, “'darling . like a man awakening sud-
denly. when he noticed that she had stopped speaking

‘’What’s the matter. Hank?” she asked softly.

"Nothing . . . {Except that you shouldn't have called Stadler “ His
face was bright with confidence, his voice sounded amused, protec-
tive and gentle: she could discover mulling else, he looked as he had
always looked, it was only the note of gentleness that seemed strange
and new.

"1 kept feeling that 1 shouldn't have,” she said, “but I didn't
know why ”

"I'll tell yoti why.” He leaned forward. “What he wanted from
you was a recognition that he was still the l)r. Robert Stadler he
should have been, but wasn't and knew he wasn't. He wanted you
to grant him your respect, in spite of and in contradiction to his
actions. He wanted you to tuggle reality for him, so that his greatness
would remain, but the State Science Institute would be wiped out.
as it it had never existed- -and you're the only one who could do it
for him “

“Why I?”

“Because you’re the victim.”

She looked at him, startled. He spoke intently: he felt a sudden,
violent clarity of perception, as it a surge ol energy were; rushing
into the activify of sight, fusing the half-seen and half-grasped into
a single shape and direction.

“Dagny, they’re doing something that we’ve never u/uferstood.
They know something which we don’t, but should discover I can’t
see it fully yet, but I’m beginning to see parts of it. That lodjter from
the State Science Institute was scared when ! refused to help him

350

pretend that he was just an honest buyer of my MetaL He was scared
way deep. Of what? I don’t know —public opinion was just his name
for it, but it's not the full name. Why should he have been scared?
He has the guns, the jails, the laws — he could have seized the whole
of my mills, if he wished, and nobody would have risen to defend
me, and he knew it— so why should he have cared what l thought?
But he did. It was I who had to tell him that he wasn’t a looter, but
my customer and friend. That’s what he needed from me. And that’s
what Dr. Stadler needed from you — it was you who had to act as if
he were a great man who had never tried to destroy your rail and
my Metal. I don’t know what it is that they think they accomplish —
but they want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend
they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us. I don’t know
the nature of that sanction — but, Dagny, I know that if we value our
lives, we must not give it to them. If they put you on a torture rack,
don’t give it to them. Let them destroy your railroad and my mills,
but don’t give it to them. Because I know this much: I know that
that’s our only chance.”

She had remained standing still before him, looking attentively at
the faint outline of some shape she, too. had tried to grasp.

"Yes . . .” she said. ”yes, I know what you’ve seen in them. . . .
I’ve felt it, too — but it’s only like something brushing past that’s
gone before I know I’ve seen it, like a touch of cold air, and what’s
left is always the feeling that I should have stopped it. ... I know
that you’re right. 1 can’t understand their game, but this much is
right We must not see the world as they want us to see it. It’s some
sort of fraud, very ancient and very vast — and the key to break it is:
to check every premise they teach us. to question every precept,
to—”

She whirled to him at a sudden thought, but she cut the motion
and the words in the same instant: the next woids would have been
the ones she did not want to say to him She stood looking at him
with a slow, bright smile of curiosity.

Somewhere within him, ho knew the thought she would not name,
but he knew it only in that prenatal shape which has to find its words
in the future. He diet not pause to grasp it now — because in the
Hooding brightness of what he felt, another thought, which was its
predecessor, had become clear to him and had been holding him
ior many minutes past. He rose, approached her and took her in
his arms.

He held the length of her body pressed to his. as it their bodies
were two currents rising upward together, each to a single point,
each carrying the whole of their consciousness to the meeting of
their lips.

What she felt in that moment contained, as one nameless part of
it, the knowledge of the beauty in the posture of his body as he held
her, as they stood in the middle of a room high above the lights of
the city.

What he knew, what he had discovered tonight, was that his recap-
tured love of existence had not been given back to him by the return
of his desire for her — but that the desire had returned after he had

351

regained his world, the love, the value and the sense of his world —
and that the desire was not an answer to her body, but a celebration
of himself and of his will to live.

He did not know it, he did not think of it, he was past the need
of woids, but tn the moment when he felt the response of her body
to his, he felt also the unadmitted knowledge that that which he had
called her depravity was her highest \irtue- -this capacity ol hers to
feel the jo> of being, as he fell it.

Chapter II THE ARISTOCRACY OF PULL

The calendar in the sky he>ond the window ot hei oltiee said: Sep-
tember 2. Dagny leaned wealth* across her desk. I he first light to
snap on at the approach of dusk was always the ray that hit the
calendar: when the white -glowing page appeared above the roofs, it
blurred the city, hastening the darkness.

She had looked at that distant page every evening of the months
behind her Your days are numbered, it had seemed to say - as it it
were marking a piogression toward something it knew, but she
didn't. Once, it had docked her race to build the John C fait Line:
now it was docking her race against an unknown destroyei

One by one, the men who had built new towns in (oloiudo. had
departed into some silent unknown, from which no voice or person
had yet returned. The towns they had left were dying. Some of the
factories they built had remained ownerless and locked; others had
been seized by the local authorities, the machines m both stood still

She had felt as if a dark map of Colorado were spiead before her
like a traffic control panel, with a lew* lights scattered through its
mountains. One after another, the lights had gone out. One after
another, the men had vanished. There had been a pattern about it,
which she felt, but could not define; she had become able to predict,
almost with certainty, who would go next and when: she was unable
to grasp the “why?”

Of the men who had once greeted her descent from the cab of an
engine on the platform of Wyatt Junction, only Ted Nielsen was left,
still running the plant of Nielsen Motors. “Ted, you won t be the
next one to go?” she had asked him, on his recent visit to New
York; she had asked it, trying to smile. He had answered grimly, “1
hope not.” “What do you mean, you hope? — aren’t you sure?*’ He
had said slowly, heavily, “Dagny, I've always thought that Ld rather
die than stop working. But so did the men who re gone. It seems
impossible to me that 1 could ever want to quit. But a year ago, it
seemed impossible that they ever could. Those men were my friends.
They knew what their going would do to us, the survivors. They
would not have gone like that, without a word, leaving to us the
added terror of the inexplicable -unless they had some reason of
supreme importance. A month ago, Roger Marsh, of Marsh 'Electric,
told me he’d have himself chained to his desk, so that he Wouldn't
be able to leave it, no matter what ghastly temptation struck him.
He was furious with anger at the men who’d left. He swore to me

352

that he’d never do it. ‘And if it’s something that 1 can’t resist/ he
said, i swear that I’ll keep enough of my mind to leave you a letter
and give you some hint of what it is, so that you won’t have to rack
your brain in the kind of dread we’re both feeling now.’ That’s what
he swore. Two weeks ago, he went. He left me no letter. . . . Dagny,
1 can’t tell what I’ll do when 1 see it— whatever it was that they saw
when they went.”

It seemed to her that some destroyer was moving soundlessly
through the country and the lights were dying at his touch — some-
one. she thought bitterly, who had reversed the principle of the
Twentieth Century motor and was now turning kinetic energy into
static.

That was the enemy — she thought, as she sat at her desk in the
gathering twilight — with whom she was running a race. The monthly
report from Quentin Daniels lay on her desk. She could not be
certain, as yet, that Daniels would solve the secret of the motor; but
the destroyer, she thought, was moving swiftly, surely, at an ever
accelerating tempo; she wondered whether, by the time she rebuilt
the motor, there would be any world left to use it.

She had liked Quentin Daniels from the moment he entered her
office on their first interview. He was a lanky man in his early thirties,,
with a homely, angular face and an attractive smite. A hint of the
smile remained in his features at all times, particularly when he lis-
tened; it was a look of good-natured amusement, as if he were swiftly
and patiently discarding the irrelevant in the words he heard and
going straight to the point a moment ahead of the speaker,

“Why did you refuse to work for Dr. Stadler?” she asked.

The hint of his smile grew harder and more stressed; this was as
near as he came to showing an emotion; the emotion was anger. But
he answered in his even, unhurried drawl, “You know. Dr. Stadler
once said that the first word of ‘Free, scientific inquiry’ was redun-
dant. He seems to have forgotten it. Well, I’ll just say that ‘Govern-
mental scientific inquiry’ is a contradiction in terms.’'

She asked him what position he held at the Utah Institute of
Technology. “Night watchman,” he answered. "What?' 1 she gasped.
“Night watchman,” he repeated politely, as if she had not caught
the words, as if there were no cause for astonishment.

Under her questioning, he explained that he did not like any of
the scientific foundations left in existence, that he would have liked
a job in the research laboratory of some big industrial concern —
“But which one of them can afford to undertake any long-range
work nowadays, and why should they?”— so when the Utah Institute
ot Technology was closed for lack of funds, he had remained there
as night watchman and sole inhabitant of the place: the salary was
sufficient to pay for his needs — and the Institute’s laboratory was
there, intact, for his own private, undisturbed use,

“So you're doing research work of your own?”

^That’s right.”

“For what purpose?”

“For my own pleasure.”

“What do you intend to do, if you discover something of scientific

353

importance or commercial value? Do you intend to put it to some
public use?'’

“1 don't know. I don’t think so.'*

‘‘Haven't you any desire to be of service to humanity?”

“I don’t talk that kind of language. Miss Taggart. 1 don’t think
you do, either.”

She laughed. “I think we ll get along together, vou and I.”

“We will.”

When she had told him the story of the motor, when he had
studied the manuscript, he made no comment, but merely said that
he >vould take the job on any terms she named.

She asked him to choose his own terms She protested, in astonish-
ment, against the low monthly salary he quoted. “Miss Taggart,” he
said, “if there's something that I won’t take, it's something for noth-
ing. I don’t know how long you might have to pay me, or whether
you'll get anything at all in return I’ll gamble on my own mmd I
won't let anybody else do it. I don’t collect tor an intention. But I
sure do intend to collect for goods delivered. If I succeed, that’s
when I’ll skin you alive, because what 1 want then is a percentage,
and it’s going to be high, but it’s going to be worth your while ”

When he named the percentage he wanted, she laughed. “That us
skinning me alive and it will be worth my while. Okay.”

They agreed that it was to be her private project and that he was
to be her private employee; neither of them wanted to have to deal
with the interference of the Taggart Research Department He asked
to remain in Utah, in his post of watchman, where he had all the
laboratory equipment and all the privacy he needed. The project was
to remain confidential between them, until and unless he succeeded.

“Miss Taggart." he said in conclusion, “l don’t know how many
years it will take me to solve this, if ever. But I know that if I spend
the rest of my life on it and succeed, I will die satisfied.” He added,
“There’s only one thing that 1 want more than to solve it: it’s to
meet the man who has."

Once a month, since his return to Utah, she had sent him a check
and he had sent her a report on his work. It was too early to hope,
but bis reports were the only bright points in the stagnant fog ol her
days in the office.

She raised her head, as she finished reading his pages. The calen-
dar in the distance said: September 2. The lights of the city had
grown beneath it, spreading and glittering. She thought of Rearden.
She wished he were in the city; she wished she would sec him tonight.

Then, noticing the date, she remembered suddenly that she had
to rush home to dress, because she had to attend Jim’s wedding
tonight. She had not seen Jim, outside the office, for over a year.
She had not met his fiancee, but she had read enough atyoul the
engagement in the newspapers. She rose from her desk in? wearily
distasteful resignation; it seemed easier to attend the weddjng than
to bother explaining her absence afterwards.

She was hurrying across the concourse of the Terminal vfrhen she
heard a voice catling, “Miss Taggart!” with a strange note ofjurgcncy
and reluctance, together. It stopped her abruptly; she took a few

354

seconds to realize that it was the old man at the cigar stand who
had called.

*Tve been waiting to catch sight of you for days. Miss Taggart.
I’ve been extremely anxious to .speak to you.” There was an odd
expression on his face, the look of an effort not to look frightened,

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling, “I’ve been rushing in and out of
the building all week and didn't have time to stop.”

He did not smile. “Miss Taggart, that cigarette with the dollar sign
that you gave me some months ago — where did you get it?”

She stood still for a moment. ‘Tm afraid that's a long* complicated
story,” she answered.

“Have you any way of getting in touch with the person who gave
it to you?”

“1 suppose so — though I’m not loo sure. Why?”

“Would he tell you where he got it?”

“1 don’t know. What makes you suspect that he wouldn’t?”

He hesitated, then asked, “Miss Taggart, what do you do when you
have to tell someone something which you know to be impossible?”

She chuckled. “The man who gave me the cigarette said that in
such a case one must check one’s premises.”

“He did? About the cigarette?”

“Well, no, not exactly. But why? What is it you have to tell me?”

“Miss Taggart, 1 have inquired all over the world. 1 have checked
every source ot information in and about the tobacco industry. 1
have had that cigarette stub put through a chemical analysis. There
is no plant that manufactures that kind of paper. The flavoring ele-
ments in that tobacco have never been used in any smoking mixture
I could find. That cigarette was machine-made, but it was not made
in any factory I know -and I know them all Miss Taggart, to the
best of my knowledge, that cigarette was not made anywhere on
earth.”

* *

Reardcn stood by, watching absently, while the waiter wheeled
the dinner table out of his hotel room. Ken Danagger had left. The
loom was half-dark: by an unspoken agreement, they had kept the
lights low during their dinner, so that Danagger’s face w'ould not be
noticed and, perhaps, recognised by the waiters.

They had had to meet furtively, like criminals who could not be
seen together, 'l’hey could not meet m their offices or in their homes,
only in the crowded anonymity of a city, in his suite at the Wayne-
Falkland Hotel. There could be a fine of $10,000 and ten years of
imprisonment for each of them, if it became known that he had
agreed to deliver to Danagger four thousand tons of structural shapes
of Rearden Metal.

They had not discussed that law, at their dinner together, or their
motives or the risk they were taking. They had merely talked busi-
ness. Speaking clearly and dryly, as he always spoke at any confer-
ence, Danagger had explained that half of his original order would
be sufficient to brace such tunnels as would cave in, if he delayed
the bracing much longer, and to recondition the mines of the Confedr
erated Coal Company, gone bankrupt, which he had purchased three

355

weeks ago — “It’s an excellent property, but in rotten condition; they
had a nasty accident there last month, cavern and gas explosion,
forty men killed/' He had added, in the monotone of reciting some
impersonal, statistical report, “The newspapers are yelling that coal
is now the most crucial commodity in the country. They are also
yelling that the coal operators arc profiteering in the oil shortage.
One gang in Washington is yelling that l am expanding too much
and something should be done to stop me, because 1 am becoming
a monopoly. Another gang in Washington is yelling that i am not
expanding enough and something should be done to let the govern-
ment seize my mines, because I am greedy for profits and unwilling
to satisfy the public's need of luel. At my present rate of profit, this
Confederated Coal property will bring back the money I spent on
it — m forty-seven years. 1 have no children. I bought it, because
there’s one customer 1 don't dare leave without coal— and that’s
Taggart Transcontinental. I keep thinking of what would happen il
the railroads collapsed " He had stopped, then added, “1 don't know
why I still care about that, but I do. Those people in Washington
don’t seem to have a clear picture ot what that would be like. 1
have.” Rearden had said, 'Til deliver the Metal. When you need
the other half of your order, let me know. I’ll deliver that, too."

At the end of the dinner. Da nagger had said in the same precise
impassive tone, the tone of a man who knows the exact meaning of
his words, “If any employee of yours or mine discovers this and
attempts private blackmail, I will pay it. within reason. But 1 will
not pay, if he has friends in Washington. II any of those come
around, then I go to jail." “Then we go together," Rearden had said.

Standing alone in his half-darkened room, Rearden noted that the
prospect of going to jail left him blankly indifferent. He remembered
the time when, aged fourteen, famt with hunger, he would not steal
fruit from a sidewalk stand. Now. the possibility of being sent to
jail — it this dinner was a felony — meant no more to him than the
possibility ol }>eing run over by a truck, an ugly physical accident
without any moral significance.

He thought that he had been made to hide, as a guilty secret, the
only business transaction he had enjoyed in a > ear’s work — and that
he was hiding, as a guilty secret, his nights with Dagny, the only
hours that kept him alive He felt that there was some connection
between the two secrets, some essential connection which he had to
discover. He could not grasp it, he could not find the words to name
it, but he felt that the day when he would find them, he would
answer every question of his life.

He stood against the wall, his head thrown back, his eyes closed,
and thought of Dagny, and then he felt that no questions could
matter to him any longer. He thought that he would see hei£ tonight,
almost hating it, because tomorrow morning seemed so ejose and
then he would have to leave her — he wondered whether fie could
remain in town tomorrow, or whether he should leave now^ without
seeing her, so that he could wait, so that he could alwayi have it
ahead of him: the moment of dosing his hands over her Shoulders
and looking down at her face. You’re going insane, he thought— but

356

he knew that if she were beside him through every hour of his days,
it would still be the same, he would never have enough of it, he
would have to invent some senseless form of torture for himself in
order to bear it — he knew he would see her tonight, and the thought
of leaving without it made the pleasure greater, a moment's torture
to underscore his certainty of the hours ahead. He would leave the
light on in her living room, he thought, and hold her across the bed,
and see nothing but the curve of the strip of light running from her
waist to her ankle, a single line drawing the whole shape of her long,
slim body in the darkness, then he would pull her head into the
light, to see her face, to see it falling back, unresisting, her hair over
his arm, her eyes closed, the face drawn as in a look of pain, her
mouth open to him.

He stood at the wall, waiting, to let all the events of the day drop
away from him, to feel free, to know that the next span of time
was his.

When the door of his room flew open without warning, he did not
quite hear or believe it. at first. He saw the silhouette of a woman,
then of a bellboy who put down a suitcase and vanished. The voice
he heard was Lillian’s: “Why, Henry! AH alone and in the dark?*’

She pressed a light switch by the door. She stood there, fastidiously
groomed, wearing a pale beige traveling suit that looked as if she
had traveled under glass; she was smiling and pulling her gloves off
with the air of having reached home.

“Are you in for the evening, dear?’ 5 she asked. “Or were you
going out?”

He did not know how long a time passed before he answered,
“What are you doing here?”

“Why, don’t you remember that Jim Taggart invited us to his
wedding? It’s tonight.”

“I didn’t intend to go to his wedding.”

“Oh, but l did!”

“Why didn’t you tell me this morning, before 1 left?”

“To surprise you, darling.” She laughed gaily. “It’s practically im-
possible to drag you to any social function, but 1 thought you might
do it like this, on the spur of the moment, just to go out and have
a good time, as married couples are supposed to. I thought you
wouldn’t mind it — you’ve been staying overnight in New York so
often!”

He saw the casual glance thrown at him from under the brim of
her fashionably tilted hat. He said nothing.

“Of course, I was running a risk,” she said. “You might have been
taking somebody out to dinner.” He said nothing. “Or weie you,
perhaps, intending to return home tonight?”

“No.”

“Did you have an engagement for this evening?”

“No.”

“Fine.” She pointed at her suitcase. “1 brought my evening clothes.
Will you bet me a corsage of orchids that 1 can get dressed faster
than you can?”

He thought that Dagny would be at her brother’s wedding tonight;

357

the evening did not matter to him any longer, ‘Til take you out, if
you wish/’ he said, “but not to that wedding/’

“Oh, but that's where I want to go! It’s the most preposterous
event of the season, and everybody's been looking forward to it for
weeks, all my friends. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. There isn’t any
better show in town — nor better publicized. It's a perfectly ridiculous
marriage, but just about what you'd expect from Jim Taggart.”

She was moving casually through the room, glancing around, as if
getting acquainted with an unfamiliar place. “1 haven't been in New
York for years/' she said. “Not with you, that is Not on any for-
mal occasion/’

He noticed the pause in the aimless wandering ot her eyes, a
glance that stopped briefly on a tilled ashtray and moved on. He lelt
a stab of revulsion.

She saw it in his face and laughed gaily. “Oh but, darling. I’m not
relieved! I'm disappointed, I did hope I’d find a few cigarette butts
smeared with lipstick/'

He gave her credit for the admission ot the spying, even if under
cover of a joke. Bur something in the stressed frankness ol her mari-
ner made him wonder whether she was joking: lor the flash ot an
instant, he felt that she had told him the truth Fie dismissed the
impression, because he could not conceive ot it as possible.

“I'm afraid that you'll never be human/’ she said. “So I'm sure
that I have no rival. And if I have— which 1 doubt; darling 1 don't
think I'll worry about it. because it it's a person who's always avail-
able on call, without appointment -well, everybody knows what sort
ot a person that is."

He thought that he would have to be careful, he had been about
to slap her face. “Lillian. 1 think you know.” he said, ‘th.it humor
of this kind is more than 1 can .stand ”

“Oh, you're so serious!” she laughed “1 keep forgetting it. You’ie
so serious about everything— particularly youiselt “

Then she whirled to him suddenly, her smile gone. She had the
strange, pleading look which he had seen in her face at tunes, a look
that seemed made of sincerity anti courage’

“You prefer to be serious, Henry? All right How long do you
wish me to exist somewhere m the basement of your hle* > How
lonely do you want me to become* 1 I've asked nothing of you. I've
let you live your life as you pleased, ( 'an t you give me one evening?
Oh, 1 know you hale parties and you'll be bored. But it means a
great deal to me. ('all it empty, social vanity - l want to appear, for
once, with my husband. 1 suppose you never think ol it in such terms,
but you're an important man, you’re envied, hailed, respected and
feared, you're a man whom any woman would be proud to show off
as her husband. You may say it’s a low form of feminine ostentation,
but that’s the form of any woman’s happiness. You don't! live by
such standards, but I do. Can’t you give me this much, at the price
of a few hours of boredom? C an't you be strong enough |o fulfill
your obligation and to perform a husband’s duty? C an't you jo there,
not for your own sake, but mine, not because you want to go, but
only because / want it?”

358

Dagny — he thought desperately — Dagny, who had never said a
word about his life at home, who had never made a claim, uttered
a reproach or asked a question — he could not appear before her
with his wife, he could not let her see him as the husband being
proudly shown off — he wished he could die now. in this moment,
before he committed this action — because he knew that he would
commit it.

Because he had accepted his secret as guilt and promised himself
to take its consequences™ because he had granted that the right was
with Lillian, and he was able to bear any form of damnation, but
not able to deny the right when it was claimed of him — because he
knew that the reason for his refusal to go, was the reason that gave
him no right to refuse — because he heard the pleading cry in his
mind: “Oh God, Lillian, anything but that party!” and he did not
allow himself to beg for mercy —

- he said evenly, his voice lifeless and firm:

“All right, Lillian. I’ll go.”

♦ *

The wedding veil of rose-point lace caught on the splintered floor
of her tenement bedroom. Cherryl Brooks lifted it cautiously, step-
ping to look at herself in a crooked mirror that hung on the wall.
She had been photographed here all day, as she had been many
times in the past two months. She still smiled with incredulous grati-
tude when newspaper people wanted to take her picture, but she
wished they would not do il so often.

An aging sob sister, who had a drippy love column in print and
the bitter wisdom ol a policewoman in person, had taken Cherryl
under her protection weeks ago, when the girl had first been thrown
into press interviews as into a meat grinder. Today, the sob sister
had chased the reporters out, had snapped, “All right, all right, beat
it!” at the ncighbois, had slammed Oherryl’s door m their faces and
had helped her to dress. She was to drive Cherryl to the wedding:
she had discovered that there was no one else to do it.

The wedding veil, the white satin gown, the delicate slippers and
the strand of pearls at her throat, had cost five hundred times the
price of the entire contents of Cherryl's room. A bed took most of
the room’s space, and the rest was taken by a chest of drawers, one
chair, and her few dresses hanging behind a faded curtain. ITie huge
hoop skiit of the wedding gown brushed against the wails when she
moved, her slender figure swaying above the skirt in the dramatic
contrast of a tight, severe, long-sleeved bodice: the gown had been
made by the best designer in the city,

“You see. when I got the job in the dime store, l could have
moved to a better room,” she said to the sob sister, in apology, “but
I don’t think it matters much where you sleep at night, so I saved my
money, because I’ll need it for something important in the future—”
She stopped and smiled, shaking her head dazedly. “1 thought Td
need il,” she said,

“You look fine,” said the sob sister. “You can’t see much in that
alleged mirror, but you’re okay.”

“The way all this happened, 1 ... I haven’t had time to catch up

359

with myself. Bui you sue. Jim is wonderful. He doesn’t mind it, that
I'm only a salesgirl from a dime store, living in a place like this. He
doesn’t hold it against me.”

v 'Uh-huh.” said the sob sister: her face looked grim.

Cherry l remembered the wonder ol the Ikst lime Jim l'aggart had
come here. He had come one evening, without warning, a month
after then lirst meeting when she had given up hope of ever seeing
him again. She had been miserably embatrassed. she had felt as if
she were uying to hold a sumise within the space ot a mud puddle —
but Jim had smiled, silting on hei only chair, looking at her Hushed
face and at hei room Then he had told her to put on her coat, and
he had taken her to dinnet at the most expensive restaurant in the
city. He had smiled at her uncertainty, at her awkwardness, at her
terror of picking the wrong toik, and at the look of enchantment in
her eyes. She had not known what he thought But he had known
that she was stunned, not by the place, but by his bringing her there,
that she barely touched the costly food, that she took the dinner,
not as booty from a rich sucker— as all the girls he knew would
have taken it — but as some shining award she had never expected
to deserve

He had come back to her two weeks later, and then their dates
had grown progressively more frequent. He would drive up to the
dime store at the closing hour, and she would sec hei tellovv salesgirls
gaping at her. at his limousine, at the uniformed chauffcui who
opened the door tor her. He would take her to the best night dubs,
and when he introduced her to his friends, he would say, w 'Miss
Brooks works in the dime store in Madison Square.” She would sec
the strange expressions on their faces and Jim watching them with
a hint of mockery in his eyes. He wanted to spare her the need of
pretense or embarrassment, she thought with gratitude. He had the
strength to be honest and not to care whether others approved ol
him or not, she thought with admiration. But she fell an odd. burning
pain, new to her, the night she heard some woman, who worked tor
a highbrow political magazine, say to her companion at the next
table, *“How generous of Jim!’’

Had he wished, she would have given him the only kind of pay-
ment she could offer in return. She was grateful that he did not seek
it. But she fell as if their relationship was an immense debt and she
had nothing to pay it with, except her silent worship. He did not
need her worship, she thought.

There were evenings when he came to take her out. but remained
in her room, instead, and talked to her. while she listened in silence,
ft always happened unexpectedly, with a kind of peculiar abruptness,
as if he had not intended doing it. but something burst within him
and he had to speak. Then he sat slumped on her bed. unaware of
his surroundings and of her presence, yet his eyes jcrkcjfi to her
face once in a while, as if he had to be certain that a livipg being
heard him.

“ it wasn’t for myself, it wasn’t for myself at alt — why won't
they believe me, those people? I had to grant the unions’ demands
to cut down the trains — and the moratorium on bonds was the only

360

way f could do it, so (hat's why Wesley gave it to me. for the workers,
not for myself. All the newspapers said that 1 was a great example
(or all businessmen to follow — a businessman with a sense of social
responsibility. Thai's what they said. It's true, isn't it? . . . Isn't it? . . .
What was wrong about that moratorium * What il we did skip a few
technicalities? It was foi a good purpose, livery one agrees that any-
thing you do is good, so king as it’s not for yourself . . But she
won’t give me credit lor a good purpose. She doesn't think anybody’s
any good except hcisell. My sislei is a ruthless, conceited hitch, who
won't take anyone's ideas but her own. Why do they keep
looking at me that way — she and Rearden and all those people?
Why are they so sure they're right? If I acknowledge their
superiority in the material realm, why don’t they acknowledge mine
in the spiritual? They have the brain, but 1 have the heart. They
have the capacity to pioducc wealth, but I have the capacity to love.
Isn’t mine the gi eater capacity? Hasn't it been recognized as the
greatest through all the centuries oi human history? Why won't they
recognize it? . . . Why aie they so sure they’re great? . , . And if
they ’re gieat and I'm not - isn't that exattly why they should bow
to me, because I’m not? Wouldn’t that be an ait ot true humanity?
It takes no kindness to respect a man who deserves respect — it’s
only a payment which he’s earned. To give an unearned respect is
the supieme gesture ot chanty. , But they're incapable ul charity.
They 're not human. T hey feci no concern for anyone’s need . . or

weakness. No concern . . and no pity . .

She could understand little ot n. but she understood that he was
unhappy and that somebtxly had hurt him. He saw the pain of ten-
derness in her face. the pain of indignation against his enemies, and
he saw the glance intended for heroes - given to him by a person
able to experience the emotion behind that glance.

She did not know why she tell certain that she was the only one
to whom he could confess his torture. She took it as a special honor,
as one more gift.

T he only way to be worthy of him, she thought, was never to ask
him for anything He offered her money once, and she refused it,
with such a bright, painful dare of anger m her eyes that he did not
attempt it again. The anger was at herself: she wondered whether
she had done something to make him think she was that kind of
person. But she did not want to be ungrateful for his concern, or to
embarrass him by her ugly poverty; she wanted to show him her
eagerness to rise and justify his favor; so she told him that he could
help her, if he wished, by helping her to find a better job. He did
not answer. In the weeks that followed, she waited, but he never
mentioned the subject. She blamed herself: she thought that she had
offended him, that he had taken it as an attempt to use him.

When he gave her an emerald bracelet, she was too shocked to
understand. Trying desperately not to hurt him, she pleaded that she
could not accept it “Why not?'’ he asked. “It isn’t as if you were a
bad woman paying the usual price for it. Are you afraid that III
start making demands? Don’t you trust me?” He laughed aloud at
her stammering embarrassment. He smiled, with an odd kind of eo-

361

joyment, all through the evening when they went to a night dub and
she wore the bracelet with her shabby black dress.

He made her wear that bracelet again, on the night when he took
her to a party, a great reception given by Mrs. Cornelius Pope, If
he considered her good enough to bring into the home of his friends,
she thought— the illustrious friends whose names she had seen on
the inaccessible mountain peaks that were the society columns ot
the newspapers — she could not embarrass him by wearing her old
dress. She spent her year’s savings on an evening gown of bright
green chiffon with a low neckline, a belt of yellow roses and a rhine-
stone buckle. When she entered the stern residence, with the cold,
brilliant lights and a terrace suspended over the roofs of skyscrapers,
she knew that her dress was wrong for the occasion, though she
could not tell why. But she kept her posture proudly straight and
she smiled with the courageous trust of a kitten when it sees a hand
extended to play: people gathered to have a good time would not
hurt anyone, she thought.

At the end of an hour, her attempt to smile had become 4 helpless,
bewildered plea. Then the smile went, as she watched the people
around her. She saw that the trim, confident girls had a nasty inso-
lence of manner when they spoke to Jim, as if they did not respect
him and never had. One of them in particular, a Betty Pope, the
daughter of the hostess, kept making remarks to him which Cherry 1
could not understand, because she could not believe that she under-
stood them correctly.

No one had paid any attention to her, at first, except for a few
astonished glances at her gown After a while, she saw them looking
at her. She heard an elderly woman ask Jim, in the anxious lone of
referring to some distinguished family she had missed knowing, ‘‘Did
you say Miss Brooks of Madison Square?” She saw an odd smile on
Jim’s face, when he answered, making his voice sound peculiarly
clear, “Yes — ^he cosmetics counter of Raleigh’s Five and Ten.” Then
she saw some people becoming too polite to her, and others moving
away in a pointed manner, and most of them being senselessly awk-
ward in simple bewilderment, and Jim watching silently with that
odd smile.

She tried to get out of the way, out of their notice. As she slipped
by, along the edge of the room, she heard some man say, with a
shrug, “Well, Jim Taggart is one of the most powerful men in Wash-
ington at the moment.” He did not say it respectfully.

Out on the terrace, where it was darker, she heard two men talking
and wondered why she felt certain that they were talking about her.
One of them said, “Taggart can afford to do if, if he pleases,” and
the other said something about the horse of some Roman emperor
named Caligula.

She looked at the lone straight shaft of the Taggart Building rising
in the distance— and then she thought that she understood: these
people hated Jim became they envied him. Whatever they ^ere, she
thought, whatever their names and their money, none of them had
an achievement comparable to his, none af them had defied the
whole country to build a railroad everybody thought impossible. For

362

the first time, she saw that she did have something to offer Jim:
these people were as mean and small as the people from whom she
had escaped in Buffalo; he was as lonely as she had always been, and
the sincerity of her feeling was the only recognition he had found.

Then she walked back into the ballroom, cutting straight through
the crowd, and the only thing left of the tears she had tried to hold
back in the darkness of the terrace, was the fiercely luminous sparkle
of her eyes. It he wished to stand by her openly, even though she
was only a shopgirl, if he wished to Haunt it, if he had brought her
here to face the indignation of his friends —then it was the gesture
of a courageous man defying their opinion, and she was willing to
match his courage by serving as the scarecrow of the occasion.

But she was glad when it was over, when she sat beside him in
his car, driving home through the darkness. She felt a bleak kind of
relief. Her battling defiance ebbed into a strange, desolate feeling;
she tned not to give way to it. Jim said little; he sat looking sullenly
out the car window, she wondered whether she had disappointed
him in some manner.

On the stoop of her rooming house, she said to him forlornly,
‘Tin sorry it I let you down

He did not answer for a moment, and then he asked, “What would
you say if I asked you to marry me?"

She looked at him. she looked around them - there was a filthy
mattress hanging on somebody's window sill, a pawnshop across the
street, a garbage pail at the stoop beside them - one did not ask such
a question in such a place, she did not know what it meant, and she
answered. “1 guess 1 . 1 haven't any sense of humor."

“This is a proposal, my deal."

then this was the way they reached their first kiss -wiih tears
running down her face, tears unshed at the party, tears of shock, of
happiness, of thinking that this should be happiness, and of a low,
desolate voice telling her that this was not the way she would have
wanted it to happen

She had not thought about the newspapers, until the day when
Jim told her to come to Ins apaitmcnt and she found it crowded
with people who had notebooks, cameras and Hash bulbs. When she
saw her picture in the papers lor the first time- a picture ot them
together, Jim s arm around her she giggled with delight and won-
dered proudly whether every person in the city had seen it. After a
while, the delight vanished.

They kept photographing her at the dime-store counter, in the
subway, on the sloop of the tenement house, in her miserable room
She would have taken money from Jim now and run to hide in some
obscure hotel tor the weeks of their engagement -but he did not
offer it. He seemed to want her to remain where she was. They
printed pictures of Jim at his desk, in the concourse of the Taggart
Terminal, by the steps of his private lailway car, at a formal banquet
in Washington, The huge spreads of full newspaper pages, the articles
in magazines, the radio voices, the newsreels, all were a single. long,
sustained scream— about the "Cinderella Girl" and the "Demo-
cratic Businessman.”

3b3

She told herself not to be suspicious, when she felt uneasy; she
told herself not to be ungrateful, when she felt hurt She felt it only
in a few rare moments, when she awakened in the middle of the
night and lay in the silence of her room, unable to sleep. She knew
that it would take her years to recover, to believe, to understand.
She was reeling through her days like a person with a sunstroke,
seeing nothing but the figure of Jim Taggart as she had seen him
first on the night of his great triumph.

‘‘listen, kid,** the sob sister said to her, when she stood in her
room for the last time, the lace of the wedding veil streaming like
crystal foam from her hair to the blotched planks of the floor, “You
think that if one gets hurt in life, it's through one’s own sins— and
that’s true, in the long run. But there are people who’ll try to hurt
you through the good they see in you — knowing that it's the good,
needing it and punishing you for it. Don’t let it break you when you
discover that.”

“1 don’t think I'm afraid,” she said, looking intently straight before
her, the radiance of her smile melting the earnestness of her glance.
“I have no right to be afraid of anything. I’m too happy. You see,
I always thought that there wasn't any sense in people saying that
all you can do in life is suffer. I wasn't going to knuckle down to
that and give up. 1 thought that things could happen which were
beautiful and very great. 1 didn’t expect it to happen to me— not so
much and so soon. Bui I’ll try to live up to it."

* *

“Money is the root of all evil,” said James Taggart. “Money can t
buy happiness. Love will conquer any barrier and any social distance.
That may be a bromide, boss, but that’s how I feel.”

He stood under the lights of the ballroom of the Wayne-Falkland
Hotel, in a circle Of reporters who had closed about him the moment
the wedding ceremony ended. He heard the crowd of guests beating
like a tide beyond the circle. Cherryl stood beside him, her white-
gloved hand onjthe black of his sleeve. She was still trying to hear the
words of the ceremony, not quite believing that she had heard them.
- “How do you feel, Mrs. Taggart ?”

She heard the question from somewhere in the circle of reporters.
It was like the jolt of returning to consciousness: two words suddenly
made everything real to her. She smiled and whispered, choking,
“I . . . I’m very happy . .

At opposite ends of the ballroom, Orren Boyle, who seemed too
stout for his full-dress clothes, and Bertram Scudder, who seemed
too meager for his. surveyed the crowd of guests with the same
thought, though neither of them admitted that he was thinking it
Orren Boyle half-told himself that he was looking for the faces of
friends, and Bertram Scudder suggested to himself that he wap gath-
ering material for an article. But both, unknown to each olhef, were
drawing a mental chart of the faces they saw, classifying then* under
two headings which, if named, would have read: “Favor” and ‘fFcaf .”
There were men whose presence signified a special protection ex-
tended to Janies Taggart, and men whose presence confessed k desire
to avoid his hostility— those who represented a hand lowered to pull

364

him up* and those who represented a back bent to let him climb. By
the unwritten code of the day, hobody received or accepted an invita-
tion from a man of public prominence except in token of one or the
other of these motives. Those in the first group were, for the most
part, youthful; they had come from Washington. Those in the second
group were older; they were businessmen.

Orren Boyle and Bertram Scudder were men who used words as
a public instrument, to be avoided in the privacy of one’s own mind.
Woids were a commitment, carrying implications which they did not
wish to face. They needed no words for their chart; the classification
was done by physical means: a respectful movement of their eye-
brows, equivalent to the emotion of the word “So!” for the first
group-— and a sarcastic movement of their lips, equivalent to the
emotion of “Well, well!” for the second. One lace blew up the
smooth woiktng of their calculating mechanisms for a moment: when
they saw the cold blue eyes and blond hair of Hank Rearden, their
muscles tore at the register of the second group m the equivalent of
'Oh, boy!” The sum of the chart was an estimate of James Taggart's
power It added up to an impressive total.

They knew that James Taggart was tully aware of it when they
saw him moving among his guests. He walked briskly, in a Morse
code pattern of short dashes and brief stops, with a manner of faint
irritation, as if conscious ot the number of people whom his displea-
sure might worry. The hint of a smile on his face had a flavor of
gloating— as it he knew that the act ol coming to honor him was
an act that disgraced the men who had come; as it he knew and
enjoyed it

A tail of figures kept trailing and shifting behind him, as if their
1 unction were to give him the pleasure of ignoring them. Mr. Mowcn
llickered briefly among the tail, and Dr. Pritchett, and Balph Eubank.
Hie most persistent one was Paul Larkin. He kepi describing eircle*s
around Taggart, as ll trying to acquire a suntan by means of an
occasional ray. his wistful smile pleading to be noticed.

Taggart's eyes swept ovei the crowd once in a while, swiftly and
furtively, in the manner of a prowler's flashlight, this, in the muscular
shorthand legible to Orren Boyle, meant that Taggart was looking
for someone and did not want anyone to know it. 1'he search ended
when Eugene Lawson came to shake Taggart's hand and to say. his
wet lower lip twisting like a cushion to soften the blow, “Mr. Mouch
couldn’t come, Jim, Mr. Mouch is so sorry, he had a special plane
chartered, but at the last minute things came up. crucial national
problems, you know.” Taggart stood still, did not answer and
frowned.

Orren Boyle burst out laughing. Taggart tinned to him so sharply
that the others melted away without waiting for a command to
vanish.

“What do you think you’re doing?” snapped Taggart.

“Having a good time, Jimmy, just having a good time,” said Boyle.
“Wesley is your boy, wasn't he?”

“Lknow somebody who's my boy and he'd better not forget it''

“Who? Larkin? Well, no, I don't think you’re talking about Lar-

365

kin. And if it’s not Larkin that you're talking about, why then I
think you ought to be careful in your use of the possessive pronouns.
1 don’t mind the age classification, I know I look young for my years,
but I’m just allergic to pronouns.”

“That’s very smart, but you’re going to get too smart one of
these days.”

“If I do, you just go ahead and make the most of it, Jimmy. //”

“The trouble with people who overreach themselves is that they
have short memories. You’d better remember who got Rearden
Metal choked off the market for you.”

“Why. f remember who promised to. That was the party who then
pulled every string he could lay his hands on to try to prevent that
particular directive from being issued, because he figured he might
need rail of Rearden Metal in the future.”

“Because you spent ten thousand dollars pounng liquor into peo-
ple you hoped would prevent the directive about the bond mora-
torium!”

“That’s right. So I did. 1 had friends who had railroad bonds. And
besides, 1 have friends in Washington, too, Jimmy. Well, your friends
beat mine on that moratorium business, but mine beat yours on
Rearden Metal — and I’m not forgetting it. But what the hell! — it's
all right with me, that’s the way to share things around, only don't
you try to fool rue, Jimmy. Save the act for the suckers.”

“If you don’t believe that I’ve always tried to do my best for
you — ”

“Sure, you have. The best that could be expected, all things consid-
ered. And you'll continue to do it. too, so long as I’ve got somebody
you need — and not a minute longer. So 1 just wanted to remind you
that I’ve got my own friends in Washington. Friends Lhat money
can’t buy— just like yours, Jimmy.”

“What do you think you mean?”

“Just what you’re thinking. The ones you buy aren’t really worth
a damn, because somebody can always offer them more, so the field’s
wide open to anybody and it’s just like old-lashioned competition
again. But if you get the goods on a man, then you’ve got him, then
there’s no higher bidder and you can count on his friendship. Well,
you have friends, and so have 1. You have friends I can use, and
vice versa. That’s all right with me — what the hell!— one’s got to
trade something If we don’t trade money — and the age of money is
past — then we trade men.”

“What is it you're driving at?”

“Why, I'm just telling you a lew things that you ought to remem-
ber. Now take Wesley, for instance. You promised him the assistant’s
job in the Bureau of National Planning — for double -crossing Rear-
den, at the time of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. You had
the connections to do it, and that’s what 1 asked you to!do~~in
exchange for the Anti-dog-eat-dog Rule, where I had the tonnec-
tions. So Wesley did his part, and you saw to it that you g£>t it all
on paper — oh sure, f know that you’ve got written proof of the kind
of deals he pulled to help pass that bill, while he was taking Rear-
deiTs money to defeat it and keeping Rearden off guard. Thtiy were

366

pretty ugly deals. It would be pretty messy for Mr. Mouch, if it all
came out in public. So you kept your promise and you got the job
for him* because you thought you had him. And so you did. And he
paid off pretty handsomely, didn’t he? But it works only just so long.
After a while, Mr. Wesley Mouch might get to be so powerful and
the scandal so old, that nobody will care how he got his start or
whom he double-crossed. Nothing lasts forever. Wesley was Rear-
den s man. and then he was your man, and he might be somebody
eise’s man tomorrow.”

“Are you giving me a hint?”

“Why no, I’m giving you a friendly warning. We’re old friends,
Jimmy, and I think that that's what we ought to remain. 1 think we
can be very useful to each other, you and l, if you don’t start getting
the wrong ideas about friendship. Me--1 believe in a balance of
power.”

“Did you prevent Mouch from coming here tonight?”

“Well, maybe I did and maybe 1 didn’t. I’ll let you worry about
it. That's good for me. if I did -and still better, if 1 didn't ”

Cherryl's eyes followed James Taggart through the crowd. The
faces that kept shifting and gathering around her seemed so friendly
and their voices were so eagerly warm that she fell certain there was
no malice anywhere in the room. She wondered why some of them
talked to her about Washington, in a hopeful, confidential manner
of half -sentences, half-hints, as if they were seeking her help for
something secret she was supposed to understand. She did not know
what to say, but she smiled and answered whatever she pleased. She
could not disgrace the person of “Mrs. Taggart” by any touch of fear.

Then she saw the enemy. It was a tall, slender figure in a gray
evening gown, who was now her sister-in-law.

The pressure ol anger in C herryl’s mind was the stored accumula-
tion of the sounds of Jim's tortured voice. She felt the nagging pull
of a duty left undone. Her eyes kept returning to the enemy and
studying her intently. The pictures of Dagnv Taggart in the newspa-
pers had shown a figuie dressed in slacks, or a face with a slanting
hat brim and a raised coat collar Now she wore a gray evening gown
that seemed indecent, because it looked austerely modest, so modest
that it vanished from one's awareness and left one too aware of the
slender body it pretended to cover. There was a tone of blue in the
gray cloth that went with the gun-metal gray of her eyes. She wore
no jewelry, only a bracelet on her wrist, a chain of heavy metal links
with a green blue cast.

Cherryl waited, until she saw Dagny standing alone, then tore
forward, cutting resolutely across the room. She looked at dose
range into the gun-metal eyes that seemed cold and intense at once,
the eyes that looked at her directly with a polite, impersonal
curiosity.

. “There’s something 1 want you to know,” said Cherryl, her voice
taut and harsh, “so that there won t be any pretending about it. I’m
not .going to put on the sweet relative act. I know what you've done
to Jim and how you've made him miserable all his life. I’m going to

367

protect him against you, PU put you in your place. I'm Mrs. Taggart.
I'm the woman in this family now "

“That's quite all right," said Dagny. "Pm the man."

Chenyl watched her walk away, and thought that Jim had been
right: this sister of his was a creature of cold evil who had given her
no response, no acknowledgment, no emotion of any kind except a
touch of something that looked like an astonished, indifferent
amusement.

Rearden stood by Lillian’s side and followed her when she moved.
She wished to be seen with her husband; he was complying. He did
not know whether anyone looked at him or not: he was aware of
no one around them, except the person whom he could not permit
himself to see.

The image still holding his consciousness was the moment when
he had entered this room with Lillian and had seen Dagny looking
at them. He had looked straight at her, prepared to accept any blow
her eyes would choose to give him. Whatever the consequences to
Lillian, he would have confessed his adultery publicly, there and in
that moment, rather than commit the unspeakable act of evading
Dagny’s eyes, of closing his face into a coward’s blankness, of pre-
tending to her that he did not know the nature of his action.

But there had been no blow. He knew every shade of sensation
ever reflected in Dagny 's face; he had known that she had felt no
shock; he had seen nothing but an untouched serenity. Her eyes had
moved to his, as if acknowledging the full meaning of this encounter,
but looking at him as she would have looked anywhere, as she
looked at him in his office or in her bedroom. It had seemed to him
that she had stood before them both, at the distance of a few steps,
revealed to them as simply and openly as the gray dress revealed
her body.

She had bowed to them, the courteous movement of her head
including them both He had answered, he had seen Lillian’s brief
nod, and then # he had seen Lillian moving away and realized that he
had stood with his head bowed for a long moment.

He did not know what Lillian’s friends were saying to him or what
he was answering. As a man goes step by step, trying not to think
of the length of a hopeless road, so he went moment by moment,
keeping no imprint of anything in his mind. He heard snatches of
Lillian’s pleased laughter and a tone of satisfaction in her voice.

After a while, he noticed the women around him; they all seemed
to resemble Lillian, with the same look of static grooming, with thin
eyebrows plucked to a static lift and eyes frozen in a static amuse-
ment. He noticed that they were trying to flirt with him, and that
Lillian watched it as if she were enjoying the hopelessness of their
attempts. This, then — he thought — was the happiness of feminine
vanity which she had begged him to give her, these were tpc stan-
dards which he did not live by, but had to consider. He tufned for
escape to a group of men.

He could not find a single straight statement in the conversation
of the men; whatever subject they seemed to be talking abopt never
seemed to be the subject they were actually discussing. He listened

368

like a foreigner who recognized some of the words, but could not
connect them into sentences. A young man, with a look of alcoholic
insolence, staggered past the group and snapped, chuckling,
“Learned your lesson. Rear den?” He did not know what the young
rat had meant, but everybody else seemed to know it; they looked
shocked and secretly pleased

Lillian drifted away from him. as if letting him understand that she
did not insist upon his literal attendance He retreated to a corner of
the room where no one would see him or notice the direction of his
c>es. Then he permuted himself to look at Dagnv.

He watched the gray dress, the shifting movement of the soft cloth
when she walked, the momentary pauses sculptured by the cloth, the
shadows and the light. He saw' it as a bluish-gra> smoke held shaped
tor an instant into a long curve that slanted tot ward to her knee and
back to the tip of her sandal. He knew eveiy tacet the light would
shape if the smoke were ripped away.

He felt a murky, twisting pain: it was jealousy of every man who
spoke to her. He had never felt it before; but he felt it here, where
everyone had the right to approach her. except himself

Then, as if a single, sudden blow to his brain blasted a moment's
shift of petspective. lie tdt an immense astonishment at what he was
doing here and why He lost, foi that moment, all the days and
dogmas ol his past: his concepts, his problems, his pain were wiped
out. he knew- only -as from a great, clear distance -that man exists
for the achievement ot his desires, and he wondered why he stood
here, he wondered who had the right to demand that he waste a
single irreplaceable hour of his hte, when his only desire was to seize
the slender figure in gray and hold her through the length of what-
ever time there was left foi him to exist.

In the next moment, he loll the shudder of recapturing his mind.
He fell the tight, contemptuous movement of his lips pressed to-
gether in token of the words he cried to himself: You made a con-
tract once, now stick to it. And then he thought suddenly that in
business transactions the courts of law did not recognize a contract
wherein no valuable consideration had been given by one party to
the other. He wondered what made him think of it. The thought
seemed irrelevant. He did not pursue it.

James Taggart saw Lillian Reardon drift casually toward him at
the one moment when he chanced to be alone in the dim corner
between a potted palm and a window. He stopped and waited to let
her approach. He could not guess her purpose, but this was the
manner which, in the code he understood, meant that he had better
hear her.

“How do you like my wedding gift, Jim?" she asked, and laughed
at his look of embarrassment “No, no, don't try to go over the list
ot things in your apartment, wondering which one the hell it was.
It’s not m your apartment, it’s right here, and it’s a non-material
gift, darling.”

He saw the half-hint of a srmle on her face, the look understood
among his friends as an invitation to share a secret victory: it was
the look, not of having outthought, but of having outsmarted some*

369

body. He answered cautiously, with a safely pleasant smile, “Your
presence is the best gift you could give me.”

“ My presence, Jim?”

The lines of his face were shock-bound for a moment. He knew
what she meant, but he had not expected her to mean it.

She smiled openly. “We both know whose presence is the most
valuable one for you tonight — and the unexpected one. Didn't you
really think of giving me credit for it? I’m surprised at you. 1 thought
you had a genius for recognizing potential friends.”

He would not commit himself; he kept his voice carefully neutral.
“Have I failed to appreciate your friendship, Lillian?”

"Now, now, darling, you know what I’m talking about. You didn’t
expect him to come here, you didn’t really think that he is afraid of
you, did you? But to have the others think he is — that’s quite an
inestimable advantage, isn’t it?”

"I’m . . . surprised, Lillian."

"Shouldn’t you say ‘impressed’? Your guests are quite impressed.
I can practically hear them thinking all over the room. Most of them
are thinking: if he has to seek terms with Jim Taggart, we’d belter
toe the line.’ And a few are thinking: if he's afraid, we’ll get away
with much more.’ This is as you want it, of course — and 1 wouldn't
think of spoiling your triumph — but you and I are the only' ones who
know that you didn’t achieve it single-handed."

He did not smile; he asked, his face blank, his voice smooth, but
with a carefully measured hint of harshness, "What’s your angle?"

She laughed. "Essentially — the same as yours. Jim. But speaking
practically — none at all. It’s just a favor I’ve done you. and I need
no favor in return. Don’t worry. I’m not lobbying lor any special
interests. I’m not after squeezing some particular directives out of
Mr. Mouch, I'm not even after a diamond tiara from you. Unless,
of course, it’s a tiara of a non-material order, such as your ap-
preciation.” *

He looked straight at her for the first time, his eyes narrowed, his
face relaxed to the same half-smile as hers, suggesting the expression
which, for both of them, meant that they felt at home with each
other: an expression of contempt. "You know that I have always
admired >ou, Lillian, as one of the truly superior women.”

‘Tm aware of it." There was the faintest coating of mockery
spread, like shellac, over the smooth notes of her voice.

He was studying her insolently. “You must forgive me if f think
that some curiosity is permissible between friends,” he said, with no
tone of apology. “I’m wondering from what angle you contemplate
the possibility of certain financial burdens— «*r losses — whi<£h affect
your own personal interests.”

She shrugged. “From the angle of a horsewoman, darling;. If you
had the most powerful horse in the world, you would keep if bridled
down to the gait required to carry you in comfort, even though this
meant the sacrifice of its full capacity, even though its U$> speed
would never be seen and its great power would be wasted. You
would do it — because if you let the horse go full blast, it would throw

370

you off in no time. . . . However, financial aspects are not my chief
concern— nor yours, Jim,”

“1 did underestimate you,” he said slowly.

“Oh, well, that’s an error Lm willing to help you correct. I know
the sort of problem he presents to you. I know why you’re afraid of
him, as you have good reason to be. But . . . well, you're in business
and in politics, so I’ll try to say it in your language. A businessman
says that he can deliver the goods, and a ward heeler says that he
can deliver the vote, is that right? Well, what 1 wanted you to know is
that 1 can dehvei him, any time 1 choose. You may act accordingly.’*
In the code of his friends, to reveal any part of one’s self was to
give a weapon to an enemy— but he signed her confession and
matched it, when he said, “1 wish I were as smart about my sister.”

She looked at him without astonishment; she did not find the
words irrelevant. “Yes, there's a tough one,” she said. “No vulnera-
ble point‘ > No weaknesses 7 ”

“None.”

“No love affairs?”

“(iod, no!”

She slnugged, in sign of changing the subject: Dagny Taggart was
a person on whom she did not care to dwell. “I think I'll let you
run along, so that vou can chat a little with Fialph hubank.” she
said. “He looks worried, because you haven’t looked at him all eve-
ning and he’s wondering whether iiteiatuie will tie loll without a
friend at court.’’

“Lillian, you're wonderful!” he said quite spontaneously.

She laughed. “ I hat. rnv dear, is the non-material tiara I wanted!*’
I he remnant of a smile stayed on her face as she moved through
the crowd, a Hunt smite that ran softly into the look of tension and
boredom worn by all the faces around her. She moved at random,
enjoying the sense ol being seen, her eggshell satin gown shimmering
like heavy cream with the motion of her tall figure

ft was the green-blue spark that caught her attention, it Hashed
loi an instant undet the lights, on the wrist of a thin, naked arm.
Then she saw the slender body, the gray dress, the fragile, naked
shoulders. She stopped. She looked at the bracelet, frowning.

Dagny turned at her approach. Among the many things that Lillian
resented, the impersonal politeness of Dagny 's face w'as the one she
resented most,

“What do you think of your brother’s marriage. Miss Taggart?”
she asked casually, smiling.

“I have no opinion about it.”

“Do you mean to say that you don’t find it worthy of any
thought?”

“It you wish to be exact yes, that’s what 1 mean.”

“Oh, but don't you sec any human significance in it?”

“No.”

“Don’t you think that a person such as your brother's bride does
deserve some interest?”

SM Why, no,”

“I envy you. Miss Taggart. 1 envy your Olympian detachment. It

371

is, I think, the secret of why lesser mortals can never hope to equal
your success in the field of business. They allow their attention to
be divided — at least to the extent of acknowledging achievements in
other fields/*

“What achievements are we talking about?”

“Don’t you grant any recognition at all to the women who attain
unusual heights of conquest, not in the industrial, but in the
human realm?**

“1 don't think that there is such a word as ‘conquest* — in the
human realm.”

“Oh, but consider, for instance, how hard other women would
have had to work— if work were the only means available to them —
to achieve what this girl has achieved through the person of your
brother.*’

“I don’t think she knows the exact nature of what she has
achieved.”

Rearden saw them together. He approached. He felt that he had
to hear it, no matter what the consequences. He stopped silently
beside them. He did not know whether Lillian was aware of his
presence; he knew that Dagny was.

“Do show a little generosity toward her. Miss Taggart,” said Lil-
lian. “At least, the generosity of attention. You must not despise the
women who do not possess your brilliant talent, but who exercise
their own particular endowments. Nature always balances her gifts
and offers compensations— don't you think so?”

“T’m not sure 1 understand you.”

“Oh, Tm sure you don’t want to hear me become more explicit!”

“Why, yes, 1 do.”

Lillian shrugged angrily; among the women who were her friends,
she would have been understood and stopped long ago; but this was
an adversary new to her — a woman who refused to be hurt. She did
not care to speak more dearly, but she saw Rearden looking at her.
She smiled and said, “Well, consider your sister-in-law. Miss Taggart.
What chance did she have to rise in the world? None— by your
exacting standards. She could not have made a successful career in
business. She does not possess your unusual mind. Besides, men
would have made it impossible for her. They would have found her
too attractive. So she took advantage of the fact that men have
standards which, unfortunately, are not as high as yours. She resorted
to talents which, I’m sure, you despise. You have never cared to
compete with us lesser women in the sole field of our ambition — in
the achievement of power over men.”

‘if you cal! it power, Mrs. Rearden — then, no, 1 haven’t/’

She turned to go, but Lillian’s voice stopped her: “1 would like to
believe that you’re fully consistent. Miss Taggart, and fullir devoid
of human frailties. 1 would like to believe that you’ve neve# felt the
desire to flatter— or to offend — anyone. But 1 see that you expected
both Henry and me to be here tonight.”

“Why, no, 1 can’t say that I did, 1 had not seen my brother’s
guest list.”

“Then why are you wearing that bracelet?”

372

Dagny’s eyes moved deliberately straight to hers. “I always wear
it.”

“Don’t you think that that’s carrying a joke too far?”

“It was never a joke, Mrs. Rearden.”

“Then you'll understand me if I say that I’d like you to give that
bracelet back to me.”

“1 understand you. But 1 will not give it back.'’

Lillian let a moment pass, as if to let them both acknowledge the
meaning of their silence. For once, she held Dagny’s glance without
smiling. “What do you expect me to think, Miss Taggart?”

“Anything you wish.”

“What is your motive?”

“You knew my motive when you gave me the bracelet.”

Lillian glanced at Rearden. His face was expressionless; she saw
no reaction, no hint of intention to help her or stop her. nothing
but an attentiveness that made her feel as if she were standing in
a spotlight.

Her smile came back, as a protective shield, an amused, patroniz-
ing smile, intended to convert the subject into a drawing-room issue
again. “Lm sure. Miss Taggart, that you realize how enormously
improper this is.’’

“No.”

“But surely you know that you are taking a dangerous and ugly
risk.”

“No.”

“You do not take into consideration the possibility of being . . .
misunderstood?”

“No.”

L ilhan shook her head in smiling reproach. “Miss Taggart, don't
you think that this is a case where one cannot at ford to indulge in
abstract theory, but must consider practical reality?”

Dagny would not smile “I have never understood what is meant
by a statement ol that kind.”

“I mean that your attitude may be highly idealistic --as 1 am sure
it is but, unfortunately, most people do not share voui lofty frame
ol mind and will misinterpret your action in the one manner which
would be most abhorrent to you.”

“Then the responsibility and the risk will be theirs, not mine.”

“I admire your . . . no, 1 must not say 'innocence,' but shall 1 say
‘purity’ 7 You have never thought of it, Lm sure, but life is not as
straight and logical as . . . as a railroad track. It is regrettable, but
possible, that your high intentions may lead people to suspect things
which . . well, which I'm sure you know to be of a sordid and

scandalous nature.”

Dagny was looking straight at her, “1 don't.”

“But you cannot ignore that possibility.”

“1 do.” Dagny turned to go.

“Oh, but should you wish to evade a discussion if you have nothing
to hide?” Dagny stopped. “And if your brilliant — and reckless —
courage permits you to gamble with your reputation, should you
ignore the danger to Mr. Rearden?”

373

Dagny asked slowly, “What is the danger to Mr. Rearden?”

“Pm sure you understand me.”

“I don't.”

“Oh, but surely it isn’t necessary to be more explicit”

“It is — if you wish to continue this discussion.”

Lillian’s eyes went to Reardon’s face, searching for some sign to
help her decide whether to continue or to stop. He would not help
her.

“Miss Taggart,” she said, “1 am not your equal in philosophical
altitude. I am only an average wife. Please give me that bracelet —
if you do not wish me to think what I might think and what you
wouldn’t want me to name.”

“Mrs. Rearden, is this the manner and place in which you choose
to suggest that 1 am sleeping with your husband?”

“Certainty not!” The cry was immediate; it had a sound of panic
and the quality of an automatic reflex, like the jerk of withdrawal
of a pickpocket’s hand caught in action. She added, with an angry,
nervous chuckle, in a tone of sarcasm and sincerity that confessed a
reluctant admission of her actual opinion, “That would be the possi-
bility farthest from my mind.”

“Then you will please apologize to Miss Taggart,” said Rearden.

Dagny caught her breath, cutting off all but the faint echo of a
gasp. They both whirled to him. Lillian saw nothing in his face;
Dagny saw torture.

“It isn’t necessary-. Hank,” she said.

“It is — for me.” he answered coldly, not looking at her; he was
looking at Lillian in the manner of a command that could not be
disobeyed.

Lillian studied his face with mild astonishment, but without anxiety
or anger, like a person confronted by a puzzle of no significance.
“But of course,” she said complaisantly, her voice smooth and con-
fident again. “Please accept my apology. Miss Taggart, if 1 gave you
the impression that I suspected the existence of a relationship which
l would consider improbable for you and — from my knowledge of
his inclinations — impossible for my husband.”

She turned and walked away indifferently, leaving them together,
as if in deliberate proof of her words

Dagny stood still, her eyes closed; she was thinking of the night
when Lillian had given her the bracelet. He had taken his wife’s
side, then; he had taken hers, now. Of the three of them, she was
the only one who understood fully what this meant.

“Whatever is the worst you may wish to say to me, you will be
right.”

"She heard him and opened her eyes. He was looking at hjer coldly,
his face harsh, allowing no sign of pain or apology to suggest a hope
of forgiveness.

“Dearest, don’t torture yourself like that,” she said. “I knew that
you’re married. I’ve never tried to evade that knowledge! I’m not
hurt by 1 1 tonight.” f

Her first word was the most violent of the several blows he felt;
she had never used that word before. She had never let him hear

374

that partiqilar tone of tenderness. She had never spoken of his mar-
riage in the privacy of their meetings— yet she spoke of it here with
effortless simplicity.

She saw the anger in his face — the rebellion against pity— the look
of saying to her contemptuously that he had betrayed no torture and
needed no help — then the look of realization that she knew his face
as thoroughly as he knew hers — he dosed his eyes, inclined his head
a little, and he said very quietly, "Thank you.”

She smiled and turned away from him.

James Taggart held an empty champagne glass in his hand and
noticed the haste with which Balph Eubank waved at a passing
waiter, as if the waiter were guilty of an unpardonable lapse. Then
Eubank completed his sentence:

“ — but you, Mr. Taggart, would know that a man who lives on a
higher plane cannot be understood or appreciated. It’s a hopeless
struggle— trying to obtain support for literature from a world ruled
by businessmen. They are nothing but stuffy, middle-class vulgarians
or else predatory savages like Rearden.”

"Jim,” said Bertram Scudder, slapping his shoulder, "the best com-
pliment 1 can pay you is that you're not a real businessman!”

"You’re a man of culture, Jim,” said Dr. Pritchett, "you're not an
cx-ore -digger like Rearden. 1 don't have to explain to you the crucial
need of Washington assistance to higher education.”

"You really liked my last novel, Mr. Taggart?” Balph Eubank
kept asking. “You really liked it?”

Orren Boyle glanced at the group, on his way across the room,
but did not stop. The glance was sufficient to give him an estimate
of the nature ot the group’s concerns. Fair enough, he thought, one's
got to trade something. He knew, but did not care to name just what
was being traded.

“ We are at the dawn of a new age,” said James Taggart, from
above the rim of his champagne glass. "We are breaking up the
vicious tyianny of economic power. We will set men free of the rule
of the dollar. We will release our spiritual aims from dependence on
the owners of material means. We will liberate our culture from the
stranglehold of the profit -chasers We will build a society dedicated
to higher ideals, and we will replace the aristocracy of money by — ”

" — the aristocracy of pull,” said a voice beyond the group.

They whirled around. The man who stood facing them was Fran-
cisco d’Anconia.

His face looked tanned by a summer sun, and his eyes were the
exact color of the sky on the kind of day when he had acquired his
tan. His smile suggested a summer morning. The way he wore his
formal clothes made the rest of the crowd look as if they were
masquerading in borrowed costumes.

"What’s the matter?” he asked in the midst of their silence. “Did
I say something that somebody here didn’t know?”

“How did you get here?” was the first thing James Taggart found
himself able to utter.

“By plane to Newark, by taxi from there, then by elevator from
my suite fifty-three floors above you.”

375

“I didn't mean . . . that is, what I meant was — ”

“Don't look so startled, James. If 1 land in New York and hear
that there’s a party going on, I wouldn’t miss it, would I? You've
always said that Fm just a party hound/’

The group was watching them.

“I’m delighted to see you, of course,’’ Taggart said cautiously, then
added belligerently, to balance it, “But if you think you’re going
to— ’

Francisco would not pick up the threat; he let Taggart’s sentence
slide into mid-air and slop, then asked politely, “If I think what?”

“You understand me very well.”

“Yes. I do. Shall l tell you what I think 7 ”

“This is hardly the moment for any — ”

“I think you should present me to your bride, James. Your man-
ners have never been glued to you too solidly — yoi* always lose them
in an emergency, and that’s the time when one needs them most.”

Turning to escort him toward Cherry 1, Taggart caught the faint
sound that came from Bertram Scudder; it was an unborn chuckle.
Taggart knew that the men who had crawled at his feet a moment
ago, whose hatred for Francisco d’Anconia was, perhaps, greater
than his own, were enjoying the spectacle none the less. The implica-
tions of this knowledge were among the things he did not care to
name.

Francisco bowed to Cherryl and offered his best wishes, as if she
were the bride of a royal heir. Watching nervously, Taggart fell re-
lief — and a touch of nameless resentment, which, if named, would
have told him he wished the occasion deserved the grandeur that
Francisco’s manner gave it for a moment.

He was afraid to remain by Francisco’s side and afraid to let him
loose among The guests. He backed a few tentative steps away, but
Francisco followed him, smiling.

“You didn’t think I’d want to miss your wedding, James — when
you’re my childhood friend and best stockholder?”

“ What ?” gasped Taggart, and regretted it: the sound was a confes-
sion of panic.

Francisco did not seem to take note of it; he said, his voice gaily
innocent, “Oh, but of course I know it. I know the stooge behind
the stooge behind every name on the list of the stockholders of
d’Anconia Copper. It’s surprising how many men by the name of
Smith and Gomez are rich enough to own big chunks of the richest
corporation in the world — so you can’t blame me if I was curious to
learn what distinguished persons I actually have among my minority
stockholders. I seem to be popular with an astonishing collection of
public figures from all over the world— from People’s States where
you wouldn’t think there’s any money left at all.”

Taggart said dryly, frowning, “There are many reason#*— business
reasons — why it is sometimes advisable not to make oijie’s invest-
ments directly.”

“One reason is that a man doesn’t want people to kno^ he’s rich.
Another is that he doesn’t want them tp learn how he got that way.”

“I don’t know what you mean or why you should objtfct.”

376

“Oh, 1 don’t object at all. I appreciate it. A great many investors —
the old-fashioned sort — dropped me after the San Sebastian Mines.
It scared them away. But the modern ones had more faith m me and
acted as they always do — on faith. I can’t tell you how thoroughly l
appreciate it.”

Taggart wished Francisco would not talk so loudly: he wished peo-
ple would not gather around them. “You have been doing extremely
well,” he said, in the safe tone of a business compliment.

“Yes, haven’t 1? It’s wonderful how the stock of d'Anconia Chop-
per has risen within the last year. But I don’t think I should be too
conceited about it — there’s not much competition left in the world,
theie’s no place to invest one's money, if one happens to get rich
quickly, and here's d'Anconia Copper, the oldest company on earth,
the one that’s been the safest bet for centuries. Just think of what
it managed to survive through the ages. So d you people have de-
cided that it’s the best place lor your hidden money, that it can't be
beaten, that it would take a most unusual kind oi man to destroy
d'Anconia Copper— -you were right."

“Well, 1 hear it said that you've begun to take your responsibilities
seriously and that you’ve settled down to business at last. 'They say
you've been working very hard.”

“Oh, has anybody noticed that? It was the old-lashioned investors
who made it a point to watch what the president ol a company was
doing The modern investors don’t tind knowledge necessary, 1 don't
think they ever look into my activities ”

Taggart smiled. “They look at the ticker tape ot the stock ex-
change. I hat tells the whole story, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it does— in the long run.”

“1 must say I'm glad that you haven't been much ot a party hound
this past year. The results show in your work.”

“Do they? Well, no, not quite yet.”

“I suppose,” said Taggart, in the cautious tone of an indirect ques-
tion, “that 1 should feet Haltered you chose to come to this party.”

“Oh, but I had to come l thought you were expecting me.”

“Why, no, 1 wasn’t . . . that is, 1 mean — ”

“You should have expected me, James. This is the great, formal,
nose-counting event, where the victims come in order to show how
sale it is to destroy them, and the destroyers form pacts of eternal
friendship, which lasts for three months. I don’t know exactly which
group 1 belong to, but 1 had to come and be counted, didn’t 1?”

“What in hell do you think you're saying?” Taggait cried furiously,
seeing the tension on the faces around them.

“Be careful, James. If you try to pretend that you don’t understand
me, I’m going to make it much clearer.”

“If you think it's proper to utter such—”

“I think it’s funny There was a time when men were afraid that
somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to
their fellows. Nowadays, they’re afraid that somebody will name
what, eve?*ybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that
that's all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure.

377

with aJI your laws and guns — just somebody naming the exact nature
of what you're doing?”

“If you think it’s proper to come to a celebration such as a wed-
ding, in order to insult the host — ”

“Why, James, 1 came here to thank you."

“To thank me?”

“Of course. You’ve done me a great favor — you and your boys in
Washington and the boys in Santiago. Only I wonder why none of
you took the trouble to inform me about it. Those directives that
somebody issued here a few months ago are choking off the entire
copper industry of this country. And the result is that this country
suddenly has to import much larger amounts of copper. And where
in the world is there any copper left — unless it's d’Anconia copper?
So you see that I have good reason to be grateful.”

“1 assure you I had nothing to do with it,” Taggart said hastily,
“and besides, the vital economic policies of this country are not
determined by any considerations such as you're intimating or—”

“I know how they're determined, James. I know that the deal
started with the boys in Santiago, because they've been on the d’An-
conia pay roll for centuries —well, no. "pay roll’ is an honorable word,
it would be more exact to say that d'Anconia Copper has been pay-
ing them protection money for centuries — isn’t that what your gang-
sters call it? Our boys m Santiago call it taxes. They've been getting
their cut on every ton of d'Anconia copper sold. So they have a
vested interest to see me sell as many tons as possible. But with the
world turning into People's States this is the only country left where
men are not yet reduced to digging for roots in forests for their
sustenance — so this is the only market left on earth. The boys in
Santiago wanted to corner this market. I don't know what they of-
fered to the boys in Washington, or who traded what and to whom-
but I know that you came in on it somewhere, because you do hold
a sizable chunk of d'Anconia Copper stock. And it surely didn’t
displease Jou — that morning, four months ago, the day after the
directives were issued — to see the kind ot soaring leap that d’An-
conia Copper performed on the Stock Exchange. Why, it practically
leaped off the ticker tape and into your face.”

“Who gave you anv grounds to invent an outrageous story of
this kind?”

“Nobody. I knew nothing about it. 1 just saw the leap on the ticker
tape that morning. That told the whole story, didn’t it? Besides, the
boys in Santiago slapped a new tax on copper the following week —
and they told me that 1 shouldn’t mind, not with the sudden rise of
my stock. They were working for my best interests, they said. They
said, why should i care — taking the two events together, I was richer
than I had been before. True enough. 1 was.”

“Why do you wish to tell me this?” •

“Why don’t you wish to take any credit for it, James'! That's out
of character and out of the policy at which you're sucty an expert.
In an age when men exist, not by right, but by favor, ohe does not
reject a grateful person, one tries to trap into gratitude as many

378

people as possible. Don’t you want to have me as one of your men
under obligation?”

‘i don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Think what a favor I received without any effort on my part. I
wasn’t consulted, I wasn’t informed, I wasn’t thought about, every-
thing was arranged without me — and all I have to do now is produce
the copper. That was a great favor, James*— and you may be sure
that I will repay it."

Francisco turned abruptly, not waiting for an answer, and started
away. Taggart did not follow; he stood, feeling that anything was
preferable to one more minute of their conversation.

Francisco stopped when he came to Dagny. He looked at her for
a silent instant, without greeting, his smile acknowledging that she
had been the first person he saw and the first one to see him at his
entrance into the ballroom.

Against every doubt and warning in her mind, she felt nothing but
a joyous confidence; inexplicably, she felt as if his figure in that
crowd was a point of indestructible security. But in the moment
when the beginning of a smile told him how glad she was to see
him, he asked, “Don't you want to tell me what a brilliant achieve-
ment the John (jalt Line turned out to be?”

She felt her lips trembling and tightening at once, as she answered,
“I'm sorry if I show that Fm still open to be hurt. It shouldn't shock
me that you’ve come to the stage where you despise achievement.”

“Yes, don’t I? I despise that Line so much that 1 didn’t want to
see it reach the kind of end it has reached.”

He saw her look of sudden attentiveness, the look of thought
ruling into a breach torn open upon a new direction. He watched
hci for a moment, as if he knew every step she would tind along
that load, then chuckled and said. “Don't you want to ask ine now:
Who is John Galt?”

“Why should 1 want to. and why now?"

“Don’t you remember that you dared him to come and claim your
l ine? Well, he has.”

He walked on, not waiting to see the look in her eyes— a look
that held anger, bewilderment and the first faint gleam of a ques*
non mark.

It was the muscles of his own face that made Rcardcn realize the
nature of his reaction to Francisco's arrival; he noticed suddenly that
he was smiling and that his face had been relaxed into the dim well-
being of a smile for some minutes past, as he watched Francisco
d'Anconia in the crowd.

He acknowledged to himself, for the first time, all the half-grasped,
halt-rejected moments when he had thought of Francisco d'Anconia
and thiust the thought aside before it became the knowledge of how
much he wanted to see him again. In moments of sudden exhaus-
tion— al his desk, with the fires of the furnaces going down in the
twilight— in the darkness of the lonely walk through the empty coun-
tryside to his house — in the silence of sleepless nights — he had found
himself thinking of the only man who had once seemed to be his
spokesman. He had pushed the memory aside, telling himself: But

379

that one is worse than all the others! — while feeling certain that this
was not true, yet being unable to name the reason of his certainty.
He had caught himself glancing through the newspapers to see
whether Francisco d’Anconia had returned to New York — and he
had thrown the newspapers aside, asking himself angrily: What if he
did return? — would you go chasing him through night dubs and
cocktail parties?— what is it that you want from him?

This was what he had wanted — he thought, when he caught himself
smiling at the sight of Francisco in the crowd — this strange leeling
of expectation that held curiosity, amusement and hope.

Francisco did not seem to have noticed him. Rearden waited,
fighting a desire to approach; not after the kind of conversation we
had. he thought — what for?— what would l say to him? And then,
with the same smiling, light-hearted feeling, the feeling of being cer-
tain that it was right, he found himself walking across the ballroom,
toward the group that surrounded Francisco d’Anconia.

He wondered, looking at them, why these people were drawn to
Francisco, why they chose to hold him imprisoned in a clinging circle,
when their resentment of him was obvious under their smiles. Their
faces had the hint of a look peculiar, not to fear, but to cowardice:
a look of guilty anger. Francisco stood cornered against the side
edge of a marble stairway, half-leaning, half-sitting on the steps; the
informality of his posture, combined with the strict formality of his
clothes, gave him an air of superlative elegance. His was the only
face that had the carefree look and the brilliant smile proper to the
enjoyment of a party: but his eyes seemed intentionally expression-
less, holding no trace of gaiety, showing — like a warning signal -
nothing but the activity of a heightened perceptiveness.

Standing unnoticed on the edge ot the group. Rearden heard a
woman, who had large diamond earrings and a flabby, nervous face,
ask tensely, “Senor d’Anconia, what do you think is going to happen
to the world?”

“Just exactly what it deserves.”

“Oh, how cruel!”

“Don't you believe in the operation of the moral law. madame?”
Francisco asked gravely. ‘1 do.”

Rearden heard Bertram. Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl
who made some sound of indignation, “Don't let him disturb you.
You know, money is the root of all evil- -and he’s the typical product
of money.”

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he
saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco
d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money
is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there arfe goods pro-
duced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape
of the principle that men who wish to deal with one ^nother must
deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not ttye tool of the
moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the} looters, who
take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men
who produce Is this what you consider evil?

380

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so
only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of
the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give
value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world
can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread
you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which
should have been gold, are a token of honor— your claim upon the
energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of
hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who
will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money.
Is this what you consider evil?

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look
at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by
the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat
without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it
for the first time Try to obtain your food by means o l nothing but
physical motions — and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of
all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed
on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of
the weak? What strength do you mean 0 It is not the strength of
guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.
Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense
of those who did not invent it 0 Is money made by the intelligent at
the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompe-
tent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made —
before it can be looted or mooched — made by the effort of every
honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one
who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will.
Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind
and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your
effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade
you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods
and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them,
but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit
by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the
recognition that men must work lor their own benefit, not for their
own injury, for their gain, not their loss— the recognition that they
are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery —
that you must offer them values, not wounds— that the common
bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange
of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s
stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy,
not the shoddiest they offer, bill the best that your money can find.
And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final
arbiter — it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the
man of best judgment and highest ability- and the degree of a man’s
productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of exis-
tence* whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider
evil?

381

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish,
but it will not replace you as the driver, ft will give you the means
for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with
desires. Money is the scourge ot the men who attempt to reverse
the law of causality —the men who seek to replace the mind by
seizing the products of the mind.

•'Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no con-
cept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if
he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide
him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money
will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward,
or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase
the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing
his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of hts inferiors I he
men of intelligence desert him. but the cheats and the frauds come
flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that
no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you
call it evil?

“Only the man who does not need it, is lit to inherit wealth- the
man who would make his own fortune no mallei where he started.
If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him: if not, it destroys him
But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it'* Or
did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir: his wealth
is not yours and you would have done no better with it Do not
think that it should have been distributed among you: loading the
world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the
dead virtue which was the fortune Money is a living power that dies
without its root. Money will not servo the mind that cannot match
it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival The verdict you pronounce
upon the source of youi livelihood is the verdict vou pronounce upon
your tile. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own exis-
tence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandenng to men's
vices or men's stupidity? By catering to tools, in the hope ot getting
more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? Bv
doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your
money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then
all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a re-
proach; not an achievement, but a reminder ot shame Then you’ll
scream that money is evil. Lvil. because it would not pinch-hit tor
your self-respect? Fivil, because it would not let you enjoy your de-
pravity? Is this the root of your hatred ot money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as
the cause. Money is the product ol virtue, but it will nof give you
virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will note give you
the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the ropt of your
hatred of money ?

“Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root <if all evil?
To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to
know and love the fact that money is the creation of the West power
within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for th<i effort of

3H2

the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a
nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his haired of money— and he
has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work
for it. 'lltey know they are able to deserve it.

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who
damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it
has earned it.

“Run for your life Ironi any man who tells you that money is evil.
That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long
as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one
another — their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle
of a gun.

“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to
make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-
esteem, men who have no moral sense ot their right to their money
and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who
apologize for being rich — will not remain rich lor long. Hiey are the
natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centu-
ries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to
be torgiven for the guiit of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve
him of the guilt — and of his life, as he deserves.

“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard —
the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to
create the value ot their United money— the men who are the hitch-
hikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the
statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society
establishes crimmals-hy right and looters-by-law — men who use force
to seize the wealth of disarmed victims— then money becomes its
crealois* avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men,
once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes
the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it.
Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those
most ruthless at brutality. When torce is the standard, the murderer
wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread
ui ruins and slaughter.

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money.
Money is the barometer ot a society's virtue. When you see that
trailing is done, not by consent, but by compulsion —when you see
dial in order to produce, you need to obtain permission Irom men
who produce nothing-' when you see that money is ilowing to those
who deal, not in goods, but in favors — when you see that men get
richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect
><>u against them, but protect them against you —when you see cor*
ruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self -sacrifice — you
may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium
that it does not compete with guns and tt does not make terms with
brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property,
half-loot.

‘Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying
money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral exis-
tence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit

383

pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into
the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an
objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mort-
gage on wealth that dt>es not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those
who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal
looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the
victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account
overdrawn/

''When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect
men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose
their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral.
Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and
looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?’ You
are,

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the great-
est productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around
you, while you’re damning its life-blood — money You look upon
money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle
is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history,
money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose
names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize
wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, de-
famed, deprived of honor. That phtase about the evil of money,
which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes lrom a
time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves- -slaves who
repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and lelt
unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force,
and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer
Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men ex-
alted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth,
as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves,
as traders^ as shopkeepers— as industrialists.

“To the glory of mankind, there was. for the first and only time
in history, a country of money —and 1 have no higher, more reverent
tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason. justice,
freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind
and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conqucst,
but only fortunes-by-work. and instead of swordsmen and slaves,
there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the
highest type of human being — the self-made man—the American
industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I
would choose —because it contains all the others— the fact that the\
were the people who created the phrase ‘to make mone^.’ No other
language or nation had ever used these words before; pen had al
ways thought of wealth as a static quantity — to be seized, begged,
inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor, Americans were the
first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make
money" hold the essence of human morality,

“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced
by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now>the looters'
' 384

credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a
hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the
industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent lactones as the
product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven
slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt The rotter who simpers that he
sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power
of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide — as, 1
think, he will.

’"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good,
you ask for youi own destruction. When money ceases to be the
tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the
tools of men. Blood, whips and guns— or dollars. l ake your choice—
there is no other -and your lime is running out."

Francisco had not glanced at Rearden once while speaking; but
the moment he finished, his eyes went straight to Kcarden's face.
Rearden stood motionless, seeing nothing but Francisco d'Anconia
across the moving figures and angry voices between them.

There weie people who had listened, but now hurried away, and
people who said, “It’s horrible!"— ’it's not true!" -""How vicious
and selfish!" -saying it loudly and guardedly at once, as if wishing
that their neighbors would hear them, but hoping that Francisco
would not.

"Seiior d’Anconia," declared the woman with the earrings, "I
don’t agree with you!"

V I( you can retule a single sentence 1 ulleicd, madame, 1 shall
heat it gratefully."

“Oh. I can't answer you I don’t have any answers, my mind
doesn't work that way, but I don’t feel that you're riaht, so I know
that you’ie wrong."

“flow do you know it?"

"I Jed it. \ don’t go by my head, but by my heart. You might be
good at logic, but you're heartless."

"Madame, when we ll see men dying of starvation around us. your
heart won't be of any earthly use to save them. And I'm heartless
enough to say that when you'll scream, ‘but I didn't know it!' — you
will not be forgiven."

The woman turned away, a shudder running through the tksh of
her cheeks and through the angry tremor of her voice; "Well, it's
certainly a funny way to talk at a parly!"

A portly man with evasive eyes said loudly, his tone of forced
cheerfulness suggesting that his stile concern in any issue was not to
let it become unpleasant, "If this is the way you feel about money,
sertor, 1 think I’m darn glad that I’ve got a goodly piece of d'Anconia
Topper stock."

Francisco said gravely, "l suggest that you think twice, sir."

Rearden started toward him — and Francisco, who had not seemed
h> look in his dilection, moved to meet him at once, as if the others
had never existed.

"Hello,” said Reatden simply, easily, as to a childhotxl friend; he
was smiling.

He saw his own smile reflected in Francisco’s face. "Hello."

385

“I want to speak to you.”

"To whom do you think I’ve been speaking for the last quarter
of an hour?*’

Rearden chuckled, in the manner of acknowledging an opponent’s
round, ‘l didn't think you had noticed me."

“I noticed, when I came in, that you were one of the only two
persons in this room who were glad to see me."

"Aren't you being presumptuous?"

"No — grateful."

"Who was the other person glad to see you?"

Francisco shrugged and said lightly, “A woman "

Rearden noticed that Francisco had led him aside, away from the
group, in so skillfully natural a manner that neither he nor the otheis
had known it was being done intentionally.

"1 didn’t expect to find you here," said Francisco. "You shouldn’t
have come to this party."

"Why not?"

"May 1 ask what made you come?"

“My wife was anxious to accept the invitation "

“Forgive me it I put it in such form, but it would have been much
more proper and less dangerous if she had asked you to take her
on a tour of whorehouses."

"What danger are you talking about?”

"Mr. Rearden, you do not know these people's way of doing busi
ness or how they interpret your presence here In your code, but not
in theirs, accepting a man's hospitality is a token of good will, a
declaration that you and your host stand on terms of a civilized
relationship. Don't give them that kind ot sanction."

“Then why did you come here?"

Francisco shrugged gaily. ‘‘Ob. f — it doesn't matter what I do. Tm
only a parly hound."

"What are you doing at this party?”

"Just looking for conquests."

"Found any?"

His face suddenly earnest. Francisco answered gravely, almost sol-
emnly, “Yev— ■ what I think is going to be my best and greatest."

Rearden's anger was involuntary, the cry, not of reproach, but of
despair: "How can you waste yourself that way*"

The faint suggestion of a smile, like the rise of a distant light,
came into Francisco’s eyes as he asked, "Do you care to admit that
you care about it?"

“You’re going to hear a few more admissions, if that’s what you’re
after. Before I met you, 1 used to wonder how you could waste a
fortune such as yours. Now it’s worse, because 1 can’t .despise you
as I did, as I’d like to, yet the question is much more terrible: How
Can you waste a mind such as yours?"

"1 don’t think Fm wasting it right now."

"I don't know whether there’s ever been anything that meant a
damn to you — but I’m going to tell you what I’ve ifever said to
anyone before. When I met you, do you remember tjiat you said
you wanted to offer me your gratitude?"

386

There was no trace of amusement left in Francisco’s eyes; Rearden
had never faced so solemn a look of respect. “Yes, Mr. Rearden,”
he answered quietly.

“1 told you that I didn’t need it and I insulted you for it. All right,
you’ve won. That speech you made tonight — that was what you were
offering me, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Mr. Rearden.”

“It was more than gratitude, and 1 needed the gratitude; it was
more than admiration, and 1 needed that, t<xr, it was much more
than any word 1 can find, it will take me days to think of all that
it’s given me — but one thing 1 do knovy: I needed it. I’ve never made
an admission of this kind, because I’ve never cried for anyone’s help.
If it amused you to guess that J was glad to see you. you have
something real to laugh about now. if you wish.”

“It might take me a few years, but I will prove to you that these
are the things l do not laugh about ”

“Prove it now — by answering one question: Why don't you prac-
tice what you preach'”'

“Are you sure that 1 don't?”

“If the things you said are true, if you have the greatness to know
it, you should have been the leading industrialist of the world by
now.”

Francisco said gravely, as he had said to the portly man, but with
an odd note of gentleness in his voice, “1 suggest that you think
twice, Mr. Rearden,”

“I’ve thought about you more than I care to admit. I have found
no answer.”

“Let me give you a hint: If the things 1 said are true, who is the
guiltiest man in this room tonight?”

“I suppose — James Taggart?”

“No, Mr, Rearden, it is not James Taggart But you must define
the guilt and choose the man youiself.”

“A few years ago, 1 would have said that it’s you. 1 still think that
that’s what I ought to say. But Pm almost in the position of that
!ool woman who spoke to you: every reason 1 know tells me that you’re
guilty— and yet 1 can't feel it ”

“You are making the same mistake as that woman, Mr. Rearden,
though in a nobler foim ”

“What do you mean ”’

I mean much more than just your judgment of me. T hat woman
and all those like her keep evading the thoughts which they know
to be good. You keep pushing out of your mind the thoughts which
you believe to be evil. They do it, because they want to avoid effort.
You do it, because you won't permit yourself to consider anything
that would spare you. They indulge their emotions at any cost. You
Mcritice your emotions as the. first cost of any problem. They are
willing to bear nothing. You are willing to bear anything. They keep
evading responsibility. You keep assuming it. But don't you see that
die essential error is the same? Any refusal to recognize reality, for
any reason whatever, has disastrous consequences. There are no evil
thoughts except one: the refusal to think. Don’t ignore your own

387

desires, Mr. Rearden. Don’t sacrifice them. Examine their cause.
There is a limit to how much you should have to bear.”

“How did you know this about me?”

“I made the same mistake, once. But not for long.”

”1 wish — ” Rearden began and stopped abruptly.

Francisco smiled. ‘Afraid to wish, Mr. Rearden?”

“1 wish 1 could permit myself to like you as much as 1 do.”

“Fd give — ” Francisco stopped; inexplicably. Rearden saw the look
of an emotion which he could not define, yet fell certain to be pain;
he saw Francisco’s first moment of hesitation. “Mr. Rearden, do you
own any d’Anconia Copper stock?”

Rearden looked at him, bewildered. “No.”

“Some day, you’ll know what treason I'm committing right now,
but . . . Don’t ever buy any d’Anconia Copper stock. Don't ever
deal with d’Anconia Copper in any way.”

“Why?”

“When you’ll learn the lull reason, you’ll know whether there’s
ever been anything — or anyone- that meant a damn to me. and . . .
and how much he did mean ”

Rearden frowned: he had remembered something. “I wouldn’t
deal with your company. Didn't you call them the men of the double
standard? Aren’t you one of the looters who is growing rich right
now by means of directives?”

Inexplicably, the words did not hit Francisco as an insult, hut
cleared his face back into his look of assurance. “Did you think that
it was I who wheedled those directives out of the robber planners?”

“If not. then who did it *”

“My hitchhikers.”

“Without your consent?”

“Without my knowledge.”

“I’d hate to admit how much l want to believe you - but there’s
no way for you to prove it now ”

“No? HI prove it to you within the next fifteen minutes.”

“How? The fact remains that you’ve profited the most from
those directives.”

“That’s true. I’ve profited more than Mr. Mouch and his gang
could ever imagine. After my years of work, they gave me just the
chance 1 needed.”

“Are you boasting?”

“You bet I am!” Rearden saw incredulously that Francisco’s eyes
had a hard, bright look, the look, not of a party hound, but of a
man of action. “Mr. Rearden. do you know where most of those
new aristocrats keep their hidden money? Do you know where most
of the fair-share vultures have invested their profits from Rearden
Metal?”

“No, but—” ,

“In d’Anconia Copper stock. Safely out of the way and <>ut of the
country. D’Anconia Copper- an old, invulnerable company, so rich
that it would last for three more generations of looting. Accompany
managed by a decadent playboy who doesn’t give a damm^vho’ll let
them use his property in any way they please and just cctntinue to

388

make money for them — automatically, as did his ancestors. Wasn’t
that a perfect setup for the looters, Mr, Rearden? Only— what one
single point did they miss?'’

Rearden was staring at him. “What are you driving at?”

Francisco laughed suddenly, “It's too bad about those profiteers
on Rearden Metal. You wouldn’t want them to lose the money you
made for them, would you, Mr. Rearden? But accidents do happen
in the world — you know what they say, man is only a helpless play-
thing at the rneicy of nature’s disasters. For instance, there was a
tire at the d'Anconia ore docks in Valparaiso tomorrow morning, a
tire that razed them to the ground along with half of the port struc-
tures. What time is it, Mr. Rearden? Oh, did I mix my tenses? To-
morrow afternoon, there will be a rock slide in the d’Anconia mines
at Orano- -no lives lost, no casualties, except the mines themselves.
It will be found that the mines are done for. because they had been
worked in the wrong places for months - what can you expect from
a playboy’s management? The great deposits of copper will be buried
under tons of mountain where a Sebastian d'Anconia w'uuld not be
able to reclaim them in less than three years, and a People’s State
will never reclaim them at all. When the stockholders begin to look
into things, they will find that the mines at Campos, at San Felix, at
l as Heras have been worked in exactly the same manner and have
been running at a loss for over a year, only the playboy juggled the
books and kept it out of the newspapers. Shalt I tell you what they
will discover about the management ot the d’Anconia foundries? Or
of the d’Anconia ore fleet? But all these discoveries won’t do the
stockholders any good anyway, because the stock of d’Anconia Cop-
pci wall have crashed tomorrow morning, crashed like an electric
bulb against concrete, crashed like an express elevator, spattering
pieces of hitchhikers all over the gutters!”

The triumphant rise ot Francisco's voice merged with a matching
sound Rearden burst out laughing

Rearden did not know how long that moment lasted or what he
had felt, it had been like a blow hurling him into another kind of
consciousness, then a second blow returning him to his own — all that
was left, as at the awakening from a narcotic, was the feeling that
he had known some immense kind of freedom, never to be matched
in reality. This was like the Wyatt fire again, he thought, this was
liis secret danger.

He found himself backing away from Francisco d’Anconia. Fran-
cisco stood watching him intently and looked as if he had been
watching him all through that unknown length of time.

“There arc no evil thoughts, Mr. Rearden,” Francisco said softly,
except one: the refusal to think.”

“No,” said Rearden; it was almost a whisper, he ha<l to keep his
voice down, he was afraid that he would hear himself scream it,
‘no . . if this is the key to you. no, don’t expect me to cheer you . . .
vou didn't have the strength to fight them . . . you chose the easiest,
most vicious way . . . deliberate destruction. , . the destruction of
m achievement you hadn’t produced and couldn't match. . .

“Thai’s not what you’ll read in the newspapers tomorrow. There

T89

won't be any evidence of deliberate destruction. Everything hap-
pened in the normal, explicable, justifiable course of plain incompe-
tence. Incompetence isn’t supposed to be punished nowadays, is it?
The boys in Buenos Aires and the boys in Santiago will probably
want to hand me a subsidy, by way of consolation and reward.
There’s still a great part of the d'Anconia Copper Company left,
though a great part of it is gone for good. Nobody will say that I’ve
done it intentionally. You may think what you wish.”

”1 think you’re the guiltiest man in this room,” said Rearden qui-
etly. wearily; even the fire of his anger was gone; he felt nothing but
the emptiness left by the death of a gTeat hope. ”1 think you’re
worse than anything 1 had supposed. . . .”

Francisco looked at him with a strange half-smile of serenity, the
serenity of a victory over pain, and did not answer.

It was their silence that let them hear the voices of the two men
who stood a few steps away, and they turned to look at the speakers.

The stocky, elderly man was obviously a businessman of the con-
scientious, unspectacular kind. His formal dress suit was of good
quality, but of a cut fashionable twenty years before, with the faintest
tinge of green at the seams; he had had few occasions to wear it.
His shirt studs were ostentatiously too large, but it was the pathetic
ostentation of an heirloom, intricate pieces of old-fashioned work-
manship, that had probably come to him through four generations,
like his business. His face had the expression which, these days, was
the mark of an honest man; an expression of bewilderment. He was
looking at his companion, trying hard -conscientiously, helplessly,
hopelessly — to understand.

His companion was younger and shorter, a small man with lumpy
flesh, with a chest thrust forward and the thin points of a mustache
thrust up. He was saying, in a tone of patronizing boredom, “Well.
I don't know All of you are crying about rising costs, it seems to
be the stock complaint nowadays, it's the usual whine of people
whose profits are squeezed a little. I don’t know, well have to see.
we'll have to decide whether we ll permit you to make any profits
or not.”

Rearden glanced at Francisco- and saw a face that went beyond
his conception of what the purity of a single purpose could do to a
human countenance: it was the most merciless (ace one could ever
be permitted to see. He had thought of himself as ruthless, but he
knew that he could not match thus level, naked, implacable look,
dead to all feeling but justice. Whatever the rest of him- -thought
Rearden — the man who could experience this was a giant.

it was only a moment. Francisco turned to him, his face normal,
and said very quietly, “I’ve changed my mind, Mr. Rearden. I’m glad
that you came to this party. 1 want you to see this.” *

Then, raising his voice, Francisco said suddenly, in thf gay, loose,
piercing lone of a man of complete irresponsibility, “Yoi| won't grant
me that loan, Mr. Rearden? It puts me on a terrible fipot. 1 must
get the money — l must raise it tonight — 1 must raise $ before the
Stock Exchange opens in the morning, because otherwise — ”

390

He did not have to continue, because the little man with the mus-
tache was clutching at his arm.

Rearden had never believed that a human body could change di-
mensions within one’s sight, but he saw the man shrinking in weight,
in posture, in form, as if the air were let out of his lungs, and what
had been an arrogant ruler was suddenly a piece of scrap that could
not be a threat to anyone.

“Is ... is there something wrong, Sehor d’Anconia‘ > I mean, on . . .
on the Stock Exchange?"

Francisco jerked his finger to his Ups, with a (lightened glance.
“Keep quiet," he whispered. "For God’s sake, keep quiet!”

The man was shaking. “Something’s , . . wrong?"

“You don’t happen to own any d’Anconia Copper stock, do you?”
The man nodded, unable to speak. “Oh my, that’s too bad! Well
listen, I’ll tell you, if you give me your word of honor that you won’t
repeat it to anyone. You don’t want to start a panic.”

“Word of honor . . gasped the man.

“What you’d better do is run to your stockbroker and sell as fast as
you can —because things haven't been going too well for d'Anconia
Copper, I’m trying to raise some money, but if I don't succeed, you’ll
be lucky it you’ll have ten cents on your dollar tomorrow morning —
oh my! I forgot that you can't reach your stockbroker before tomor-
row morning— well, it's too bad, but — "

The man was running across the room, pushing people out of his
way, like a torpedo shot into the crowd.

“Watch," said Francisco austerely, turning to Reaidcn.

The man was lost in the crowd, they could not see him; they could
not tell to whom he wav selling his secret or whether he had enough
of his cunning left to make it a trade with those who held favors —
but they saw the wake of his passage spreading through the room,
the sudden cuts splitting the crowd, like the first few cracks, then
like the accelerating branching that runs through a wall about to
crumble, the streaks of emptiness slashed, not bv a human touch,
but by the impersonal breath of terror.

There were the voices abruptly choked off. the pools of silence,
then sounds of a different nature, the rising, hysterical inflections of
uselessly repeated questions, the unnatural whispers, a woman’s
sci earn, the few spaced, forced giggles of those still trying to pretend
that nothing was happening.

There were spots of immobility in the motion of the crowd, like
spreading blotches of paralysis; there was a sudden stillness, as if a
motor had been cut off; then came the frantic, jerking, purposeless,
judder less movement of objects bumping down a hill by the blind
mercy ol gravitation and of every rock they hit on the way. People
were running out. running to telephones, running to one another,
clutching or pushing the bodies around them at random. These men,
the most powerful men m the country, those who held, unanswerable
lo any power, the power over every man’s food and every man’s
enjoyment of his span of years on earth — these men had become a
pile of rubble, clattering in the wind of panic, the rubble left of a
structure when its key pillar has been cut.

m

James Taggart* his face indecent in its exposure of emotions which
centuries had taught men to keep hidden, rushed up to Francisco
and screamed, "Is it true?’'

"Why, James/* said Francisco* smiling, ‘"what’s the matter? Why
do you seem to be upset? Money is the root of all evil — so I just
got tired of being evil."

Taggart ran toward the main exit, yelling something to Orren
Boyle on the way. Boyle nodded and kept on nodding, with the
eagerness and humility of an inefficient servant, then darted off in
another direction. Cherry!, her wedding veil coiling like a crystal
cloud upon the air, as she ran after him, caught Taggart at the door.
"Jim, what’s the matter?" He pushed her aside and she fell against
the stomach of Paul Larkin, as Taggart rushed out.

Three persons stood immovably still, like three pillars spaced
through the room, the lines of their sight cutting across the spread of
the wreckage. Dagny, looking at Francisco- -Francisco and Bearden,
looking at each other.

Chapter III WHITE BLACKMAIL

"What time is it?"

It’s running out, thought Reardon — but he answered, “I don’t
know. Not vet midnight," and remembering his wrist watch, added.
“Twenty of."

‘Tm going to take a train home." said Lillian.

He heard the sentence, but it had to wait its turn to enter the
crowded passages to his consciousness. He sUkxJ looking absently at
the living room of his suite, a few minutes’ elevator nde away from
the party. In a moment, he answered automatically, "At this hour?"

"It’s still early. There are plenty of trains running."

"You Ye welcome to stay here, of course."

"No. I think I prefer to go home." He did not argue. "What about
you, Henry 1 ? Do you intend going home tonight?"

"No." He added, "i have business appointments here tomorrow."

"As you wish."

She shrugged her evening wrap oft her shoulders, caught it on her
arm and started toward the door of his bedroom, but stopped.

"1 hate Francisco d’Anconia,” she said tensely. "Why did he have
to come to that party? And didn’t he know enough to keep his
mouth shut, at least till tomorrow morning?" He did not answer.
"It’s monstrous — what he’s allowed to happen to his company. Of
course, he’s nothing but a rotten playboy— still, a fortune of that si/e
is a responsibility, there’s a limit to the negligence a man <San permit
himself!" He glanced at her face: it was oddly tense, the features
sharpened, making her look older. "He owed a certain (July to his
stockholders, didn’t he? . . . Didn’t he, Henry?"

"Do you mind if we don't discuss it?"

She made a tightening, sidewise movement with her Jips. the equiv-
alent of a shrug, and walked into the bedroom.

He stood at the window, looking down at the streaming roofs of

392

automobiles* letting his eyes rest on something while his faculty of
sight was disconnected. His mind was still focused on the crowd in
the ballroom downstairs and on two figures in that crowd. But as
his living room remained on the edge ot his vision, so the sense of
some action he had to perform remained on the edge of his con-
sciousness. He grasped it for a moment — it was the fact that he had
to remove his evening clothes— but farther beyond the edge there
was the teeling of reluctance to undress in the presence of a strange
woman in his bedroom, and he forgot it again in the next moment.

Lillian came out, as trimly groomed as she had arrived, the beige
traveling suit outlining her figure with efficient tightness, the hat
tilted over half a head ol hair set in waves. She carried her suitcase,
swinging it a little, as if in demonstration of her ability to carry it.

He reached over mechanically and took the suitcase out of her
hand.

‘What are you doing?'’ she asked.

‘i ni going to take you to the station ”

“Like this? You haven't changed your clothes.”

“It doesn't matter.”

“You don’t have to escort me !’m quite able to find my own
way. If you have business appointments tomorrow, you'd better go
to bed.”

He did not answer, but walked to the door, held it open for her
and followed her to the elevator.

They remained silent when they rode m a taxicab to the station.
At such moments as he remembered her presence, he noticed that
she sat efficiently straight, almost flaunting the perfection of her
poise; she seemed alertly awake and contented, as if she were starting
out on a purposeful journey of early morning.

The cab stopped at the entrance to the Taggart Terminal. The
bright lights Hooding the great glass doorway transformed the late-
ness of the hour into a sense of active, timeless security. Lillian
jumped lightly out of the cab, saying, “No, no, you don’t have to
get out, drive on back. Will you be home for dinner tomorrow — or
next month?”

‘i’ll telephone you,” he said.

She waved her gloved hand at him and disappeared into the lights
ol the entrance. As the cab started forward, he gave the driver the
address of Oagny's apartment

The apartment was dark when he entered, but the door to her
bedroom was halt-open and he heard her voice saying, “Hello,
Hank.”

He walked in, asking. “Were you asleep?”

“No.”

He switched on the light. She lay in bed, her head propped by the
pillow, her hair falling smoothly to her shoulders, as if she had not
moved for a long time; but her (ace was untroubled. She looked like
a schoolgirl, with the tailored collar of a pale blue nightgown lying
severely high at the base of her throat; the nightgown's front was a
deliberate contrast to the severity, a spread of pale blue embroidery
that looked luxuriously adult and feminine.

393

He sat down on the edge of the bed — and she smiled, noticing
that the stern formality of his full dress clothes made his action so
simply, naturally intimate. He smiled in answer. He had come, pre-
pared to reject the forgiveness she had granted him at the party, as
one rejects a favor from too generous an adversary. Instead, he
reached out suddenly and moved his hand over her forehead, down
the line of her hair, in a gesture of protective tenderness, in the
sudden feeling of how delicately childlike she was, this adversary
who had borne the constant challenge of his strength, but who should
have had his protection.

“You're carrying so much," he said, “and it’s I who make it harder
for you . .

“No, Hank, you don't and you know it.”

“I know that you have the strength not to let it hurt you. but it's
a strength 1 have no right to call upon. Yet I do, and I have no
solution, no atonement to offer. 1 can only admit that I know it and
that there’s no way J can ask you to forgive me."

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

“I had no right to bring her into your presence.”

“It did not hurt me. Only .

“Yes?”

, . only seeing the way you suffered ... was hard to see."

‘*1 don't think that suffering makes up for anything, but whatever
1 felt, I didn't sutler enough. It theie's one thing I loathe, it's to
speak of m> own suffering- -that should be no one’s concern but
mine. But if you want to know, since you know it already -yes, it
was hell tor me. And t wish it were worse At least. I'm not letting
myself get away with it.”

He said it sternly, without emotion, as an impersonal verdict upon
himself. She smiled, in amused sadness, she look his hand and
pressed it to her lips, and shook her head in rejection of the verdict,
holding her face hidden against his hand.

“What do yam mean?” he asked softly.

“Nothing . . ” lhen she raised her head and said firmly “Hank,
I knew you were married. I knew what I was doing 1 chose to do
it 'f here's nothing that you owe me, no duty that sou have to
consider."

He shook his head slowly, in protest

“flank, I want nothing from you except what you wish to give me.
Do you remember that you called me a trader once? 1 want you to
come to me seeking nothing but your own enjoyment. So long as
you wish to remain married, whatever your reason. I have no right
to resent it. My way of trading is to know that the joy you give me
is paid for by the joy you get Irom me— not by your suffering or
mine, I don't accept sacrifices and l don’t make them. If you asked
me for more than you meant to me, l would refuse. If yofti asked
me to give up the railroad. I'd leave you. If ever the plcasurf of one
has to be bought by the pain of the other, there better be $o trade
at all. A trade by which one gains and the other loses is h fraud.
You don’t do it in business. Hank. Don’t do it m your own life,”

Like a dim sound track under her words, he was hearing the words

394

said to him by Lillian; he was seeing the distance between the two,
the difference in what they sought from him and from life-

“Dagny, what do you think of my marriage?”

“I have no right to think of it.”

‘'You must have wondered about it”

“I did . . . before f came to Ellis Wyatt’s house. Not since.”

‘■You've never asked me a question about it.”

‘ And won’t.”

He was silent for a moment, then said, looking straight at her,
underscoring his first rejection of the privacy she had always granted
him, ‘There’s one thing I want you to know: I have not touched her
since . . . Ellis Wyatt’s house ”

“I’m glad.”

‘Did you think I could 7 ”

“I’ve never permitted myself to wonder about that ”

“Dagny. do you mean that it 1 had, you . . . you’d accept that,
too?”

■‘Yes”

■‘You wouldn’t hate it?”

“I'd hate it more than I can tell you. But if that were your choice,

1 would accept it l want you. Hank.”

He took her hand and raised it to his lips, she tell the moment’s
struggle m his hod), m the sudden movement with which he came
down, half collapsing, and let his mouth cling to her shoulder. Then
he pulled hei forward, he pulled the length of her body in the pale
blue nightgown to lie stretched acioss his knees, he held it with an
unsmiling violence, as it in hatred for her words and as it they were
the words he had most wanted to hear

He bent his face down to hers and she heard the question that
had come again and again in the nights of the year behind them,
always torn out of him involuntarily, always as a sudden break that
betrayed Ins constant, secret torture: “Who was your first man?”

She strained back, trying to draw away from him. but he held her.
“No. Hank," she said, her lace hard.

Ihe brief, taut movement ol his lips was a smile. “1 know that
you won’t answer it. but i won't stop asking because that is what
1 11 never accept.”

“Ask yourself why you won't accept it.”

He answered, his hand moving slowly from hei breasts to her
knees, as if stressing his ownership, and hating it, “Because . . . the
things you've permitted me to do , . . 1 didn’t think you could, not
ever, not even for me . . . but to find that you did. and more: that
>ou had permitted another man, had wanted bun to, had — ”

“Do you understand what you're saying? That vou ve never ac-
cepted mv wanting you, either -you’ve never accepted that 1 should
want you, just as 1 should have wanted him. once.”

He said, his voice low, “That's true.”

She tore herself away from him with a brusque, twisting move-
ment. she stood up, but she stood looking down at him with a faint
srnilcs and she said softly, “Do you know your only real guilt? With
the greatest capacity for it, you’ve never learned to enjoy yourself.

395

You’ve always rejected your own pleasure too easily. You’ve been
willing to bear too much.”

“He said that, too.”

“Who?”

“Francisco d’Anconia.”

He wondered why he had the impression that the name shocked
her and that she answered an instant too late. “He said that to you?”

“We were talking about quite a different subject.”

In a moment, she said calmly. “I saw you talking to him. Which
one of you was insulting the other, this time?”

“We weren’t. Dagny, what do you think of him?”

“I think that he’s done it intentionally — that smash-up we’re in
for. tomorrow.”

“1 know' he has. Still, what do you think of him as a person?”

“I don’t know. I ought to think that he’s the most depraved person
I’ve ever met.”

“You ought to? But you don't?”

"No. I can’t quite make myself feel certain of it.”

He smiled. “That’s what’s strange about him 1 know' that he’s a
liar, a loafer, a cheap playboy, the most viciously irresponsible waste
of a human being 1 ever imagined possible. Yet. when 1 look at him,
I feel that if ever there was a man to whom l would entrust my life,
he’s the one.”

She gasped. “Hank, are you saying that you like him 0 ”

‘Tin saying that I didn’t know what it meant, to like a man. I
didn’t know how much I missed it — until I met him.”

"Good God. Hank, you’ve fallen for him!”

“Yes— 1 think I have.” He smiled “Why does it frighten you 0 ”

“Because . . . because 1 think he’s going to hurt you m some
terrible way . ... and the more you see in him. the harder it will be
to bear . . . and it will take you a long time to get over it, if ever. . . .
I feel that I ought to warn you against him. but l can’t — because
I’m certain of nothing about him, not even whether he’s the greatest
or the lowest man on earth.”

“I’m certain of nothing about him-- except that I like him.”

“But think of what he’s done. It’s not Jim and Boyle that he’s
hurt, it’s you and me and Ken Danagger and the rest of us, because
Jim’s gang will merely take it out on us — and it s going to be another
disaster, like the Wyatt tire.”

“Yes . . . yes, like the Wyatt fire. But, you know, I don’t think 1
care too much about that. What’s one more disaster? Everything's
going anyway, it’s only a question of a little faster or a little slower,
all that’s left for us ahead is to keep the ship afloat as long as we
can and then go down with it.”

“Is that his excuse for himself? Is that what he’s made Vjnu feel?”

“No Oh, no! That’s the feeling I lose when I speak to 'him. The
strange thing is what he does make me feel.”

“What?”

“Hope.”

She nodded^ in helpless wonder, knowing that she had fflt it, too.

“I don’t know why,” he said. “But I look at people and they seem

3 %

to be made of nothing but pain. He’s not. You’re not. That terrible
hopelessness that’s all around us, f lose it only in his presence. And
here. Nowhere else.”

She came back to him and slipped down to sit at his feet, pressing
her face to his knees. “Hank, wc still have so much ahead of us . . .
and so much right now. . .

fie looked at the shape of pale blue silk huddled against the black
of his clothes — he bent down to her - he said, his voice low, “Dagny . . .
the things I said to you that morning in Ellis Wyatfs house . , . f
think I was lying to myself.”

“I know it.”

* +

t hrough a gray drizzle of rain, the calendar above the roofs said:
September 3, and a clock on another tower said: 10:40, as Rearden
rode back to the Wayne-Falkland Hotel The cab’s radio was spitting
out shrilly the sounds of a panic-tinged voice announcing the crash
ot d’Ancoma Copper.

Rearden leaned wearily against the seat: the disaster seemed to
he no more than a stale news story read long ago. He felt nothing,
except an uncomfortable sense of impropriety at finding himself out
in the morning streets, dressed in evening clothes. He felt no desire
to return from the world he had left to the world he saw drizzling
past the windows of the taxi.

He turned the key in the door of his hotel suite, hoping to get back
to a desk as fast as possible and have to set' nothing around him.

They hit his consciousness together: the breakfast table — the door
to his bedroom, open upon the sight of a bed that had been slept
in and Lillian’s voice saying, “Good morning. Henry.”

She sat m an armchair, wearing the suit she had worn yesterday,
without the jacket 01 hat; her white blouse l(K)ked smugly crisp.

I here were remnants of a breakfast on the table. She was smoking
a cigarette, with the air and pose of a long, patient vigil

As he stood still, she took the time to cross her legs and settle
down more comfortably, then asked. “Aren't you going to say any-
thing, Henry?”

He stood like a man in military uniform at some official proceed-
ings where emotions could not be permitted to exist. “It is for you
to speak.”

“Aren't you going to try to justify yourself?”

“No.*’

“Aren't you going to start begging my forgiveness?”

“ I here is no reason why you should forgive me. There is nothing
for me to add. You know the truth. Now it is up to you.”

She chuckled, stretching, rubbing her shoulder blades against the
chair’s back, “Didn’t you expect to be caught, sooner or later?” she
asked. “If a man like you stays pure as a monk for over a year,
didn’t you think that I might begin to suspect the reason? It's funny,
though, that that famous brain of yours didn’t prevent you from
getting caught as simply as this,” She waved at the room, at the
breakfast table. “I felt certain that you weren’t going to return here,
last night. And it wasn’t difficult or expensive at all to find out from

397

a hotel employee, this morning, that you haven’t spent a night in
these rooms in the past year.”

He said nothing.

‘The man of stainless steel!” She laughed. “The man of achieve-
ment and honor who’s so much better than the rest of us! Does she
dance in the chorus or is she a manicurist in an exclusive barber
shop patronized by millionaires?”

He remained silent.

“Who is she, Henry?”

“I won’t answer that.”

“I want to know.”

“You’re not going to.”

‘Don’t you think it's ridiculous, your playing the part of a gentle-
man who's protecting the lady’s name — or of any sort of gentleman,
from now on? Who is she?”

“1 said l won't answer.”

She shrugged. “I suppose it makes no difference. There’s only one
standard type for the one standard purpose. I’ve always known that
under that ascetic look of yours you were a plain, crude sensualist
who sought nothing from a woman except an animal satisfaction
which I pride myself on not having given you. 1 knew that your
vaunted sense of honor would collapse some day and you would be
drawn to the lowest, cheapest type of female, just like any other
cheating husband.” She chuckled “That great admirer of yours. Miss
Dagny Taggart, was furious at me for the mere hint of a suggestion
that her hero wasn’t as pure as his stainless, non-corrosive rail And
she was naive enough to imagine that I could suspect her oi being
the type men hnd attractive for a relationship m which'- what they
seek is most notoriously not brains. 1 knew- your real nature and
inclinations. Didn’t l?” He said nothing. “Do you know' what l think
of you now?”

“You have the nght to condemn me in any way you wish.”

She laughed. “The great man who was so contemptuous -in busi-
ness- — of weaklings who trimmed corners or fell by the wayside, be-
cause they couldn’t match his strength ol character and steadfastness
of purpose! How do you feel about it now?”

“My feelings need not concern you. You have the right to decide
what you wish me to do. I will agree to any demand you make,
except one: don’t ask me to give it up.”

"Oh, 1 wouldn’t ask you to give it up! I wouldn’t expect you to
change your nature. This is your true level- under all that self-made
grandeur of a knight of industry who lose by sheer genius Irom the
ore mine gutters to finger bowls and white tie! It tits you well, that
white tie, to come home at eleven o’clock in the morning! You nevet
rose out of the ore mines, that’s where you belong- -all of you self-
made princes of the cash register— in the corner saloon orf Saturday
night, with the traveling salesmen and the dance -hall girls!”

“Do you wish to divorce me?” ,

“Oh, wouldn’t you tike that! Wouldn't that be a smarl trade to
pull! Don’t you suppose l know that you’ve wanted to dfvorce me
since the first month of our marriage?”

m

if that is what you thought, why did you stay with roe?”

She answered severely, “It’s a question you have lost the right
:> ask.”

“That's true,” he said, thinking that only one conceivable reason,
er love tor him, could justify her answer.

“No, I’m not going to divorce you. Do you suppose that I will
How your romance with a floozie to deprive me of my home, my
ame, my social position? 1 shall preserve such pieces of my life as
can, whatever does not rest on so shoddy a foundation as your
dehty. Make no mistake about it: I shall never give you a divorce.
Whether you like it or not, you’re married and you'll stay married.”
“1 will, if that is what you wish.”

“And furthermore, I will not consider — incidentally, why don’t you
it down?”

He remained standing “Please say what you have to say.”

“I will not consider anv unofficial divorce, such as a separation,
'ou may continue your love idyll in the subways and basements
/here it belongs, but in the eyes of the world I will expect you to
emember that 1 am Mrs. Henry Reardon. You have always pro-
laimed such an exaggerated devotion to honesty —now let me see
ou be condemned to the life of the hypocrite that you really are. 1
/ill expect you to maintain your residence at the home which is
fl'tcially yours, but will now be mine.”

"If you wish ”

She leaned back loosely, in a manner of untidy relaxation, her legs
pread apart, her arms resting in two strict parallels on the aims of
he chair— like a judge who could permit himsell to be sloppy.

Divorce?” she said, chuckling coldly. “Did you think you’d get
It as easily as that? Did you think you'd get by at the price of a few
your millions tossed off as alimony? You’re so used to purchasing
/hatever \ou wish by the simple means of vour dollars, that you
annol conceive of things that are non-commercial, non-negotiable,
on -subject to any kind of trade. You’re unable to believe that there
lay exist a person who feels no concern for money. You cannot
nuiginc what that means. Well, 1 think you’re going to learn. Oh
es, of course you’ll agree to any demand 1 make, from now on. 1
>ant you to sit in that office of which you’re so proud, in those
irecious mills of yours, and play the hero who works eighteen hours
day, the giant of industry who keeps the whole country going, the
enius who is above the common herd of whining, lying, chiseling
itimanity. Then 1 want you to come home and face the only person
vho knows you for what you really are, who knows the actual value
*f your word, of your honor, of your integrity, of your vaunted self-
steem. 1 want you to face, in your own home, the one person who
lespises you and has the right to do so. I want you to look at me
whenever you build another furnace, or pour another recordbreaking
nad of steel, or hear applause and admiration, whenever you feel
>roud of yourself, whenever you feel clean, whenever you feel drunk
>n the sense of your own greatness. I want you to look at me when-
ver you hear of some act of depravity, or feel anger at human
ormption, or feel contempt for someone's knavery, or are the victim

399

of a new governmental extortion— to look and to know that you’re
no better, that you’re superior to no one, that there’s nothing you
have the right to condemn. I want you to look at me and to learn
the fate of the man who tried to build a tower to the sky, or the
man who wanted to reach the sun on wings made ot wax — 01 you,
the man who wanted to hold himseli as perfect!”

Somewhere outside of him and apart, as if he were reading it in
a brain not his own, he observed the thought that there was some
flaw in the scheme of the punishment she wanted him to bear, some -
thing wrong by its own terms, aside from its propriety or justice,
some practical miscalculation that would demolish it all it discovered.
He did not attempt to discover it. The thought went by as a mo-
ment’s notation, made in cold curiosity, to be brought back in some
distant future. There was nothing within him now with which to feel
interest or to respond.

His own brain was numb with the effort to hold the last of his
sense of justice against so overwhelming a tide of revulsion that it
swamped Lillian out of human form, past all his pleas to himself
that he had no right to feel it. If she was loathsome, he thought, it
was he who had brought her to it; this was her way of taking pain —
no one could prescribe the form of a human being’s attempt to bear
suffering — no one could blame— above all not he. who had caused
it. But he saw no evidence of pain in her manner. Then perhaps the
ugliness was the only means she could summon to hide it. he thought.
Then he thought of nothing except of withstanding the revulsion for
the length of the next moment and of the next

When she stopped speaking, he asked, “Have you finished?*'

“Yes, l believe so.”

“Then you had better take the train home now.”

When he undertook the motions necessary to remove his evening
clothes, he discovered that his muscles felt as it he weic at the end
of a long day of physical labor. His starched shirt was limp with
sweat There was neither thought nor feeling left in him. nothing but
a sense that -merged the remnants of both, the sense ol congratula-
tion upon the greatest victory he had evei demanded of himself: that
Lillian had walked out of the hotel suite alive

* *

Entering Reardon’s office. Dr. Floyd Ferris wore the expression
of a man so certain of the success ot his quest that he could afford
a benevolent smile. He spoke with a smooth, cheerful assurance;
Rearden had the impression that it was the assurance of a cardsharp
who has spent a prodigious effort in memorizing every possible varia-
tion of the pattern, and is now safe in the knowledge that every card
in the deck is marked.

“Well, Mr. Rearden.” he said, by way of greeting, ‘T didn’t know
that even a hardened hound of public functions and shaker <>f famous
hands, like myself, could still get a thrill out of meeting an eminent
man, but that’s what I feel right now, believe it or not,”

“How do you do,” said Rearden.

Dr. Ferris sat down and made a few remarks about th$ colors of
the leaves in the month of October, as he had observed thffcm by the

400

roadside on his long drive from Washington, undertaken specifically
for the purpose of meeting Mr. Rearden in person. Rearden said
nothing. Dr. Ferris looked out the window and commented on the
inspiring sight of the Rearden mills which, he said, were one of the
most valuable productive enterprises in the country.

‘ That is not what you thought of my product a year and a half
ago," said Rearden.

Dr. Ferris gave a brief frown, as if a dot of the pattern had slipped
and almost cost him the game, then chuckled, as if he had recaptured
it. “That was a year and a half ago, Mr. Rearden," he said easily.
“Times change, and people change with the times — the wise ones
do. Wisdom lies in knowing when to remember and when to forget.
Consistency is not a habit of mind which it is wise to practice or to
expect of the human race."

He then proceeded to discourse upon the toolishness of coasts*
tency in a world where nothing was absolute except the principle of
compromise. He talked earnestly, but in a casual manner, as if both
understood that this was not the main subject of their interview; yet,
oddly, he spoke not in the tone of a foreword, but in the tone of a
postscript, as if the main subject had been settled long ago.

Rearden waited for the first "Don't you think so?" and answered,
“Please state the urgent matter for which you requested this ap-
pointment.''

Dr. Feiris looked astonished and blank for a moment, then said
brightly, as if remembering an unimportant subject which could be
disposed of without effort, “Oh. that? That was in regard to the
dates of delivery of Rearden Metal to the State Science Institute.
We should like to have five thousand tons by the first of December,
and then we ll be quite agreeable to waiting for the balance of the
order until after the first of the year/'

Rearden sat looking at him silently for a long time; each passing
moment had the effect of making the gay intonations of Dr. Ferris’
voice, still hanging in the air of the room, seem more foolish. When
Dr. Ferris had begun to dread that he would not answer at all.
Rearden answered, “Hasn’t the traflic cop with the leather leggings,
whom you sent here, given you a report on his conversation with
me?"

“Why, yes, Mr. Rearden. but — "

“What else do you want to hear?"

“But that was five months ago, Mr. Rearden. A certain event has
taken place since, which makes me quite sure that you have changed
your mind and that you will make no trouble for us at all, just as
we will make no trouble for you,"

“What event?"

“An event of which you have far greater knowledge than l — but,
you see, 1 do have knowledge of it, even though you would much
prefer me to have none."

“What event?"

“Since it is your secret, Mr. Rearden, why not let it remain a
secret? Who doesn’t have secrets nowadays? For instance. Project X
is a secret. You realize, of course, that we could obtain your Metal

401

simply by having it purchased in smaller quantities by various gov-
ernment offices who would then transfer it to us— and you would
not be able to prevent it* But this would necessitate our letting a lot
of lousy bureaucrats" — Dr. Ferris smiled with disarming frankness —
“oh yes, we are as unpopular with one another as we are with you
private citizens— it would necessitate our letting a lot of other bu-
reaucrats in on the secret of Project X, which would be highly unde-
sirable at this time And so would any newspaper publicity about
the Project — if we put you on trial for refusal to comply with a
government order. But if you had to stand trial on another, much
more serious charge, where Project X and the State Science Institute
were not involved, and where you could not raise any issue of princi-
ple or arouse any public sympathy — why, that would not inconve-
nience us at all, but it would cost you more than you would care to
contemplate. Therefore, the only practical thing for you to do is to
help us keep our secret and get us to help you keep yours — and, as
I’m sure you realize, we are fully able to keep any of the bureaucrats
safely oft your trail for as long as we wish."

“What event, what secret and what trail?"

“Oh, come, Mr. Rearden, don’t be childish! The tour thousand
tons of Rearden Metal which you delivered to Ken Danaggei, of
course,” said Dr. Ferris lightly.

Rearden did not answer.

“Issues of principle are such a nuisance," said Dr. Ferris, smiling,
“and such a waste ot lime for all concerned. Now would you care
to be a martyt for an issue of principle, only m ciiciimMances where
nobody will know that that’s what you are - nobody but you and
me— where you won't get a chance to breathe a word about the
issue or the principle— where you won't be a hero, the creator of a
spectacular new metal, making a stand against enemies whose actions
might appear somewhat shabby m the eyes of the public- -where you
won't be a hero, but a common criminal, a greedy industrialist —
who's cheated the law for a plain motive of profit, a racketeer of
the black market who’s bioken the national regulations designed to
protect the public welfare- a hero without glory and without public,
who’ll accomplish no more than about half a column ot newsprint
somewhere on page five— now would you still care to be that kind
of martyr? Because that’s just what the issue amounts to now' either
you let us have the Metal or you go to jail for ten years and take
your friend Danagger along, too."

As a biologist. Dr Ferris had always been fascinated by the theory
that animals had the capacity to smell fear, he had tried to develop
a similar capacity in himself. Watching Rearden, he concluded that
the man had long since decided to give in — because he Caught no
tTacc of any fear.

“Who was your informer?” asked Rearden.

“One of your friends. Mr. Rearden. The owner of a copper mine
in Arizona, who reported to us that you had purchased an extra
amount of copper last month, above the regular tonnagd required
for the monthly quota of Rearden Metal which the law permits you
to produce. Copper is one of the ingredients of Rearden Metal, isn't

402

it? Thai was all the information we needed. The rest was easy to
trace. You mustn't blame that mine owner too much. The copper
producers, as you know, are being squeezed so badly right now that
the man had to offer something of value in order to obtain a favor,
an ‘emergency need’ ruling which suspended a few of the directives
in his case and gave him a little breathing spell. The person to whom
he traded his information knew where it would have the highest
value, so he traded it to me. in return for certain favors he needed.
So all the necessary evidence, as well as the next ten years of your
life, are now in my possession — and I am offering you a trade. I’m
sure you won’t object, since trade is your specialty. The form may
be a little different from what it was in your youth — but you're a
smart trader, you’ve always known how to take advantage of chang-
ing conditions, and these are the conditions of our day, so it should
not be difficult for you to see where your interests lie and to act
accordingly.”

Rcarden said calmly, "In my youth, this was called blackmail.”

Dr. Ferris grinned, " that’s what it is, Mr. Reardon. We’ve entered
a much mote i caUstic age.”.

But there was a peculiar difference, thought Rcarden, between the
manner of a plain blackmailer and that of Dr. Ferris. A blackmailer
would show signs of gloating over his victim’s sin and of acknowledg-
ing its evil, he would suggest a thieat to the victim and a sense of
danger to them both. Dr. Ferris conveyed none of it. His manner
was that of dealing with the normal and the natural, it suggested a
sense of safety, if held no tone of condemnation, but a hint of com-
radeship. a comradeship based— for both of them - on seif-contempt.
The sudden feeling that made Rcarden lean forward in a postpre of
eager attentiveness, was the tooling that he was about to discover
another step along his half glimpsed trail.

Seeing Rearden’s look of interest. Dr. Ferns smiled and congratu-
lated himself on having caught the right key. The game was dear to
him now, the markings of the pattern were tailing in the right order;
some men, thought Dr. Ferns, would do anything so long as it was
left unnamed, but this man wanted frankness, this was the tough
realist he had expected to find.

"You’re a practical man, Mr. Rcarden,” said Dr, Ferris amiably,
"1 can’t understand why you should want to stay behind the times.
Why don’t you adjust yourself and play it right? You're smarter than
most of them. You're a valuable person, we've wanted you for a
long time, and when I heard that you were trying to string along
with Jim Taggart. I knew you could be had. Don’t bother with Jim
Taggart, he’s nothing, he's just flea-bait. Get into the big game. We
can use you and you can use us. Want us to step on Orren Boyle
lur you? He’s given you an awful beating, want us to trim him down
a little? H can be done. Or want us to keep Ken Danagger in line?
Look how impractical you've been about that. 1 know why you sold
him the Metal— it’s because you need him to get coal from. So you
take a chance on going to jail and paying huge lines, just to keep
on the good side of Ken Danagger. Do you call that good business?
Now, make a deal with us and just let Mr. Danagger understand that

403

if he doesn’t toe the line* he’ll go to jail, but you won’t, because
you’ve got friends he hasn't got — and you'll never have to worry
about your coal supply from then on. Now that’s the modern way of
doing business. Ask yourself which way is more practical. And what-
ever anyone’s said about you, nobody’s ever denied that you’re a
great businessman and a hard-headed realist.”

“That’s what I am,” said Rearden.

“That’s what I thought,” said Dr. Ferris. “You rose to riches in
an age when most men were going bankrupt, you've always managed
to blast obstacles, to keep your mills going and to make money —
that’s your reputation — so you wouldn’t want to be impractical now,
would you? What for? What do you care, so long as you make
money? Leave the theories to people like Bertram Scudder and the
ideals to people like Balph Eubank — and be yourself. Come down
to earth. You’re not the man who’d lei sentiment interfere with
business.”

“No,” said Rearden slowly, “1 wouldn't Not any kind of senti-
ment.”

Dr. Ferris smiled. “Don't you suppose we knew it?” he said, his
tone suggesting that he was letting his patent-leather hair down to
impress a fellow criminal by a display of superior cunning. “We've
waited a long time to get something on you. You honest men arc
such a problem and such a headache. But we knew you’d slip sooner
or later — and this is just what we wanted.”

“You seem to be pleased about it ”

“Don't 1 have good reason to be 9 ”

“But, after all, I did break one of your taws.”

“Well, what do you think they're for?”

Dr. Ferris did not notice the sudden look on Reardon’s lace, the
look of a man. hit by the first vision of that which he had sought to
see. Dr. Ferris was past the stage of seeing: he was intent upon
delivering the last blows to an animal caught in a trap.

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?”
said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight
that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against— then you’ll
know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after
power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the
real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule
innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to
crack down on criminals Well, when there aren't enough criminals,
one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it
becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who
wants a nation of law-abiding citi/ens? What’s there in that for any-
one? But just pass the kind ot laws that can neither be observed nor
enforced nor objectively interpreted — and you create a natipn of law-
breakers — and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the s$ilem, Mr.
Rearden. that’s the game, and once you understand it,] | you’ll be
much easier to deal with.”

Watching Dr. Ferris watch him, Rearden saw the sudtjen twitch
of anxiety, the look that precedes panic, as if a clean card jtad fallen
on the table from a deck Dr. Ferris had never seen before.

m

What Dr. Ferris was seeing in Rearden '$ face was the look of
luminous serenity that comes from the sudden answer to an old, dark
problem, a look of relaxation and eagerness together; there was a
youthful clanty in Rearden’s eyes and the faintest touch of contempt
in the line of his mouth. Whatever this meant — and Dr. Ferris could
not decipher it — he was certain of one thing: the face held no sign
of guilt.

“There’s a Haw in your system. Dr. Ferris,*' Reardon said quietly,
almost tightly, “a practical Haw which you will discover when you
put me on trial tor selling four thousand tons of Reaidcn Metal to
Ken Danagger.”

It took twenty seconds — Kcarden could fed them moving past
slowly- -at the end of which Dr. Ferris became convinced that he
had heard Reardon's final decision.

“Do you think we’re bluffing'*” snapped Dr. Ferris: his voice sud-
denly had the quality ot the animals he had spent so much time
studying* it sounded as if he were baring his teeth.

“I don’t know,” said Rearden. “1 don’t care, one way or the
other.”

“Are you going to he as impractical as that?”

“The evaluation of an action as ‘practical,* Dr. Ferris, depends on
what it is that one wishes to practice.”

“Haven’t you always placed your self-interest above all else?”

“1 hat is what I am doing light now”

“If you think we ll let you get away with a — ”

“You will now please get out of here ”

“Whom do you think you’re fooling?” Dr. Ferris’ voice had risen
dose to the edge of a scream. “ The day of the barons of industry is
done! You've got the goods, but we've got the goods on you, and
you're going to play it our way or you'll — ”

Rearden had pressed a button; Miss Ives entered the office.

“Dr. Ferris has become confused and has lost his way. Miss Ives,”
said Rearden: “Witt you escort him out, please?” He turned to
Ferris “Miss Ives is a woman, she weighs about a hundred pounds,
and she has no practical qualifications at all. only a superlative intel-
lectual efficiency. She would never do for a bouncer in a saloon,
only in an impractical place, such as a factory.”

Mis.s Ives looked as d she were performing a duty of no greater
emotional significance than taking dictation about a list of shipping
invoices. Standing straight in a disciplined manner of icy formality,
she held the door open, let Dr. Ferris cross the room, then walked
out first; Dr, Ferris followed.

She came back a lew minutes later, laughing in uncontrollable
exultation.

“Mr. Rearden,” she asked, laughing at her fear for him, at their
danger, at everything but the triumph of the moment, “what is it
you're doing?”

He sal in a pose he had never permitted himself before, a pose
he had resented as the most vulgar symbol of the businessman — he
sat leaning back in his chair, with his feet on his desk — and it seemed

405

to her that the posture had an air of peculiar nobility , that it was
not the pose of a stuffy executive, but of a young crusader.

think Pm discovering a new continent, Gwen," he answered
cheerfully. “A continent that should have been discovered along with
America, but wasn’t."

* *

'‘I have to speak of it to vow," said Eddie Willers, looking at the
worker across the table. “1 don’t know why it helps me, but it does
just to know that you’re hearing me."

K was late and the lights of the underground cafeteria were low,
but Eddie Willers could see the worker’s eyes looking at him
intently.

“I feel as if ... as if there’s no people and no human language
left," said Eddie Willers. “I feel that if 1 were to scream in the
middle of the streets, there would bo no one to hear it. . , . No.
that's not quite what I feel, it’s this: I feel that someone « screaming
in the middle of the streets, but people are passing by and no sound
can reach them — and it’s not Hank Rcarden or Ken Danngger or I
who’s screaming, and yet it seems as if it’s all three of us. . . . Don’t
you see that somebody should have risen to defend them, but nobody
has or will? Rearden and Danagger were indicted this morning -lor
an illegal sale of Rcarden Metal. They’ll go on trial next month. I
was there, in the courtroom m Philadelphia, when they read the
indictment. Reardon was very calm — 1 kept feeling that he was smil-
ing. but he wasn’t. Danagger was worse than calm He didn’t say a
word, he just stood there, as if the room were empty. . . The
newspapers are saying that both of them should be thrown in jail. . . .
No . . . no. I’m not shaking, I’m all right, I’ll be all light in a
moment. . . , That’s why I haven’t said a word to her, l was afraid
I*d explode and l didn’t want to make it harder for hei, I know how
she feels. . . . Oh yes, she spoke to me about it, and she didn’t shake,
but it was worse — you know, the kind of rigidity when a person acts
as if she didn’t feel anything at all, and . . Listen, did I ever tell

you that 1 like you 7 1 like you very much —for the way you look
right now. You hear us. You understand . . What did she say 7 It

was strange: it’s not Hank Rcarden that she’s afraid for, it’s Ken
Danagger She said that Rearden will have the strength to take it.
but Danagger won’t. Not that he’ll lack the strength, but he’ll refuse
to take it. .She . . . she feels certain that Ken Danagger will he the
next one to go. To go like Ellis Wyatt and all those others. To give
up and vanish . . . Why? Well, she thinks that there’s something like
a shift of stress involved — economic and personal stress As soon as
all the weight of the moment shifts to the shoulders of some one
man — he's the one who vanishes, like a pillar slashed off. A year
ago, nothing worse could have happened to the country th$n to lose
Ellis Wyatt. He’s the one we lost. Since then, she says, itT been as
if the center of gravity were swinging wildly — like in a sinking cargo
ship out of control— shifting from industry to industry, Irofn man to
man. When we lose one, another becomes that much morte desper-
ately needed — and he’s the one we lose next. Well, what cbuld be a
greater disaster now than to have the country’s coal supply left in

406

the hands of men like Boyle or Larkin? And there’s no one left in
the coal industry who amounts to much, except Ken Danagger. So
she says that she feels almost as if he’s a marked man, as if he’s hit
by a spotlight right now, waiting to be cut down- - . . What are you
laughing at? It might sound preposterous, but i think it’s true. . . .
What? . . . Oh yes. you bet she’s a smart woman! . . . And then
there's another thing involved, she says. A man has to come to a
certain mental stage— not anger oi despair, but something much,
much more than both — before he can be cut down. She can’t tell
what it is, but she knew, long before the tire, that Ellis Wyatt had
reached that stage and something would happen to him. When she
saw Ken Da nagger in the courtroom today, she said that he was
ready for the destroyer. ... Yes, that’s the words she used: he was
ready for the destroyer. You see, she doesn’t think it’s happening
by chance or accident She thinks there’s a system behind it. an inten-
tion. a man There's a destroyer loose in the country, who’s cutting
down the buttresses one after another to let the structure collapse
upon our heads. Some ruthless creature moved by some inconceiv-
able purpose . . She says that she won’t let him get Ken Danagger.
She keeps repeating that she must stop Danagger — and she wants
to speak to him, to beg, to plead, to revive whatever it is that he’s
losing, to arm him against the destroyer, before the destroyer comes.
She’s desperately anxious to reach Danagger first. He has refused
to see anyone. He's gone back to Pittsburgh, to his mines. But she
got him on the phone, late today, and she's made an appointment
to see him tomorrow afternoon. . . Yes, she’ll go to Pittsburgh
tomorrow. Yes, she's afraid for Danagger, terribly afraid. . . .
No She knows nothing about the destroyer. She has no clue to his
identity, no evidence of his existence— except the trail of destruction.
But she teels certain that he exists. . , . No. she cannot guess his
purpose. She says that nothing on earth could justify him. There are
times when she feels that she'd like to find him more than any other
man in the world, more than the inventor of the motor. She says
that if she found the destroyer, she’d shoot him on sight — she’d be
willing to give her life if she could take his first and by her own
hand . . . because he’s the most evil creature that's ever existed, the
man who’s draining the brains of the world. ... 1 guess it's getting
to be too much for her, at times— -even for her. 1 don't think she
allows herself to know how tired she is. The other morning, 1 came
to work very early and 1 found her asleep on the couch in her office,
with the light still burning on her desk. She’d been there all night
1 just stood and looked at her, l wouldn’t have awakened her if the
whole goddamn railroad collapsed. . . . When she was asleep? Why,
she looked like a young girl. She looked as if she felt certain that
she would awaken in a world where no one would harm her, as if
she had nothing to hide or to fear. That's what was terrible — that
guiltless purity of her face, with her body twisted by exhaustion, still
lying there as she had collapsed. She looked — say, why should you
ask me what she looks like when she’s asleep? ... Yes, you're right,
why do / talk about it? 1 shouldn’t. 1 don’t know what made me
think of it. . . . Don’t pay any attention to me. I'll be all right

407

tomorrow. I guess it’s just that I’m sort of shell-shocked by that
courtroom. I keep thinking: if men like Reardon and Danagger are
to be sent to jail, then what kind of world are we working in and
what for? Isn't there any justice left on earth? 1 was foolish enough
to say that to a reporter when we were leaving the courtroom —and
he just laughed and said, ‘Who is John Galt?’ . . . Tell me, what’s
happening to us? Isn’t there a single man of justice left? Isn’t there
anyone to defend them? Oh, do you hear me? Isn’t there anyone to
defend them?”

* *

“Mr. Danaggei will be fiee in a moment. Miss Taggart. He has a
visitor in his office. Will you excuse it. please?’* said the secretary.

Through the two hours of her llight to Pittsburgh. Dagny had been
tensely unable to justify her anxietv or to dismiss it; there was no
reason to count minutes, yet she had felt a blind desire to hurry.
The anxiety vanished when she entered the anteroom of Ken Danag-
ger’s office: she had reached him. nothing had happened to prevent
it, she felt safety, confidence and an enormous sense of relief

The words of the secretary demolished it. You’re becoming a cow-
ard — thought Dagnv, feeling a causeless jolt ot dread at the words,
out of alt proportion to their meaning.

“1 am so sorry. Miss Taggart.’’ She heard the secretary’s respectful,
solicitous voice and realized that she had stood there without answer-
ing. “Mr. Danagger will be with you in just a moment. Won’t you
sit down?” The voice conveyed an anxious concern over the impro-
priety of keeping her waiting.

Dagnv smiled. “Oh, that's quite all right ”

She sat down in a wooden armchair, facing the secretary’s failing.
She reached for a cigarette and stopped, wondering whether she
would have time to finish it, hoping that she would not. then lighted
it brusquely

It was an old-fashioned frame building, this headquarters of the
great Danagger Coal Company. Somewhere in the hills beyond the
window were the pits where Ken Danagger had once worked as a
miner. He had never moved his office awav from the coal fields.

She could see the mine entrances cut into the hillsides, small
frames of metal girders, that led to an immense underground king-
dom. They seemed precariously modest, lost in the violent orange
and red of the hills. . . . Under a harsh blue sky, in the sunlight of
late October, the sea of leaves looked like a sea of fire . like
waves rolling to swallow the fragile posts ol the mine doorways. She
shuddered and looked away: she thought of the flaming leaves spread
over the hills of Wisconsin, on the road to Starnesville.

She noticed that there was only a stub left of the cigarette between
her fingers. She lighted another.

When she glanced at the clock on the wall of the antdruom, she
caught the secretary glancing at it at the same time. Her appointment
was for three o’clock; the white dial said: 3:12. ;

“Please forgive it. Miss Taggart," said the secretary, “tylr, Danag-
ger will be through, any moment now Mr. Danagger is extremely

408

punctual about his appointments. Please believe me that this is
unprecedented.”

"I know it.” She knew that Ken Danagger was as rigidly exact
about his schedule as a railroad timetable and that he had been
known to cancel an interview if a caller permitted himself to arrive
live minutes late.

The secretary was an elderly spinster with a forbidding manner: a
manner of even-toned courtesy impervious to any shock, just as her
spotless white blouse was impervious to an atmosphere tilled with
coal dust. Dagny thought it strange that a hardened, well-trained
woman of this type should appear to be nervous: she volunteered
no conversation, she sat still, bent over some pages of paper on her
desk. Half of Dagny's cigarette had gone in smoke, while the woman
still sat looking at the same page.

When she raised her head to glance at the dock, the dial said:
V.tO. “I know that this is inexcusable, Miss Taggart." The note of
apprehension was obvious in her voice now. i am unable to under-
stand it.”

“Would you mind telling Mi. Danagger that I’m here?”

“I can't'" It was almost a cry; she saw Dagny’s astonished glance
and left obliged to explain; "Mr. Danagger called me. on the interof-
fice communicator, and told me that he was not to be interrupted
under any circumstances or tor any reason whatever."

“When did he do that?"

The moment’s pause was like a small air cushion for the answer:
“ l wo hours ago.”

Dagny looked at the closed door of Danagger ‘s office. She could
hear the sound of a voice beyond the door, but so faintly that she
could not tell whether it was the voice of one man or the conversa-
tion of two; she could not distinguish the words or the emotional
quality of the tone, it was only a low, even progression of sounds
that seemed normal and did not convey the pitch of raised voices.

“How long has Mr Danagger been in conference?" she asked.

“Since one o’clock," said the secretary grimly, then added in apol-
ogy. ‘it was an unscheduled caller, or Mr. Danagger would never
have permuted this to happen "

The door was not locked, thought Dagny, she felt an unreasoning
desire to tear it open and walk in- - it was only a few wooden boards
and a brass knob, it would require only a small muscular contraction
of her arm— but she looked away, knowing that the power of a
civilized order and of Ken Da nagger’s right was more impregnable
a banter than any lock.

She found herself staring at the stubs of hei cigarettes in the ash-
tray stand beside her, and wondered why it gave her a sharper feeling
of apprehension, then she realized that she was thinking of Hugh
Akston: she had written to him. at his diner in Wyoming, asking him
to tell her wheie he had obtained the cigarette with the dollar sign;
her letter had come back, with a postal inscription to inform her
that he had moved away, leaving no forwarding address.

She told herself angnly that this had no connection with the pres-
ent moment and that she had to control her nerves. But her hand

409

jerked to press the button of the ashtray and make the cigarette
stubs vanish inside the stand.

As she looked up, her eyes met the glance of the secretary watch-
ing her. “I am sorry. Miss Taggart. I don't know what to do about
it.*' It was an openly desperate plea. “I don’t dare interrupt/'

Dagny asked slowly, as a demand, in defiance of office etiquette,
“Who is with Mr. Dan agger?'’

“1 don't know. Miss Taggart. I have never Seen the gentleman
before/' She noticed the sudden, fixed stillness of Dagny’s eyes and
added. “J think it’s a childhood friend of Mr. Danagger."

“Oh!" said Dagny, relieved,

“He came in unannounced and asked to see Mr. Danagger and
said that this was an appointment which Mr. Danagger had made
with him forty years ago "

“How old is Mr. Danagger?"

“Fifty-two." said the secretary She added reflectively, in the tone
of a casual remark, “Mr. Danagger started working at the age of
twelve." After another silence, she added, “The strange thing is that
the visitor does not look as if he’s even forty years old. He seems
to be a man in his thirties "

“Did he give his name?"

“No."

“What does he look like?"

The secretary smiled with sudden animation, as il she were about
to utter an enthusiastic compliment, but the smile vanished abruptly.
“I don’t know." she answered uneasily. “He’s hard to describe. He
has a strange face."

They had been silent for a long time, and the hands of the dial
were approaching 3:50 when the buzzer rang on the secretary's
desk — the bell from Danaggcr’s office, the signal of permission to
enter.

They both leaped to their feet, and the secretary rushed forward,
smiling with, relief, hastening to open the door.

As she entered Danagger s office, Dagny saw the private exit door
dosing after the caller who had preceded her She heard the knock
of the door against the jamb and the faint tinkle of the glass panel.

She saw the man who had left, by his reflection on Ken Danagger’s
face. It was not the face she had seen in the courtroom, it was not
the face she had known for years as a countenance of unchanging,
unfeeling rigidity— it was a face which a young man of twenty should
hope for. but could not achieve, a face from which every sign of
strain had been wiped out, so that the lined cheeks, the creased
forehead, the graying hair— like elements rearranged by a new
theme — were made to form a composition of hope, eagerness and
guiltless serenity: the theme was deliverance.

He did not rise when she entered — he looked as if toe had not
quite returned to the reality of the moment and had forgotten the
proper routine — but he smiled at her with such simple bdnevolence
that she found herself smiling in answer. She caught herself thinking
that this was the way every human being should greet andther — and

410

she lost her anxiety, feeling suddenly certain that all was well and
that nothing to be feared could exist,

“How do you do. Miss Taggart,” he said, “Forgive me, I think
that 1 have kept you waiting. Please sit down.” He pointed to the
chair in front of his desk,

T didn't mind waiting," she said. “I’m grateful that you gave me
this appointment, i was extremely anxious to speak to you on a
matter of urgent importance.”

He leaned forward across the desk, with a look of attentive con-
centration, as he always did at the mention of an important business
matter, but she was not speaking to the man she knew, this was a
stranger, and she stopped, uncertain about the arguments she had
been prepared to use.

He looked at her in silence, and then he said. “Miss Taggart, this
is such a beautiful day— probably the last, this year. There's a thing
I've always wanted to do, but never had time for it. I^et’s go back
to New York together and take one ol those excursion boat trips
around the island of Manhattan. Lei's take a last look, at the greatest
city in the world.”

She sat still, trying to hold her eyes fixed in order to stop the
office from swaying, this was the Ken Danagger who had never had

personal friend, had never married, had never attended a play or
,1 movie, had never permitted anyone the impertinence of taking his
time for any concern but business,

"Mi Danagger, 1 came heie to speak to you about a matter of
crucial importance to the future of your business and mine. I came
to speak to you about your indictment.”

"Oh, that? Don’t worry about that. It doesn’t matter. I’m going
to retire."

She sat still, feeling nothing, wondering numbly whether this was
how it felt to heai a death sentence one had dreaded, but had never
quite believed possible

Her first movement was a sudden jerk of her head toward the exit
dooi. she asked, her voice low, her mouth distorted by hatred. "Who
was he?”

Danagger laughed, ‘if you've guessed that much, you should have
guessed that it’s a question 1 won't answer ”

“Oh God, Ken Danagger!" she moaned, his words made her real-
ize that the barriei of hopelessness, of silence, of unanswered ques-
tions was already erected between them: the hatred had been only
a thin wire that had held her for a moment and she broke with its
breaking. "Oh God!"

"You’re wrong, kid," he said gently. "I know how you fed, but
you're wtong.” then added more formally, as if remembering the
proper manner, as if still trying to balance himself between two kinds
of reality, "I'm sorry. Miss Taggart, that you had to come here so
soon after.”

i came too late," she said. ‘That's what l came here to prevent.
1 knew it would happen.”

"Why?”

i felt certain that he'd get you next, whoever he is.”

4H

“You did? That’s funny. I didn’t.”

“I wanted to warn you, to . . . to arm you against him.”

He smiled. 'Take my word for it. Miss Taggatt, so that you won’t
torture yourself with regrets about the timing: that could not have
been done.”

She felt that with every passing minute he was moving away into
some great distance where she would not be able to reach him. but
there was still some thin bridge left between them and she had to
hurry. She leaned forward, she said very quietly, the intensity of
emotion taking form in the exaggerated steadiness of her voice, “Do
you remember what you thought and felt, what you were, three hours
ago? Do you remember what your mines meant to you? Do you
remember Taggart Transcontinental or Reardon Steel? In the name
of that, will you answer me? Will you help me to understand?"

“I will answer whatever 1 may."

“You have decided to retire? To give up your business 0 ”

“Yes.”

“Does it mean nothing to you now?"

“It means more to me now than it ever did be tore.”

“But you're going to abandon it?"

“Yes"

“Why?"

“That. I won’t answer."

“You. who loved your work, who respected nothing but work,
who despised every kind of aimlessness, passivity and renunciation ~
have you renounced the kind of life you loved?”

"No. I have just discovered how much I do love it "

“But you intend to exist without work or purpose?"

“What makes you think that?"

“Are you going into the coal-mining business somewhere else 0 "

"No, not into the coal-mining business."

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I haven’t decided that vet."

“Where are you going?”

“1 won’t answer."

She gave herself a moment’s pause, to gather her strength, to tell
herself: Don’t feel, don’t show him that you feel anything, don’t let
it cloud and break the bridge — then she said, in the same quiet, even
voice. “Do you realize what your retirement will do to Hank Rear-
den, to me, to ail the rest of us, whoever is left?"

“Yes. I realize it more fully than you do at present."

“And it means nothing to you?"

“It means more than you will care to believe ”

“Then why are you deserting us?”

“You will not believe it and 1 will not explain, but 1 am not de-
serting you."

“We’re being left to carry a greater burden, and you're indifferent
to the knowledge that you’ll see us destroyed by the looters.”

“Don’t be too sure of that.”

“Of which? Your indifference or our destruction?”

“Of either.”

412

‘‘But you know, you knew it this morning, that it’s a battle to the
death, and it’s we — you were one— against the looters.*’

“If 1 answer that l know it, but you don’t — you’ll think that I
attach no meaning to my words. So take it as you wish, but that is
my answer.”

‘"Will you tell me the meaning?”

“No. It’s for you to discover.”

“You’re willing to give up the world to the looters. We aren’t”

“Don’t be too sure of either.”

She remained helplessly silent. The strangeness of his manner was
its simplicity: he spoke as if he were being completely natural and —
in the midst of unanswered questions and of a tragic mystery — he
conveyed the impression that there were no secrets any longer, and
no mystery need ever have existed.

But as she watched him, she saw the first break in his joyous calm:
she saw him struggling against some thought; he hesitated, then said,
with effort, “About Hank Reardon . . Will you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Will you tell him that I . . . You see. I’ve never cared for people,
yet he was always the man 1 respected, but I didn’t know until today
that what 1 fell was . . . that he was the only man I ever loved. . . .
Just tell him this and that I wish I could— no. 1 guess that’s all I can
tell him. . . He’ll probably damn me for leaving . . . still, maybe
he won t.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Hearing the dulled, hidden sound of pain in his voice, she felt so
close to him that it seemed impossible he would deliver the blow he
was delivering— and she made one last effort.

“Mr Danaggcr, it I were to plead on my knees, if I were to hnd
some sort of words that I haven't found- would there be . . , is there
a chance to stop you?”

“There isn’t.”

After a moment, she asked tonelcssly, “When are you quitting?”

“Tonight.”

“What will you do with” —she pointed at the hills beyond the
window— “the Danagger Coal Company? To whom are you leav*
mg it?”

“I don’t know — or care. To nobody or everybody. To whoever
wants to take it.”

“You're not going to dispose of it or appoint a successor?”

“No. What foi?”

“To leave it in good hands. Couldn’t you at least name an heir of
your own choice?”

“I haven’t any choice It doesn’t make any difference to me. Want
me to leave it all to you?" He reached for a sheet ot paper. “I’ll
write a letter naming you sole heiress right now, if you want me to.”

She shook her head in an involuntary recoil of horror. “I’m not
a looter!”

He chuckled, pushing the paper aside “You see? You gave the
right answer, whether you knew it or not. Don’t worry about Danag-
ger Coal. It won’t make any difference, whether I appoint the best

413

successor in the world, or the worst, or none. No matter who takes
it over now, whether men or weeds, it won't make any difference.”

“But to walk off and abandon . . . just abandon ... an industrial
enterprise, as if we were in the age of landless nomads or of savages
wandering in the jungle!"

“Aren’t we?" He was smiling at her, half in mockery, half in
compassion. “Why should 1 leave a deed or a will? 1 don’t want to
help the looters to prelend that private property still exists. 1 am
complying with the system which they have established. They do not
need me. they say, they only need my coal. Let them take it."

“Then you're accepting their system?"

“Am I?”

She moaned, looking at the exit door, “What has he done to you?”

“He told me that 1 had the right to exist,”

“I didn’t believe it possible that in three hours one could make a
man turn against fifty -two years of his life!”

“If that’s what you think he’s done, or it you think that he's told
me some inconceivable revelation, then 1 can see how bewildering
it would appear to you Bui that’s not vvhat he’s done. He merely
named what 1 had lived bv. what every man lives by -and to the
extent of such time as he doesn’t spend destroying himself.”

She knew that questions were futile and that theie was nothing
she could say to him.

He lv>oked at her bowed head and said gently, “You’re a brave
person, Miss Taggart. I know what you’re doing right now and what
it’s costing you. Don't torture yourself. Let me go "

She rose to her feel. She was about to speak - but suddenly he
saw her stare down, leap lorward and seize the ashtray that stood
on the edge of the desk

The ashtray contained a cigarette butt stamped with the sign o!
the dollar

“What’s the matter. Miss Taggart?"

“Did he . . . did he smoke this?"

“Who?" •

“Your caller — did he smoke this cigaielte?"

“Why, 1 don’t know . . 1 guess so . . . yes. I think I did see him
smoking a cigarette once . . let me see . . . no, that’s not my brand,
so it must be his."

“Were there any other visitors m this office today?”

“No. [Tut why. Miss Taggart? What’s the matter?"

“May 1 take this?”

“What? The cigarette butt?" He stared at her in bewilderment

“Yes."

“Why, sure — but what for?”

She was looking down at the butt in the palm of her h$nd as if n
were a jewel. “I don’t know ... 1 don’t know vvhat good it will do
me, except that it’s a clue to”— she smiled bitterly— “to k secret of
my own." \

She stood, reluctant to leave, looking at Ken Da nagger in the
manner of a last took at one departing for the realm of $o return

He guessed it, smiled and extended his hand. “1 won’t say good-

414

bye/’ he said, “because I’ll see you again in the not too distant
future.”

“Oh/’ she said eagerly, holding his hand clasped across the desk,
“arc you going to return?”

“No. You're going to join me."

* *

There was only a faint red breath above the structures in the
darkness, as if the mills were asleep but alive, with the even breath-
ing of the furnaces and the distant heartbeats of the conveyor belts
to show it. Reardon stood at the window of his office, his hand
pressed to the pane; in the perspective of distance, his hand covered
half a mile of structures, as if he were trying to hold them.

He was looking at a long wall of vertical strips, which was the
battery of coke ovens. A narrow door slid open with a brief gasp of
(lame, and a sheet of red-glowing coke came sliding out smoothly,
like a slice of bread from the side of a giant toaster. It held still for
an instant, then an angular aack shot through the slice and it crum-
bled into a gondola waiting on the rails below

Danagger coal, he thought These were the only words in his mind.
The rest was a feeling of loneliness, so vast that even its own pain
seemed swallowed in an enormous void.

Yesterday, Dagnv had told him the story of her futile attempt and
given him Da nagger's message Ibis morning, he had heard the news
that Danagger had disappeared Through his sleepless night, then
through the taut concentration on the duties of the day, his answer
to the message had kept beating in his mind, the answer he would
never have a chance to utter.

‘1 he only man I ever loved.” It came from Ken Danaggci, who
had never expressed anything more personal than ’‘Look here. Rear-
den.” He thought. Why had we let tt go? Why had we both been
condemned - in the hours away Irom oui desks-— to an exile among
dreary strangers who had made us give up all desire for rest, for
friendship, for the sound ol human voices? Could I now reclaim a
single hour spent listening to my brother Philip and give it to Ken
Danagger? Who made it our duty to accept, as the only reward for
our work, the gray torture of pretending love for those who roused
us to nothing but contempt? We who were able to melt rock and
metal for our purpose, why had we never sought that which we
wanted from men'*

He tried to choke the words in his mind, knowing that it was
useless to think of them now. But the words were there and they
were like words addressed to the dead: No, I don't damn you for
leaving- il that is the question and the pam which you took away
with you. Why didn't you give me a chance to tell you . . . what? that
1 approve? . , . no, but that I can neither blame you nor follow you,

( losing his eyes, he permitted himself to experience for a moment
the immense relief he would feel if he, too, were to walk off, aban-
doning everything Under the shock of his loss, he felt a thin thread
of envy. Why didn’t they come for me, too, whoever they are, and
give me that irresistible reason which would make me go? But in
the next moment, his shudder of anger told him that he would mur-

415

dcr the man who’d attempt to approach him, he would murder be-
fore he could hear the words of the secret that would take him away
from his mills.

It was late, his staff had gone, but he dreaded the road to his
house and the emptiness of the evening ahead. He felt as if the
enemy who had wiped out Ken Danagger were waiting for him in
the darkness beyond the glow of the mills. He was not invulnerable
any longer, but whatever it was. he thought, wherever it came from,
he was safe from it here, as in a circle of tires drawn about him to
ward off evil.

He looked at the glittering white splashes on the dark windows of
a structure in the distance; they were like motionless ripples of sun-
light on water. It was the reflection of the neon sign that burned on
the roof of the building above his head, saying: Rearden Steel. He
thought of the night when he had wished to light a sign above his
past, saying: Rearden Life. Why had he wished it? For whose eyes
to see?

He thought — in bitter astonishment and for the first time — that
the joyous pride he had once felt, had come from his respect for
men, for the value of their admiration and their judgment. He did
not feel it any longer. There were no men, he thought, to whose
sight he could wish to offer that sign.

He turned brusquely awav from the window. He seized his over-
coat with the harsh sweep of a gesture intended to jolt him back
into the discipline of action. He slammed the two folds of the over-
coat about his body, he jerked the belt tight, then hastened to turn
off the lights with rapid snaps of his hand on his way out of the office.

He threw the door open — and stopped. A single lamp was burn-
ing in a corner of the dimmed anteroom, lhe man who sat on the
edge of a desk, in a pose of casual, patient waiting, was Francisco
d’ Ancon la

Rearden stood still and caught a brief instant when Francisco, not
moving, loojced at him with the hint of an amused smile that was
like a wink between conspirators at a secret they both understood,
but would not acknowledge. It was only an instant, almost loo brief
to gTasp, because it seemed to him that Francisco rose at once at his
entrance, with a movement of courteous deference. The movement
suggested a strict formality, the denial of any attempt at presump-
tion — but it stressed the intimacy of the fact that he uttered no word
of greeting or explanation.

Rearden asked, his voice hard, “What are you doing here? 0

“I thought that you would want to see me tonight, Mr Rearden ”

“Why?”

“For the same reason that has kept you so tale in your office. You
were not working.”

“How long have you been sitting here?”

“An hour or two.”

“Why didn’t you knock at my door?”

“Would you have allowed me to come in?”

“You Ye late in asking that question.”

“Shall 1 leave, Mr. Rearden?”

416

Rearden pointed to the door of his office. “Come in.”

Turning the lights on in the office, moving with unhurried control.
Rearden thought that he must not allow himself to feci anything, but
felt the color of fife returning to him in the tensely quiet eagerness of
an emotion which he would not identify. What he told himself con-
sciously was: Be careful.

He sat down on the edge of his desk, crossed his arms, looked at
Francisco, who remained standing respectfully before him, and asked
with the cold hint of a smile, “Why did you come here?”

“You don’t want me to answer, Mr. Rearden. You wouldn't admit
to me or to yourself how desperately lonely you are tonight, ff you
don’t question me, you won’t tecl obliged to deny it. Just accept
what you do know, anyway: that I know it.”

Taut like a string pulled by anger against the impertinence at one
end and by admiration for the frankness at the other, Rearden an-
swered, “I'll admit it, if you wish What should it matter to me, that
you know it?”

“That 1 know and care. Mi. Rearden. I’m the only man around
you who does.”

“Why should you care? And why should I need your help
tonight?”

“Because it's not easy to have to damn the man who meant most
to you.”

“I wouldn’t damn you if you’d only stay away from me.”

Francisco’s eves widened a little, then he grinned and said, “I was
speaking of Mr. Danagger.”

For an instant, Rearden looked as if he wanted to slap his own
face, then he laughed softly and said, “All light Sit down.”

He waited to see what advantage Francisco would take of it now,
but Francisco obeyed him in silence, with a smile that had an oddly
boyish quality a look of triumph and gratitude, together.

“I don’t damn Ken Danagger.” said Rearden.

“You donV ? ” The two words seemed to fall with a singular em-
phasis: they were pronounced very quietly, almost cautiously, with
no remnant of a smile on Francisco’s face.

“No. 1 don't try to prescribe how much a man should have to
bear. If he broke, it’s not for me to judge him.”

“If he broke . . ?”

“Well, didn’t he?”

Francisco leaned back; his smile returned, but it was not a happy
smile. “What will his disappearance do to you?”

“I will just have to work a little harder.”

Francisco looked at a steel bridge traced in black strokes against
red steam beyond the window, and said, pointing. “Every one of
those girders has a limit to the load it can carry. What’s yours?”

Rearden laughed. “Is that what you’re afraid of? Is that why you
came here? Were you afraid I’d break? Did you want to save me,
as Dagny Taggart wanted to save Ken Danagger? She tried to reach
him m time, hut couldn’t.”

“She did? 1 didn’t know it. Miss Taggart and I disagree about
many things.”

417

“Don't worry. I’m not going to vanish. Let them all give up and
stop working, t won’t. I don’t know my limit and don’t care. All 1
have to know is that 1 can’t be stopped.”

“Any man can be stopped, Mr. Rearden.”

“How?”

“It’s only a matter of knowing man’s motive power.”

“What is it?”

“You ought to know, Mr. Reardcn. You’re one of the last moral
men left to the world.”

Rearden chuckled in bitter amusement “I’ve been called just
about everything but that. And you’re wrong. You have no idea
how wrong.”

“Are you sure/”

“I ought to know. Moral? What on earth made you say it?”

Francisco pointed to the mills beyond the window. “This.”

For a long moment, Rearden looked at him without moving, then
asked only, “What do you mean?”

“If you want to see an abstract principle, such as moral action, in
material form — there it is. Look at it, Mr Rearden. Lsery girder of
it. every pipe, wire and valve was put there by a choice in answer
to the question: right or wrong? You had to choose right and you
had to choose the best within your knowledge — the best for your
purpose, which was to make steel — and then move on and extend
the knowledge, and do better, and still better, with your purpose as
your standard of value. You had to act on your own judgment, you
had to have the capacity to judge, the courage to stand on the verdict
of your mind, and the purest, the most ruthless consociation to the
rule of doing right, of doing the best, the utmost best possible to
you. Nothing could have made you act against your judgment, and
you would have rejected as wrong — as evil-— any man who attempted
to tell you that the best way to heat a furnace was to fill it with ice
Millions of men, an entire nation, were not able to deter you from
producing Rearden Mela! — because you had the knowledge of its
superlative value and the power which such knowledge gives. But
what I wonder about, Mr Rearden, is why you live by one code of
principles when you deal with nature arid by another when you deal
with men?”

Rearden’s eyes were fixed on him so intently that the question
came slowly, as if the effort to pronounce it were a distraction 1
“What do you mean?”

“Why don’t you hold to the purpose of your life as clearly and
rigidly as you hold to the purpose of your mills?”

“What do you mean?”

“You have judged every brick within this place by its vailue to the
goal of making steel. Have you been as strict about the goal which
your work and your steel are serving? What do you wish to achieve
by giving your life to the making of steel? By what standard of value
do you judge your days? For instance, why did you spent# ten years
of exacting effort to produce Rearden Metal?”

Rearden looked away, the slight, slumping movement of his shoul-

418

ders like a sigh of release and disappointment. “If you have to ask
that, then you wouldn't understand.”

‘if 1 told you that I understand it, but you don't — would you
throw me ‘out of here?”

“I should have thrown you out of here anyway — so go ahead, tell
me what you mean.”

“Are you proud of the rail of the John Galt Line?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it's the best rad ever made.”

“Why did you make it?”

“In order to make money.”

“There were many easier ways to make money. Why did you
choose the hardest?”

“You said it in your speech at Taggart's wedding: in order to
exchange my best effort for the best effort of others.”

“If that was your purpose, have you achieved it?”

A beat of time vanished in a heavy drop of silence “No,” said
Reardon,

“Have vou made any money?”

“No.” '

“When you strain your energy to its utmost in order to produce
the best, do you expect to be rewarded for it or punished?” Rearden
did not answer. “By every standard of decency, oi honor, of justice
known to you— -are you convinced that you should have been re-
warded for it?”

“Yes,” said Rearden, his voice low

“Then if you were punished, instead-— what sort ol code have
vou accepted?”

Rearden did not answer,

“It is generally assumed,” said Francisco, “that living in a human
society makes one’s life much easier and sater than il one were left
alone to struggle against nature on a desert island. Now wherever
there is a man who needs or uses metal in any way — Rearden Metal
lias made his life easier for him. Has it made yours easier for you?”

“No,” said Reaiden, his voice low.

“Has it letl your life as it was before you produced the Metal?”

“No—” said Rearden, the word breaking off as if he had cut short
the thought that followed.

Francisco's voice lashed at him suddenly, as a command: “Say it!”

“It has made it harder,” said Rearden tunelessly.

“When you felt ptoud of the rail of the John Galt Lane,” said
Francisco, the measured rhythm ot his voice giving a ruthless clarity
to his wools, “what sou ot men did you think of? Did you want to
see that Line used by your equals - by giants of productive energy,
such as lHllis Wyatt, whom it would help to reach higher and still
higher achievements of their own?”

“Yes.” said Rearden eagerly.

“Did you want to see it used by men who could not equal the
power of your mind, but who would equal your moral integrity-
men such as Eddie Willers — who could ftever invent your Metal, but

419

who would do their best, work as hard as you did, live by their own
effort, and — riding on your rail — give a moment’s silent thanks to
the man who gave them more than they could give him?”

“Yes,” said Rearden gently.

"‘Did you want to see it used by whining rotters who never rouse
themselves to any effort, who do not possess the ability of a filing
clerk, but demand the income of a company president, who drift
from failure to failure and expect you to pay their hills, who hold
their wishing as an equivalent of your work and their need as a
higher claim to reward than your effort, who demand that you serve
them, who demand that it be the aim of your life to serve them,
who demand that your strength be the voiceless, rightless, unpaid,
unrewarded slave of their impotence, who proclaim that you are
bom to serfdom by reason of your genius, while they are born to
rule by the grace of incompetence, that yours is only to give, but
theirs only to take, that yours is to produce, but theirs to consume,
that you are not to be paid, neither in matter nor in spirit, neither
by wealth nor by recognition nor by respect nor by gratitude — so
that they would ride on your rail and sneer at you and curse you,
since they owe you nothing, not even the effort of taking off their
hats which you paid for? Would this be what you wanted? Would
you feel proud of it?”

“I'd blast that rail first,” said Rearden, his lips white

“Then why don't you do it, Mr. Rearden? Of the three kinds of
men 1 described — which men are being destroyed and which are
using your Line today 1

They heard the distant metal heartbeats of the mills through the
long thread of silence.

“What l described last,” said Francisco, “is any man who pro-
claims his right to a single penny of another man s effort.”

Rearden did not answer; he was looking at the reflection of a neon
sign on dark windows in the distance.

“You take pride in setting no limit to your endurance. Mr. Rear-
den, because you think that you arc doing right. What if you aren’t?
What if you’re placing your virtue in the service of evil and letting
it become a tool for the destruction of everything you love, respect
and admire? Why don't you uphold your own code of values among
men as you do among iron smelters? You who won't allow one per
cent of impurity into an alloy of metal— -what have you allowed into
your moral code?”

Rearden sat very still: the words in his mind were like the beat of
steps down the trail he had been seeking; the words were the sanc-
tion of the victim.

“You. who would not submit to the hardships of nature, but set
out to conquer it and placed it in the service of your jiW and your
comfort — to what have you submitted at the hands of men? You,
who know from your work that one bears punishment only for being
wrong — what have you been willing to bear and for w^at reason?
All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not forjiyour faults,
but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, nbt for your
mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all

420

those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have
been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment
and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been
called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called
cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called antisocial
for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You
have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your
drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnifi-
cence of your power to create wealth. You, who've expended an
inconceivable flow of energy, have been called a parasite. You,
who've created abundance where there had been nothing but waste-
lands and helpless, starving men before you, have been called a rob-
ber. You, who’ve kept them all alive, have been called an exploiter.
You, the purest and most moral man among them, have been
sneered at as a “vulgar materialist.’ Have you stopped to ask them:
by what right? — by what code?— by what standard? No. you have
borne it all and kept silent. You bowed to their code and you never
upheld your own. You knew what exacting morality was needed to
produce a single metal nail, but you let them biand you as immoral.
You knew that man needs the strictest code of values to deal with
nature, but you thought that you needed no such code to deal with
men. You left the deadliest weapon in the hands of your enemies,
a weapon you never suspected or understood. Their moral code is
their weapon. Ask yourself how deeply and in how many terrible
ways you have accepted it. Ask yourself what it i> that a code of
moial values does to a man’s life, and why he can't exist without it,
and what happens to him if he accepts the wrong standard, by which
the evil is the good. Shall l tell you why you're drawn to me. even
though you think you ought to damn me? It's because I'm the first
man who has given you what the whole world owes you and what
you should have demanded of all men before you dealt with them:
a moral sanction.”

Rearden whirled to him, then remained still, with a stillness like
a gasp, Francisco leaned forward, a.s if he were reaching the landing
of a dangerous flight: and his eyes were steady, but their glance
seemed to tremble with intensity.

‘You’re guilty of a great sin, Mr. Rearden, much guiltier than they
tell you, but not in the way they preach. The worst guilt is to accept
an undeserved guilt— and that is what you have been doing all your
life. You have been paying blackmail, not for your vjees, but for
your virtues. You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned
punishment — and to let it grow the heavier the greater the virtues
you practiced. But your virtues were those which keep men alive.
Your own moral code -the one you lived bv, but never stated, ac-
knowledged or defended — was the code that preserves man's exis-
tence. If you were punished for it, what was the nature of those who
punished you? Yours was the code of life. What, then, is theirs?
What standard of value lies at its root? What is its ultimate purpose?
Do you think that what you're facing is merely a conspiracy to seize
your wealth? You, who know the source of wealth, should know it’s
much more and much worse than that. Did you ask me to name

421

mao’s motive power? Man’s motive power is his moral code. Avsk
yourself where their code is leading you and what it offers you as
your final goal. A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him
suicide as an act of virtue. A viler evil than to throw a man into a
sacrificial furnace, is to demand that he leap in, of his own will, and
that he build the furnace, besides. By their own statement, it is they
who need you and have nothing to offer you in return. By their
own statement, you must support them because they cannot survive
without you. Consider the obscenity of offering their impotence and
their need — their need of you — as a justification for your torture.
Are you willing to accept it? Do you care to purchase — at the price
of your great endurance, at the price of your agony— the satisfaction
of the needs of your own destroyers?"

"No!”

"Mr. Reardon," said Francisco, his voice solemnly calm, "if you
saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, it you
saw that he stood, blood running down his ehest. his knees buckling,
his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the
last of this strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world
bore down on his shoulders— what would you tell him to do?"

"1 . . . don't know. What . . could he do? What would you
tell him? ’

"To shrug."

The clatter of the metal came m a How ot irregular sounds without
discernible rhythm, not like the action of a mechanism, but as it
some conscious impulse were behind every sudden, tearing rise that
went up and crashed, scattering into the faint moan ot gears. The
glass of the windows tinkled once in a while.

Francisco’s eyes were watching Reardon as it he were examining
the course of -bullets on a battered target. I he course was hard to
trace: the gaunt figure on the edge ot the desk was erect, the void
blue eyes showed nothing but the intensity of a glance fixed upon
a great distance, only the inflexible mouth betrayed a line drawn
by pain.

"Go on." said Kcarden with ettort. "continue. You haven’t fin-
ished. have you 9 "

"1 have barely begun." Francisco's voice was hard

"What . . . are you driving at?"

"You’ll know it beiore Fm through. But first. 1 want you to answer
a question, if you understand the nature of your burden, how can
you . . "

The scream of an alarm siren shattered the space beyond the win-
dow' and shot like a rocket in a long, thin line to the sky It held for
an instant, then fell, then went on in rising, tailing spirals of sound,
as if fighting for breath against terror to scream louder. Jt was the
shriek of agony, the call tor help, the voice of the mills as of a
wounded body erving to hold its soul

Rearden thought that he leaped for the door the instant |he scream
hit his consciousness, but he saw that he was an instant latjL\ because
Francisco had preceded him. Flung by the blast of the samjb response
as bis own. Francisco was flying down the hall, pressing ihe button

422

of the elevator and, not waiting, racing on down the stairs. Rcarden
followed him and, watching the dial of the elevator on the stair
landings, they met it halfway down the height of the building, Before
the steel cage had ceased trembling at the sill of the ground floor,
Francisco was out. racing to meet the sound of the call for help.
Rcarden had thought himself a good runner, but he could not keep
up with the swift figure streaking off through stretches of red glare
and darkness, the figure ol a useless playboy he had hated himself
tor admiring.

The stream, gushing from a hole low on the side of a blast furnace,
did not have the red glow of lire, but the white radiance of sunlight.
It poured along the ground, branching off at random in sudden
streaks; it cut through a dank fog of steam with a bright suggestion
of morning. It was liquid iron, and what the scream of the alarm
proclaimed was a break-out.

The charge of the furnace had been hung up arid, breaking, had
blown the tap-hole open. The furnace foreman lay knocked uncon-
scious. the white flow spurted, slowly tearing the hole wider, and
men were struggling with sand, hose and fire clay to stop the glowing
st leaks that spread in a heavy, gliding motion, eating everything on
their way into jets of acrid smoke.

In the few moments which Rcarden needed to grasp the sight and
nature of the disaster, he saw a man’s figure rising suddenly at the
toot of the furnace, a figure outlined by the red glare almost as if it
stood in the path ol the torrent, he saw the swing of a white shirt-
slee\cd arm that rose and flung a black object into the source of the
spurting metal. It was Francisco d'Aneonia. and his action belonged
to an ait which Rcarden had not believed any man to be trained to
pci form any longer.

Years before. Real den had worked in an obscure steel plant in
Minnesota, where it had been his job. alter a blast furnace was
tapped, to close the hole by hand — by throwing bullets of fire day
to dam the flow of the metal It was a dangerous job that bad taken
many lives, it had been abolished years earlier by the invention of
the hydraulic gun; but there had been struggling, tailing mills which,
on their way down, had attempted to use the outworn equipment
and methods of a distant past Rcarden had done the job; but in the
years since, he had met no other man able to do it. In the midst of
shooting jets of live steam, in the face of a crumbling blast furnace,
he was now seeing the tall, slim figure ol the playboy performing
the task with the skill of an expert.

It took an instant foi Rcarden to tear ott his coal, sci/c a pair of
goggles from the first man in sight and join Francisco at the mouth
ot the furnace. There was no time to speak, to feel or to wonder.
H.mciseo glanced at him once— and what Rcarden saw was a
smudged face, black goggles and a wide grin.

They stood on a slippery bank of baked mud, at the edge of the
white stream, with the raging hole under their feet, flinging clay into
the glare where the twisting tongues that looked like gas were boiling
metal, Reardon’s consciousness became a progression of bending*
raising the weight, aiming and sending it down and. before it had

423

reached its unseen destination, bending for the next one again, a
consciousness drawn tight upon watching the aim of his arm, to save
the furnace, and the precarious posture of his feet, to save himself.
He was aware of nothing else — except that the sum of it was the
exultant feeling of action, of his own capacity, of his body’s precision,
of its response to his will: And, with no time to know it, but knowing
it, seizing it with his senses past the censorship of his mind, he was
seeing a black silhouette with red rays shooting from behind its
shoulders, its elbows, its angular curves, the red rays circling through
steam like the long needles of spotlights, following the movements
of a swift, expert, confident being whom he had never seen before
except in evening clothes under the lights of ballrooms.

There was no time to form words, to think, to explain, but he
knew that this was the real Francisco d'Anconia, this was what he
had seen from the first and loved — the word did not shock him,
because there was no word in his mind, there was only a joyous
feeling that seemed like a flow of energy added to his own.

To the rhythm of his body, with the scorching heat on his face
and the winter night on his shoulder blades, he was seeing suddenly
that this was the simple essence of his universe: the instantaneous
refusal to submit to disaster, the irresistible drive to fight it, the
triumphant feeling of his own ability to win. He was certain that
Francisco felt it, too. that he had been moved by the same impulse,
that it was right to feel it. right for both of them to be what they
were — he caught glimpses of a sweat-streaked face intent upon ac-
tion. and it was the most joyous face he had ever seen

The furnace stood above them, a black bulk wrapped in coils of
tubes and steam, she seemed to pant, shooting red gasps that hung
on the air above the mills — and they fought not to let her bleed to
death. Sparks hung about their feet and burst in sudden sheafs out
of the metal, dying unnoticed against their clothes, against the skin
of their hands. The stream was coming slower, in broken spurts
through the dam rising beyond their sight.

It happened so fast that Rearden knew it fully only after it was
over. He knew that there were two moments: the first was when he
saw the violent swing of Francisco's body in a forward thrust that
sent the bullet to continue the line in space, then he saw the sudden,
unrhythmic jerk backward that did not succeed, the convulsive beat
mg against a forward pull, the extended arms of the silhouette losing
its balance, he thought that a leap across the distance between them
on the slippery, crumbling ndge would mean the death of both of
them — and the second moment was when he landed at Francisco s
side, held him in his arms, hung swaying together between space and
ridge, over the white pit, then gamed his footing and pulled him
back, and, for an instant, still held the length of Francisco’s body
against the length of his own, as he would have held thejbody of an
only son* His love, his terror, his relief were in a single |enlence:
careful, you goddamn fool!"

Francisco reached for a chunk of clay and went on.

When the job was done and the gap was closed, Rearden noticed
that there was a twisting pain in the muscles of his arnfe ami legs.

424

that his body had no strength left to movc-*yet that he felt as if he
were entering his office in the morning, eager for ten new problems
to solve. He looked at Francisco and noticed for the first time that
their clothes had black-ringed holes, that their hands were bleeding,
that there was a patch of skin torn on Francisco’s temple and a red
thread winding down his cheekbone. Francisco pushed the goggles
back off his eyes and grinned at him: it was a smile of morning.

A young man with a look of chronic hurt and impertinence to-
gether, rushed up to him, crying, “I couldn’t help it, Mr. Reardon!”
and launched into a speech of explanation. Rearden turned his back
on him without a word. It was the assistant in charge of the pressure
gauge of the furnace, a young man out of college.

Somewhere on the outer edge of Reardon's consciousness, there
was the thought that accidents of this nature were happening more
frequently now, caused by the kind of ore he was using, but he had
to use whatever ore he could find. There was the thought that his
old workers had always been able to avert disaster; any of them
would have seen the indications of a hang up and known how to
prevent it; but there were not many of them left, and he had to
employ whatever men he could find. Through the swirling coils of
steam around him, he observed that it was the older men who had
rushed from all over the mills to fight the breakout and now stood
in line, being given first aid by the medical staff. He wondered what
was happening to the young men of the country. But the wonder
was swallowed by the sight of the college boy's face, which he could
not bear to see, by a wave of contempt, by the wordless thought
that if this was the enemy, there was nothing to fear. All these things
came to him and vanished in the outer darkness; the sight blotting
them out was Francisco d'Anconia.

He saw Francisco giving orders to the men around him. They did
not know who he was or where he came from, but they listened:
they knew he was a man who knew his job. Francisco broke off in
the middle of a sentence, seeing Rearden approach and listen, and
said, laughing, "Oh, 1 beg your pardon!” Rearden said, "Go right
ahead. Ifs all correct, so far.”

Ihev said nothing to each other when they walked together
through the darkness, on their way back to the office. Rearden fell
an exultant laughlei swelling within him, he felt that he wanted, in
his turn, to wink at Francisco like a fellow' conspirator who had
learned a secret Francisco would not acknowledge. He glanced at
his face once in a while, but Francisco would not look at him.

After a while, Francisco said. ‘You saved my life,’’ The “thank
you” wits m the way he said it.

Rearden chuckled. “You saved my furnace.”

They went on in silence Rearden toll himself growing lighter with
every step. Raising his face to the cold air, he saw the peaceful darkness
of the sky and a single star above a smokestack with the vertical let-
tering; rivakdi-n stji l. He felt how glad he was to be alive.

He did not expect the change he saw in Francisco’s face when he
looked at it in the light of his office. The things he had seen by the
glare of the furnace were gone^ He had expected a look of triumph.

425

of mockery at all the iasults Francisco had heard from him, a look
demanding the apology he was joyously eager to offer. Instead, he
saw a face made lifeless by an odd dejection.

“Ate you hurt?”

“No ... no, not at all.”

“Come here,” ordered Reardon, opening the door of his bath-
room.

“Look at yourself.”

“Never mind. You come here.”

For the first time, Reardon felt that he was the older man; he felt
the pleasure of taking Francisco in charge; he felt a confident,
amused, paternal protectiveness. He washed the grime oft Francisco’s
face, he put disinfectants and adhesive bandages on his temple, his
hands, his scorched elbows. Francisco obeyed him in silence.

Rearden asked, in the tone of the most eloquent salute he could
offer, “Where did you learn to work like that?”

Francisco shrugged. “I was brought up around smelters of ever)
kind,” he answered indifferently,

Reardon could not decipher the expression of his face: it was only
a look of peculiar stillness, as if his eyes were fixed on some secret
vision of his own that drew his mouth into a line of desolate, bitter,
hurting self-mockery

They did not speak until they were back in the office.

“You know,” said Rearden. “everything you said here was true.
But that was only part of the story. The other part is what we've
done tonight. Don't you see? We re able to act. They’re not. So it’s
we who’ll win m the long run, no matter what they do to us. ’

Francisco did not answer.

“Listen,” said Rearden, “I know what’s been the trouble with you.
You've never cared to do a teal day’s work in your life I thought
you were conceited enough, but I see that you have no idea ot what
you’ve got in you Foiget that fortune of yours tor a while and come
to work for, me. Ml start you as furnace foreman any lime. You
don’t know what it will do for you. In a lew' years, you’ll be ready
to appreciate and to run d’Anconia Copper.”

He expected a burst of laughter and he was prepared to argue;
instead, he saw Francisco shaking his head slowly, as if he could not
trust his voice, as it he feared that were he to speak, he would accept.
In a moment, he said, “Mr, Rearden ... I think J would give (he
rest of my life for one year as your furnace foreman. But 1 can’t,”

“Why not?”

“Don’t ask me It's . . a personal matter.”

The vision of Francisco in Reardon’s mind, which he had resented
and found irresistibly attractive, had been the figure ol a man radi-
antly incapable of suffering. What he saw now' in Francisco's eyes
was the look of a quiet, lightly controlled, patiently borne/ torture.

Francisco reached silently for his overcoat.

“You’re not leaving, are you?” asked Rearden.

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you going to finish what you had to tell me?”

“Not tonight.”

426

‘‘You wanted me to answer a question. What was it?”

Francisco shook his head.

“You started asking me how can I . . . How can l what?”

Francisco's smile was like a moan of pain, the only moan he would
permit himself. “I won't ask it, Mr. Rearden. 1 know it.”

Chapter !V THE SANCTION OF THE VICTIM

The roast turkey had cost $30. The champagne had cost $25. The
lace tablecloth, a cobweb of grapes and vine leaves iridescent in the
candlelight, had cost $2,000. The dinner service, with an artist's de~
sign burned in blue and gold into a translucent white china, had cost
$2,500. The silverware, which bore the initials LR in Empire wreaths
of laurels, had cost $3,000, But it was held to be unspiritual to think
of money and ot what that money represented.

A peasant’s wooden shoe, gilded, stood in the center of the table,
filled with marigolds, grapes and carrots, 1 he candles were stuck into
pumpkins that were cut as open mouthed faces drooling raisins, nuts
and candy upon the tablecloth.

ft was Thanksgiving dinner, and the three who faced Rearden
about the table were his wife, his mother and his brother.

"I his is the night to thank the I ord lor our blessings.” said Rear-
den's mother. "God lias been kind to us There are people all over
the country who haven't got am food in the house tonight, and some
that haven't even got a house, and nuue of them going jobless every
day. (iives me the cieeps to look aiouml in the city. Why. only last
week, who do you suppose l ran into but Lucie Judson~-Hqnry, do
you remember Lucie Judson? Used to live next dour to us, up in
Minnesota, when you were ten twelve years old. Had a boy about
your age. I lost track of Lucie when they moved to New York, must
have been all of twenty years ago. Well, it gave me the creeps to
see what she's come to — just a toothless old hag, wrapped in a man’s
overcoat, panhandling on a street corner. And I thought: That
could've been me. but for the giaee of God."

‘‘Well, if thanks are m order," said Lillian gaily. “I think that we
shouldn’t forget Gertrude, the new cook. She's an artist."

“Me, I’m just going to be old-fashioned,” said Philip. Tin just
going to thank the sweetest mother in the world."

“Well, for the matter of that." S3id Reardon's mother, “we ought
to thank Lillian for this dinner and for all the trouble she took to
make it so pretty. She spent hours fixing the table It’s real quaint
and different."

“It's the wooden shoe that does it,” said Philip, bending his head
sidewise to study it in a manner of eiilical appreciation. “ That’s the
real touch. Anybody can have candles, silverware and junk, that
di>esn’t take anything but money— but this shoe, that took thought,”
* Rearden said nothing. The candlelight moved over his motionless
face as over a portrait; the portrait bore an expression of imper-
sonal courtesy.

“You haven't touched your wine,” said his mother, looking at him,

427

“What 1 think is you ought to drink a toast in gratitude to the people
of this country who have given you so much.”

“Henry is not in the mood for it. Mother,” said Lillian. “I'm afraid
Thanksgiving is a holiday only for those who have a clear con-
science.'’ She raised her wine glass, but stopped it halfway to her
lips and asked, “You're not going to make some sort of stand at
your trial tomorrow, are you, Henry?”

“I am.”

She put the glass down. “What are you going to do?”

“You'll see it tomorrow.”

“You don't really imagine that you can get away with it!”

“I don't know what you have in mind as the object I’m to get
away with.'*

“Do you realize that the charge against vou is extremely serious?”

“1 do.”

“You've admitted that you sold the Metal to Ken Danagger.”

“1 have.”

“They might send you to jail for ten years.”

“I don’t think they will, but it’s possible.”

“Have you been reading the newspapers, Henry?” asked Philip,
with an odd kind of smile.

“No,”

“Oh. you should!”

“Should I? Why?”

“You ought to see the names they call you!”

“That’s interesting,” said Rearden; he said it about the fact that
Philip’s smile was one of pleasure.

“I don't understand it,” said his mother. “Jail? Did you say jail.
Lillian ? Henry, are you going to be sent to jail'*”

“1 might be.” *

“But that’s ridiculous! Do something about it.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand any of it. Respectable people
don’t go to jail. Do something. You've always known what to do
- about business.”

“Not this kind of business.”

“I don't believe it.” Her voice had the tone of a frightened, spoiled
child. “You’re saying it just to be mean.”

“He’s playing the hero, Mother.” said Lillian. She smiled coldly,
turning to Rearden. “Don't you think that your attitude is per-
fectly futile?”

“No.”

“You know that cases of this kind are not . . . intended ever to
come to trial. There are ways to avoid it, to get things settled amica-
bly — if one knows the right people.”

“I don’t know the right people.”

“Look at Orren Boyle. He's done much more and mud| worse
than your little fling at the black market, but he's smart cnouch to
keep himself out of courtrooms.”

“Then I’m not smart enough,”

428

“Don’t you think it’s time you made an effort to adjust yourself
to the conditions of our age?”

“No,”

“Well, then 1 don’t see how you can pretend, that you’re some
sort of victim. If you go to jail, it will he your own fault.”

"What pretense are you talking about, Lillian?”

“Oh, I know that you think you’re fighting for some sort of princi-
ple — but actually it’s only a matter of your incredible conceit. You’re
doing it for no better reason than because you think you’re right.”

“Do you think they’re right?”

She shrugged. “That's the conceit I’m talking about — the idea that
it matters who’s right or wrong. It’s the most insufferable form of
vanity, this insistence on always doing right. Mow do you know
what’s right? How can anyone ever know it? ft's nothing but a delu-
sion to flatter your own ego and to hurt other people by flaunting
your superiority ovei them.”

He was looking at her with attentive interest. “Why should it hurt
other people, if it’s nothing but a delusion?”

“Is it necessary for me to point out that in your case it's nothing
but hypocrisy? That is why 1 find your attitude preposterous. Ques-
tions ol right have no bearing on human existence. And you’re cer-
tainly nothing but human — aren’t you, Henry? You’re no better than
any ot the men you’re going to face tomorrow. I think you should
remember that it’s not for you to make a stand on any sort of princi-
ple Maybe you’re a victim in this particular mess, maybe they’re
pulling a rotten trick on you, but what of it? They're doing it because
they're weak; they couldn’t resist the temptation to grab your Metal
and to muscle in on your profits, because they had no other way of
ever getting rich. Why should you blame them? It’s only a question
of different strains, but it’s the same shoddy human fabric that gives
way just as quickly. You wouldn’t be tempted by money., because
it’s so easy for you to make it. But you wouldn't withstand other
pressures and you’d fall just as ignominiously. Wouldn't you? So you
have no right to any righteous indignation against them. You have
no moral superiority to assert or to defend. And if you haven't, then
what is the point of fighting a battle that you can't win? 1 suppose
that one might find some satisfaction in being a martyr, if one is
above reproach. But you - who are you to cast the first stone?”

.She paused to observe the effect. There was none, except that his
look of attentive interest seemed intensified; he listened as if he were
held by some impersonal, scientific curiosity. It was not the response
she had expected.

“I believe you understand me,” she said.

“No,” he answered quietly, “I don’t.”

“I think you should abandon the illusion of your own perfection,
which you know full well to be an illusion. 1 think you should learn
to get along with other people. The day of the hero is past. This is
the day of humanity, in a much deeper sense than you imagine.
Human beings are no longer expected to be saints nor to be punished
for their sins. Nobody is right or wrong, we're all in it together,
we’re all human— -and the human is the imperfect. You’ll gain noth-

429

ing tomorrow by proving that they’re wrong. You ought to give in
with good grace, simply because it’s the practical thing to do. You
ought to keep silent, precisely because they’re wrong. They'll appreci-
ate it. Make concessions for others and they’ll make concessions for
you. Live and let live. Give and take. Give in and take in. That's the
policy of our age — and it’s time you accepted it. Don’t tell me you’re
too good for it. You know that you’re not. You know that 1 know it.”

The look of his eyes, held raptly still upon some point in space,
was not in answer to her words; it was in answer to a man’s voice
saying to him, ”Do you think that what you’re facing is merely a
conspiracy to seize your wealth? You, who know the source of
wealth, should know it’s much more and much worse than that.”

He turned to look at Lillian. He was seeing the full extent of her
failure — in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning
stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine,
a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him. He had
heard her studied reminders of his guilt on every evening he had
spent at home in the past three months. But guilt had been the one
emotion he had found himself unable to feel. The punishment she
had wanted to inflict on him was the torture of shame: what she had
inflicted was the torture of boredom.

He remembered his brief glimpse — on that morning in the Wayne-
Falkland Hotel — of a flaw in her scheme ot punishment, which he
had not examined. Now he staled it to himself for the first time She
wanted to force upon him the suffering of dishonor— but his own
sense of honor was her only weapon (if enforcement. She wanted to
wrest from him an acknowledgment of his moral depravity- -but only
his own moral rectitude could attach significance to such a verdict.
She wanted to injure him by her contempt — but he could not be
injured, unless he respected her judgment. She wanted to punish him
for the pain he had caused her and she held her pain as a gun aimed
at him, as if she wished to extort his agony at the point of his pity.
But her only tool was his own benevolence, his concern for her, his
compassion, lifer only power was the power of his own virtues. What
if he chose to withdraw it?

An issue of guilt, he thought, had to rest on his own acceptance
of the code of justice that pronounced him guilty. He did not accept
it; he never had His virtues, all the virtues she needed to achieve
his punishment, came from another code and lived by another stan-
dard. He felt no guilt, no shame, no regret, no dishonor. He felt no
concern for any verdict she chose to pass upon him: he had lost
respect for her judgment long ago And the sole chain still holding
him was only a last remnant of pity.

But what was the code on which she acted 9 What sort of code
permitted the concept of a punishment that required the victim's own
virtue as the fuel to make it work? A code — he thought whi£h would
destroy only those who tried to observe it; a punishment, (rttm which
only the honest would suffer, while the dishonest would escape unhurt.
Could one conceive of an infamy lower than to equate virtue with
pain, to make virtue, not vice, the source and motive power of suffer-
ing? If he were the kind of rotter she was struggling to make him

430

believe he was, then no issue of his honor and his moral worth would
matter to him. If he wasn’t then what was the nature of her attempt?

To count upon his virtue and use it as an instrument of torture,
to practice blackmail with the victim’s generosity as sole means of
extortion, to accept the gift of a man’s good will and turn it into a
tool lor the giver’s destruction ... he sat very still, contemplating
the formula of so monstrous an evil that he was able to name it, but
not to believe it possible.

He sat very still, held by the hammering of a single question: Did
Lillian know the exact nature of her scheme?— -was it a conscious
policy, devised with full awareness of its meaning? He shuddered;
he did not hate her enough to believe it.

He looked at her. She was absorbed, at the moment, in the task
of cutting a plum pudding that stood as a mount of blue flame on a
silver platter before her. Us glow' dancing over her face and her
laughing mouth— she was plunging a silver knife into the flame, with
a pi act iced, graceful curve of her arm. She had metallic leaves in the
red, gold and brown colors of autumn scattered over one shoulder of
her black velvet gown, they glittered in the candlelight.

He could not get rid of the impression, which he had kept reeeiv-
mg and rejecting for three months, that her vengeance was not a
form of despair, as he had supposed — the impression, which he re-
garded as inconceivable, that she was enjoying it. He could lind no
trace of pam in her manner. She had an air of confidence new to
her. She seemed to be at home in her house for the first time. Even
though everything within the house was of her own choice and taste,
she had always seemed to act as the bright, efficient, resentful man-
ager of a high-class hotel, who keeps smiling in bitter amusement at
her position of inferiority to the owners. Ihe amusement remained,
but the bitterness was gone. She had not gained weight, but her
features had lost their delicate sharpness in a blurring, softening look
of satisfaction: even her voice sounded as if it had grown plump.

He did not hear what she was saying: she was laughing in the last
flicker of the blue flames, while he sat weighing the question: Did
she know? He felt certain that he had discovered a secret much
greater than the problem of his marriage, that he had grasped the
formula of a policy practiced more widely throughout the world than
he dared to contemplate at the moment. But to convict a human
being of that practice was a verdict of irrevocable damnation, and
he knew that he would not believe it of anyone, so long as the
possibility of a doubt remained.

No- -he thought, looking at Lillian, with the last effort of his gener-
osity— he would not believe it of her In the name of whatever grace
and pride she possessed — in the name of such moments when he
had seen a smile of joy on her face, the smile of a living being — in
the name of the brief shadow of love he had once felt for her-— he
would not pronounce upon her a verdict of tola! evil.

'Die butler slipped a plate of plum pudding in front of him, and
he heard Lillian’s voice: “Where have you been for the last five
minuses, Henry — or is it for the last century? You haven’t answered
me. You haven’t heard a word I said.”

431

“I heard it,” he answered quietly. "‘I don’t know what you’re trying
to accomplish.”

“What a question!” said his mother. “Isn’t that just like a man?
She’s trying to save you from going to jail— that's what she’s tiying
to accomplish.”

That could be true, he thought; perhaps, by the reasoning of some
crude, childish cowardice, the motive of their malice was a desire to
protect him, to break him down into the safety of a compromise.
It’s possible, he thought — but knew that he did not believe it

"You’ve always been unpopular,” said Lillian, “and it's more than
a matter of any one particular issue. It's that unyielding, intractable
attitude of yours. The men who’re going to try you, know what
you're thinking. Dial's why they’ll crack down on you. while they’d
let another man off,”

"Why, no, 1 don’t think they know what I'm thinking. Thai’s what
I have to let them know tomorrow ”

“Unless you show them that you’re willing to give in and cooper-
ate, you won’t have a chance. You’ve been too hard to deal with ”

“No. I’ve been too easy ”

"But if they put you in jail ” said his mother, "what's going to
happen to your family? Have you thought of that?”

"No. I haven't,”

"Have you thought of the disgrace you’ll bring upon us?”

"Mother, do you understand the issue in this case '”

“No, I don’t and I don’t want to understand. It's all dirty bustness
and dirty politics. All business is just dirty politics and all politics is
just dirty business. I never did want to understand any of it. I don't
care who’s right or wrong, but what I think a man ought to think of
first is his family. Don't you know what this will do to us?”

“No, Mother ! don’t know or care.”

His mother looked at him. aghast.

“Well, 1 think you have a very provincial attitude, all of you,”
said Philip suddenly. "Nobody here seems to be concerned with the
wider, social ‘aspects of* the case. I don’t agree with you. Lillian. 1
don’t see why you say that they're pulling some sort of rotten trick
on Henry and that he’s in the right. I think he’s guilty as hell
Mother, \ can explain the issue to you very simply. Theie’s nothing
unusual about it, the courts are full of cases of this kind. Businessmen
are taking advantage of the national emergency in ordei to make
money. They break the regulations which protect the common wel-
fare of all — for the sake of their own personal gain. They’re profi-
teers of the black market who grow rich by defrauding the poor of
their rightful share, at a time of desperate shortage. They pursue a
ruthless, grasping, grabbing, antisocial policy, based on nothing but
plain, selfish greed. It’s no use pretending about it, we all know it —
and I think it’s contemptible,”

He spoke in a careless, offhand manner, as if explaining |he obvi-
ous to a group of adolescents; his tone conveyed the assurance of a
man who knows that the moral ground of his stand is #ot open
to question.

Rearden sat looking at him, as if studying an object seen tor the

432

first time. Somewhere deep in Rearden’s mind, as a steady, gentle
inexorable beat, was a man’s voice, saying: By what right? — by what
code?- -by what standard?

“Philip,” he said, not raising his voice, “say any of that again and
you will find yourself out in the street, right now, with the suit you’ve
got on your back, with whatever change you've got in your pocket
and with nothing else.”

He heard no answer, no sound, no movement. He noted that the
stillness of the three before him had no element of astonishment.
The look of shock on their faces was not the shock of people at the
sudden explosion of a bomb, but the shock of people who had known
that they were playing with a lighted fuse. There were no outcries,
no protests, no questions: they knew that he meant it and they knew
everything it meant. A dim sickening feeling told him that they had
known it long before he did.

“You . . . you wouldn’t throw your own brother out on the street,
would you?” his mother said at last; it was not a demand, but a plea.

“I would.”

“But he’s your brother . . . Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Maybe he goes a bit too far at times, but it’s just loose talk, it’s
just that modern jabber, he doesn't know what he’s saying.”

“Then let him learn.”

“Don’t be hard on him . . he's younger than you and . . . and
weaker. He . . . Henry, don’t look at me that way! I’ve never seen
you look like that. . You shouldn’t Irighten him. You know that
he needs you.”

“Does he know it?’’

“You can’t be hard on a man who needs you. it will prey on your
conscience lor the rest of your life.”

“It won't.”

“You’ve got to be kind, Hemy.”

“I’m not.”

“You've got to have some pity.”

“1 haven’t.”

"A good man knows how to forgive.”

“I don’t,”

“You wouldn’t want me to think that you're sellish.”

“1 am.”

Philip's eyes were darting from one to the other. He looked like
a man who had felt certain that he stood on solid granite and had
suddenly discovered that it was thin ice. now cracking open all
around him,

“But 1 . he tried, and stopped: his voice sounded like steps

testing the ice. “But don't I have any freedom of speech?”

‘in your own house. Not in nune.”

“Don’t I have any right to my own ideas?”

“At your own expense. Not at mine.”

“Hjon't you tolerate any differences of opinion?”

“Not when I'm paying the bills.”

“Isn't there anything involved but money?”

433

“Yes* The fact that it's my money,' 1

“Don't you want to consider any hi . . — he was going to say

“higher, 1 ’ but changed his mind — “any other aspects?”

“No.”

“But I’m not your slave.”

“Am 1 yours' ? ”

“I don’t know what you—” He stopped; he knew what was meant.

“No,” said Rearden, ‘you’re not my slave. You’re free to walk
out of here any time you choose.”

“I . . . I'm not speaking of that.”

“I am.”

“1 don’t understand it . .

“Don’t you?”

“You’ve always known my ... my political views. You’ve never
objected before.*’

“That’s true,” said Rearden gravely. “Perhaps 1 owe you an expla-
nation* if I have misled you. I’ve tried never to remind you that
you’re living on my charity. 1 thought that it was your place to re-
member it. I thought that any human being who accepts the help of
another, knows that good will is the giver’s only motive and that
good will is the payment he owes in return. But I see that I was
wrong. You were getting your food unearned and you concluded
that affection did not have to be earned, either. You concluded that
I was the safest person in the world lor you to spit on, precisely
because I held you by the throat. You concluded that 1 wouldn’t
want to remind you of it and that I would be tied by the fear ol
hurting your feelings All right, let’s get it straight; you’re an objeet
of chanty who’s exhausted his credit long ago. Whatever affection 1
might have felt tor you once, is gone. I haven't the slightest interest
in you, your late or your future. I haven't any reason whatever for
wishing to feed you. 11 you leave my house, it won’t make any differ-
ence to me whether you starve or not. Now that is your position
here and I will expect you to remember it, if you wish to stay. If
not, then gel out.”

But for the movement of drawing his head a little into his shoul-
ders, Philip showed no reaction. ‘Don’t imagine that 1 enjoy living
here,” he said; his voice was lifeless and shrill. “If you think I’m
happy, you're mistaken. I’d give anything to get away,” The words
pertained to defiance, but the voice had a curiously cautious quality
“If that is how you feel about it, it would be best lor me to leave.”
The words were a statement, but the voice put a question mark at
the end of it and waited; there was no answer, “You needn’t worry
about my future. 1 don’t have to ask favors of anybody. 1 can take
care of myself all right.” The words were addressed to Reasrden, but
the eyes were looking at his mother; she did not speak j she was
afraid to move. “I’ve always wanted to be on my own. fie always
wanted to live in New York, near all my friends.” The voice slowed
down and added in an impersonal, reflective manner, as if the words
were not addressed to anyone, “Of course. I’d have the problem of
maintaining a certain social position . . . it’s not my faulty if I’ll be
embarrassed by a family name associated Vvith a millionaire ... 1

434

would need enough money for a year or two ... to establish myself
in a manner suitable to my — ”

"You won’t get it from me.”

‘i wasn’t asking you for it, was 1? Don’t imagine that l couldn’t
get it somewhere else, if I wanted to l Don’t imagine that I couldn’t
leave! I’d go in a minute, if I had only myself to think about. But
Mother needs me, and if 1 deserted her — ”

"Don’t explain.”

"And besides, you misunderstood me, Henry. 1 haven’t said any-
thing to insult you. I wasn't speaking in any personal way, 1 was only
discussing the general political picture from an abstract sociological
viewpoint which — ”

"Don’t explain,” said Reardcn. He was looking at Philip's face. It
was half- lowered, its eyes looking up at him. The eyes were lifeless,
as if they had witnessed nothing: they held no spark of excitement,
no personal sensation, neither of defiance nor of regret, neither of
shame nor of suffering; they were filmy ovals that held no response
to reality, no attempt to understand it, to weigh it, to reach some
verdict of justice- ovals that held nothing but a dull, still mindless
hatred. "Don’t explain Just keep your mouth shut.”

f'hc revulsion that made Rearden turn his lace away contained a
spasm of pity. There was an instant when he wanted to seize his
biothcr's shoulders, to shake him, to cry: How could vou do this to
yourself? How did \ou come to a stage where this is all that's left
of you? Why did you let the wonderful fact ot >our own existence
go by? . . lie looked away. He knew it was useless

He noted, in weary contempt, t hut the three at the table remained
silent, through all the years past, his consideration lor them had
brought him nothing but their maliciously righteous reproaches.
Where was their righteousness now? Now was the time to stand on
their code of justice — if justice had been any part of their code. Why
didn’t they throw at him all those accusations ot cruelty and selfish-
ness, which he had come to accept as the eternal chorus to his life?
What had permitted them to do it tor Years'* He knew that the words
he hcatd in his mind were the key to the answer The sanction of
the victim.

"Don’t let’s quarrel,” said his mother, her voice cheerless and
vague. "It’s Thanksgiving Day.”

When he looked at Lillian, he caught a glance that made him
certain she had watched him for a long time, its quality was panic.

He got up. "You will please excuse me now.” he said to the table
at large.

"Where are you going?” asked Lillian shat ply.

He stood looking at her foi a dciibeiale moment, as if to confirm
the meaning she would read in his answer: "To New York.”

She jumped to her feet. "Tonight?”

"Now.”

"You can’t go to New York tonight!” Her voice was not loud, but
it had the imperious helplessness of a shriek, " This is not the time
when you can afford it. When you can afford to desert your family*
l mean. You ought to think about the matter of dean hands. You’re

435

not in a position to permit yourself anything which you know to
be depravity.’*

By what code? — thought Rcarden — by what standard?

“Why do you wish to go to New York tonight?”

“I think, Lillian, for the same reason that makes you wish to
stop me.”

‘'Tomorrow is your trial.”

“That is what 1 mean.”

He made a movement to turn, and she raised her voice: “1 don’t
want you to go!” He smiled, it was the first time he had smiled at
her in the past three months; it was not the kind of smile she could
Care to see. “I forbid you to leave us tonight!”

He turned and left the room.

Sitting at the wheel of his car, with the glassy, frozen road flying
at his face and down under the wheels at sixty miles an hour, he let
the thought of his family drop away from him -and the vision of their
faces went rotting back into the abyss of speed that swallowed the hare
trees and lonely structures of the roadside. There was little traffic,
and few lights in the distant dusters of the towns he passed; the
emptiness of inactivity was the only sign of a holiday. A hazy glow,
rusted by frost, flashed above the roof of a factory once in a rare
while, and a cold wind shrieked through the joints of his car, healing
the canvas top against the metal frame.

By some dim sense of conti ast, which he did not define, the
thought of his family was replaced by the thought of his encounter
with the Wet Nurse, the Washington boy of his mills.

At the time of his indictment, he had discovered that the boy had
known about his deal with Danagger, yet had not reported it to any-
one. “Why didn't you inform your friends about me?” he had asked.

The boy had answered brusquely, not looking at him. ‘Didn’t
want to.”

“It was part of your job to watch precisely for things of that kind,
wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Besides, your friends would have been delighted to hear it.”

“I know.”

“Didn’t you know what a valuable piece of information it was and
what a stupendous trade you could have pulled with those friends
of yours in Washington whom you offered to me once — remem-
ber? — the friends who always ‘occasion expenses'?” The boy had not
answered. “It could have made your career at the very top level.
Don’t tell me that you didn't know it.”

“I knew it,”

“Then why didn’t you make use of it?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t know.” *

The boy had stood, glumly avoiding Reardcn’s eyes, a* if trying
to avoid something incomprehensible within himself. Reairden had
laughed. “Listen, Non-Absolute, you’re playing with fire. Better go
and murder somebody fast, before you let it get you — that reason

436

that stopped you from turning informer — or else it will blast your
career to hell.”

The boy had not answered.

This morning, Rearden had gone to his office as usual, even though
the rest of the office building was closed. At lunch time, he had
stopped at the rolling mills and had been astonished to find the
Wet Nurse standing there, alone in a corner, ignored by everybody,
watching the work with an air of childish enjoyment.

“What are you doing here today?” Rearden had asked. “Don't
you know it’s a holiday?”

“Oh. 1 let the girls off, but 1 just came in to finish some business.”

“What business?”

“Oh. letters and . . Oh. hell, 1 signed three letters and sharpened
my pencils, I know 1 didn’t have to do it today, but 1 had nothing
to do at home and . . I get lonesome away from this place.”

“Don't you have any family?”

“No . . .not to speak of. What about you. Mr. Rearden? Don’t
you have any?”

“I guess— not to speak of”

“1 like this place ! like to hang around . . . You know Mr. Rear-
den. what I studied to be was a metallurgist.”

Walking away, Rearden had turned to glance back and had caught
the Wet Nurse looking after him as a boy would look at the hero
of his childhood’s favorite adventure story God help the poor little
bastard! - he had thought.

God help them all- -he thought, driving through the dark streets
ot a small town, borrowing, in contemptuous pity, the words of their
belief which he had never shared He saw newspapers displayed on
metal stands, with the black letters of headlines screaming to empty
eornei s: “Railroad Disaster.” He had heard the news on the radio,
that afternoon: there had been a wreck on the main line of Taggart
Transcontinental, near Rockland, Wyoming: a split rail had sent a
freight train crashing over the edge of a canyon. Wrecks on the
Taggart main line were becoming more frequent — the track was
wearing out— the track which, less than eighteen months ago, Dagny
was planning to rebuild, promising him a journey from coast to coast
on his own Metal,

She had spent a year, picking worn rail from abandoned branches
to patch the rail of the mam line She had spent months fighting the
men of Jim’s Board ot Directors, who said that the national emer-
gency was only temporary and a track that had lasted for ten years
could well last for another winter, until spring, when conditions
would improve, as Mr. Wesley Mouch had promised. Three weeks
ago, she had made them authorize the purchase ot sixty thousand
tons of new rail; it could do no more than make a few patches across
the continent in the worst divisions, but it was all she had been able
to obtain from them. She had had to wrench the money out of men
deaf with panic: the freight revenues were failing at such a rate that
the mfcn of the Board had begun to tremble, staring at Jim's idea of
the most prosperous year in Taggart history. She had had to order

437

steel rail, there was no hope of obtaining an “emergency need’*
permission to buy Rearden Metal and no time to beg for it*

Rearden looked away from the headlines to the glow at the edge
of the sky, which was the city of New York far ahead; his hands
tightened on the wheel a little.

It was half past nine when he reached the city. Dagny’s apartmenl
was dark, when he let himself in with his key. He picked up the
telephone and called her office. Her own voice answered: “Taggart
Transcontinental/’

“Don’t you know it's a holiday?” he asked.

“Hello, Hank. Railroads have no holidays. Where are you call-
ing from?”

“Your place.”

“I’ll be through in another half-hour ”

“it’s all right. Stay there. I’ll come for you.”

The anteroom of her office was dark, when he entered, except for
the lighted glass cubbyhole of Eddie Wiliers, Eddie was closing his
desk, getting ready to leave. He looked at Rearden. in puz/lcd
astonishment.

“Good evening. Eddie. What is it that keeps you people so busy —
the Rockland wreck?”

Eddie sighed. “Yes, Mr. Rearden.”

“Thai’s what I want to see Dagny about— about your rail.”

“She’s still here.”

He started toward her door, when Eddie called after him hesi-
tantly, “Mr. Rearden . . .”

He stopped. “Yes‘ ? ”

“1 wanted to say . . . because tomorrow is your trial . . and whatever
they do to you is supposed to be in the name of all the people
I just wanted to say that 1 . . that it won t be in mv name . . even
if there’s nothing l can do about it, except to tell you . . even if I

know that that doesn’t mean anything.”

'it means^much more than you suspect Perhaps more than any
of us suspect. Thanks, Eddie.”

Dagny glanced up from her desk, when Rearden entered her of-
fice: he saw her watching him as he approached and he saw the look
of weariness disappearing from her eyes. He sat down on the edge
of the desk. She leaned back, brushing a strand of hair off her lace,
her shoulders relaxing under her thin white blouse.

“Dagny, there’s something I want to tell you about the rail that
you ordered I want you to know this tonight.”

She was watching him attentively; the expression of his face pulled
hers into the same look of quietly solemn tension:

“I am supposed to deliver to Taggart Transcontinental, on Febru-
ary fifteenth, sixty thousand tons of rail, which is to give ^ou three
hundred miles of track. You will receive — for the san\£ sum of
money — eighty thousand tons of rail, which will give youjfive hun-
dred miles of track You know what material is cheaper and lighter
than steel. Your rail will not be steel, it will be Rearden Mdtal. Don't
argue, object or agree. I am not asking for your consent;' You are
not supposed to consent or to know anything about it. / am doing

438

this and I alone will be responsible. We will work it so that those
on your staff who’ll know that you've ordered steel, won't know that
you've received Rearden Metal, and those who'll know that you've
received Rearden Metal, won’t know that you had no permit to buy
it. We will tangle the bookkeeping in such a way that if the thing
should ever blow up, nobody wilt be able to pin anything on any-
body, except on me. they might suspect that I bribed someone on
your staff, or they might suspect that you were m on it, but they
won't be able to prove it. 1 want you to give me your word that you
will never admit it, no matter what happens It's my Metal, and if
there are any chances to take, it’s 1 who'll take them. 1 have been
planning this from the day I received your order 1 have ordered the
copper for it, from a source which will not betray me. 1 did not
intend to tell you about it till later, but 1 changed my mind. I want
you to know it tonight —because l am going on trial tomorrow for
the same kind of crime, "

She had listened without moving. At his last sentence, he saw a
faint contraction of her cheeks and lips; it was not quite a smile, but
it gave him her whole answer: pain, admiration, understanding.

Then he saw her eyes becoming softer, more painfully, dangerously
alive — he took her wrist, as if the tight grasp of his fingers and the
severity of his glance were to give her the support she needed — and
he said sternly, “Don't thank me — this is not a favor— 1 am doing it
in order to be able to bear my work, or else I'll break like Ken
Dan agger."

She whispered, “All right. Hank. I won't thank you," the tone of
her voice and the look of her eyes making it a lie by the time it
was uttered.

He smiled. “Give rne the word I asked."

She inclined her head. “I give you my word." He released her
wrist. She added, not raising her head. “The only thing I’ll say is
that if they sentence you to jail tomorrow. I’ll quit— without waiting
for any destroyer to prompt me."

“You won’t. And 1 don't think they'll sentence me to jail. I think
they’ll let me off very lightly. 1 have a hypothesis about it — I'll ex-
plain it to you afterwards, when I’ve put it to the test."

“What hypothesis?"

“Who is John Galt?" He smiled, and stood up. “That’s all. We
won't talk any further about my trial, tonight. You don't happen to
have anything to drink in your office, have you?"

“No. But 1 think my traffic manager has some sort of a bar on
one shelf of his filing closet.'’

“Do you think you could steal a drink for me, if he doesn't have
it locked?"

“I’ll try."

He stood looking at the portrait of Nat Taggart on the wall of her
office— the portrait of a young man with a lifted head — until she
returned, bringing a bottle of brandy and two glasses. He tilled the
glasses in silence.

“You know, Dagny, Thanksgiving was a holiday established by
productive people to celebrate the success of their work."

439

The movement of his arm, as he raised his glass, went from the
portrait — to her — to himself —to the buildings of the city beyond the
window.

* *

For a month in advance, the people who tilled the courtroom had
been told by the press that they would see the man who was a greedy
enemy of society; but they had come to see the man who had in-
vented Rearden Metal,

He stood up, when the judges called upon him to do so. He wore
a gray suit, he had pale blue eyes and blond hair; it was not the
colors that made his figure seem icily implacable, it was the fact that
the suit had an expensive simplicity seldom flaunted these days, that it
belonged m the sternly luxurious office of a rich corporation, that
his bearing came from a civilized era and clashed with the place
around him.

The crowd knew from the newspapers that he represented the evil
of ruthless wealth; and — as they praised the virtue of chastity, then
ran to see any movie that displayed a half-naked female on its post-
ers — so they came to see him; evil, at least, did not have the stale
hopelessness of a bromide which none believed and none dared to
challenge. They looked at him without admiration — admit ation was
a feeling they had lost the capacity to experience, long ago; they
looked with curiosity and with a dim sense of defiance against those
who had told them that it was their duty to hate him.

A few years ago. they would have jeered at his air of self-confident
wealth. Rut today, there was a slate-gray sky in the windows of the
courtroom, which promised the first snowstorm of a tong, haid win-
ter: the last of the country's oil was vanishing, and the coal mines
were not able to keep up with the hysterical set amble for winter
supplies. The crowd in the courtroom remembered that this was the
case which had cost them the services of Ken Danagger. There were
rumors that the output of the Danagger Coal Company had fallen
perceptibly within one month; the newspapers said that it was merely
a matter of readjustment while Dan agger’s cousin was reorganizing
the company he had taken over. Last week, the front pages had
carried the story of a catastrophe on the site of a housing project
under construction: defective steel girders had collapsed, killing four
workmen; the newspapers had not mentioned, but the crowd knew,
that the girders had come from Oircn Hoyle’s Associated Steel

They sat in the courtroom in heavy silence and they looked at the
tall, gray figure, not with hope— they were losing the capacity to
hope — but with an impassive neutrality spiked by a faint question
mark: the question mark was placed over all the pious slogans they
had heard for years.

The newspapers had snarled that the cause of the country's trou-
bles, as this case demonstrated, was the selfish greed of rieft industri-
alists; that it was men like Hank Rearden who were to Iblame lor
the shrinking diet, the falling temperature and the cracking roofs iri
the homes of the nation; that if it had not been for men vifrho broke
regulations and hampered the government’s plans, prosperity would
have been achieved long ago; and that a man like Hanl* Rearden

440

was prompted by nothing but the profit motive. This last was stated
without explanation or elaboration, as if the words ‘•profit motive”
were the self-evident brand of ultimate evil.

The crowd remembered that these same newspapers, less than two
years ago, had screamed that the production of Reardcn Metal
should be forbidden, because its producer was endangering people's
lives for the sake of his greed; they remembered that the man in
gray had ridden in the cab of the first engine to run over a track of
his own Metal; and that he was now on trial for the greedy crime
of withholding from the public a load of the Metal which it had been
his greedy crime to offer in the public market.

According to the procedure established by directives, cases of this
kind were not tried by a jury, but by a panel of three judges ap-
pointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Re-
sources; the procedure, the directives had stated, was to be informal
and democratic. The judge’s bench had been removed from the old
Philadelphia courtroom tor this occasion, and replaced by a table on
a wooden platform: it gave the room an atmosphere suggesting the
kind of meeting where a presiding body puts something over on a
mentally retarded membership.

One of the judges, acting as prosecutor, had read the charges
You may now offer whatever plea you wish to make in your own
defense,” he announced

facing the platform, his voice mtlectionless and peculiarly clear.
Hank Reardcn answered*

“1 have no defense.”

‘Do you — ” fbo judge stumbled; he had not expected it to be
that easy, “Do you throw yourself upon the mercy of this courjl?”

i do not recogm/e this court’s right to try me.”

“What?”

i do not recognize this court’s right to try me ”

“But. Mr. Reardcn, this is the legally appointed court to try this
particular category of cimie. ’

“1 do not recognize in\ action as a crime.”

“But you have admitted that you have broken oui regulations
controlling the sale of your Metal.”

“I do not recogm/e your light to control the sale of my Metal.”

is it necessary tot me to point out that youi recognition was
not required? 4 ’

"No. 1 am fully aware of it and 1 am acting accordingly.”

He noted the stillness of the room. By the i ules of the complicated
pretense which all those people played for one another’s benefit,
they should have considered his stand as incomprehensible folly;
there should have been lustles of astonishment and derision: there
weie none, they sat still; they understood.

“Do you mean that you are refusing to obey the law?” asked
the judge.

‘'No. I am complying with the law' — to the letter. Your law holds
that my life, my work and my property may be disposed of without
my consent. Very well, you may now dispose of me without my
participation in the matter, f will not play the part of defending

441

myself, where no defense is possible, and 1 will not simulate the
illusion of dealing with a tribunal of justice/ 1

“But, Mr. Rearden, the law provides specifically that you are to
be given an opportunity to present your side of the case and to
defend yourself/*

“A prisoner brought to trial can defend himself only if there is an
objective principle of justice recognized by hi*; judges, a principle
upholding his rights, which they may not violate and which he can
invoke. The law, by which you are trying me, holds that there are
no principles, that l have no rights and that you may do with me
whatever you please. Very well. Do it."

“Mr. Rearden, the law which you are denouncing is based on the
highest principle — the principle of the public good/'

“Who is the public 9 What does it hold as its good? Theie was a
time when men believed that v the g<x>d’ was a concept to be defined
by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his
good through the violation of the rights of another If it is now
believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they
please for the sake of whatever they deem to be their own good, if
they believe that they may seize my property simply because they
need it — well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference, the
burglar does not ask me to sanction his act/*

A group of scats at the side of the courtroom was reserved for
the prominent visitors who had come from New York to witness the
trial. Dagny sat motionless and her face showed nothing but a solemn
attention, the attention of listening with the knowledge that the tlow
of his words would determine the course of her life. Eddie Willers
sat beside her. James Taggart had not come. Paul Larkin sat hunched
forward, his face thrust out, pointed like an animal's muzzle, sharp-
ened by a look of fear, now turning into malicious hatred. Mr.
Mowen. who sat beside him, was a man of greater innocence and
smaller understanding; his tear was of a simpler nature; he listened
in bewildered indignation and he whispered to Larkin, “Good God,
now he T s done it! Now he’ll convince the whole country that all
businessmen arc enemies of the public good!"

“Are we to understand," asked the judge, “that you hold your
own interests above the interests of the public? 41

“I hold that such a question can never arise except in a society
of cannibals."

“What . . . what do you mean?”

“I hold that there is no clash of interests among men who do not
demand the unearned and do not practice human sacrifices."

“Are wc to understand that if the public deems it necessary to
curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?"

“Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits jmy time it
wishes — by refusing to buy my product/’

“We are speaking of . . . other methods." ;

“Any other method of curtailing profits is the method $f looters —
and I recognize it as such."

“Mr. Rearden, this is hardly the way to defend yourself/'

“I said that 1 would not defend myself."

442

“Bill this is unheard of! Do you realise the gravity of the charge
against you?”

“I do not care to consider it.”

“Do you realize the possible consequences of your stand?”

“Fully.”

“It is the opinion of this couit that the facts presented by the
prosecution seem to warrant no leniency. The penalty which this
court has the power to impose on you is extremely severe.”

“Go ahead.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Impose it.”

The three judges looked at one another. Then their spokesman
turned back to Rearden. “This is unprecedented,” he said.

“It is completely irregular/' said the second judge. “The law re-
quires you to submit a plea in your own defense. Your only alterna-
tive is to state for the record that you throw yourself upon the mercy
of the court.”

“I do not ”

“But you have to.”

“Do you mean that what you expect from me is some sort of
voluntary action 7 ”

“Yes.”

“1 volunteer nothing.”

“But the law demands that the defendant’s side be represented
on the record.”

“Do you mean that you need my help to make this procedure
legal?”

“Well, no . . . yes . . . that is, to complete the form.”

“1 will not help you.”

The third and youngest judge, who had acted as prosecutor,
snapped impatiently, “ I bis is ridiculous and unfair! Do you want to
let it look as if a man of your prominence had been railroaded
without a — ” He cut himself off short. Somebody at the back of the
courtroom emitted a long whistle.

”1 want,” said Rearden gravely, “to let the nature of this proce-
dure appear exactly for what it is If you need my help to disguise
it —I will not help you.”

“But we aie giving you a chance to defend yourself — and it is you
who are rejecting it.”

d will not help you to pietend that I have a chance, I will not
help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights
are not recognized. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of
rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument.
I will not help you to pretend that you are administering justice.”

“But the law compels you to volunteer a defense!”

There was laughter at the back of the courtroom.

"That is the flaw in your theory, gentlemen,” said Rearden gravely,
and ! will not help you out of it. If you choose to deal with men by
means of compulsion, do so. Bui you will discover that you need the
voluntary co-operation of your victims, in many more ways than you
c «m see at present. And your victims should discover that it is their

443

own volition — which you canuot force— -that makes you possible. I
choose to be consistent and I will obey you in the manner you de-
mand. Whatever you wish me to do, l will do it at the point of a gun.
If you sentence me to jail, you will have to send armed men to carry
me there — 1 will not volunteer to move. If you fine me, you will have
to seize ray property to collect the fine — 1 will not volunteer to pay
it. If you believe that you have the right to force me- -use your guns
openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.”

T Fhc eldest judge leaned forward across the table and his voice
became suavely derisive: "You speak as if you were fighting for some
soft of principle, Mr. Reardcn, but what you're actually fighting lor
is only your property, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course. I am fighting for my property. Do you know the
kind of principle that represents?”

“You pose as a champion of freedom, but it’s only the freedom
to make money that you’re after.”

"Yes. of course. All I want is the freedom to make money. Do
you know what that freedom implies?”

“Surely, Mr. Rearden, you wouldn't want your attitude to be mis-
understood. You wouldn't want to give support to the widespread
impression that you are a man devoid of social conscience, who feels
no concern for the welfare of his fellows and works for nothing but
his own profit.”

"I work for nothing but my own profit. I earn it.”

There was a gasp, not of indignation, but of astonishment, in the
crowd behind him and silence from the judges he faced. He went
on calmly:

“No, 1 do not want my attitude to be misunderstood. 1 shall be
glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts
of everything said about me in the newspapers — with the facts, but
not with the evaluation. 1 work for nothing but my own profit-
which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing
and able to buy it. 1 do not produce it for their benefit at the expense
of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit at the expense of
theirs; l do not sacrifice my interests to them nor do they sacrifice
theirs to me; we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advan-
tage — and I am proud of every penny that 1 have earned in this
manner. 1 am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I made my
money by my own effort, »n free exchange and through the voluntary
consent of every man 1 dealt with — the voluntary consent of those
who employed me when I started, the voluntary consent of those
who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those Who buy my
product. I shall answer all the questions you are afraid to ask me
openly. Do I wish to pay my workers more than their; services are
worth to me? I do not Do I wish to sell my product for less than
my customers are witling to pay me? I do not. Do I wish to sell it
at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do Whatever you
please about me, according to whatever standards you* hold These
are mine. I am earning my own living* as every honest ‘man must. 1
refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact
that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to adeept as guilt

444

the fact that I am able to do it and do it welt. I refuse to accept as
guilt the fact that 1 am able to do it better than most people — the
fact that my work is of greater value than the work of my neighbors
and that more men are willing to pay me. I refuse to apologize for
my ability — I refuse to apologize for my success — I refuse to apolo-
gize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what
the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me.
This is my code — and I will accept no other. I could say to you that
I have done more good for my fellow men than you can ever hope
to accomplish — but l will not say it, because l do not seek the good
of others as a sanction for my right to exist, nor do I recognize the
good of others as a justification for their seizure of my property or
their destruction of my life. I will not say that the good of others
was the purpose of my work — my own good was my purpose, and I
despise the man who surrenders his. I could say to you that you do
not serve the public good — that nobody’s good can be achieved at
the price of human sacrifices — that when you violate the rights of
one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless
creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say to you that you will
and can achieve nothing but universal devastation— as any looter
must, when he runs out of victims. 1 could say it, but l won’t. It is
not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise.
If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning
some men into sacrificial animals, and 1 were asked to immolate
myself for l he sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price
of my blood, if 1 were asked to serve the interests of society apart
from, above and against my own -1 would refuse. I would reject it
as the most contemptible evil, I would tight it with every power I
possess, I would tight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all
l could last before 1 were murdered, l would fight in the full confi-
dence of the justice of my battle and of a living being’s right to exist.
Let there lie no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief
of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their mood
requires victims, then I say. The public good be damned. I will have
no part of it!”

The crowd burst into applause.

Rearden whirled around, more startled than his judges. He saw
faces that laughed in violent excitement, and faces that pleaded for
help; he saw their silent despair breaking out into the open; he saw
the same anger and indignation as his own. finding release in the
wild defiance of their cheering; he saw the looks of admiration and
the looks of hope. There were also the faces of loose-mouthed young
men and maliciously unkempt females, the kind who led the booing
m newsreel theaters at any appearance of a businessman on the
Ncreen; they did not attempt a counter-demonstration; they were
silent.

As he hx>ked at the crowd, people saw in his face what the threats
<>t the judges had not been able to evoke: the first sign of emotion.

It was a few moments before they heard the furious beating of a
gavel upon the table and one of the judges yelling;

u ~or I shall have the courtroom cleared!”

445

As he turned back to the table, Rearden 's eyes moved over the
visitors* section. His glance paused on Dagny: a pause perceptible
only to her, as if he were saying: It works. She would have appeared
calm except that her eyes seemed to have become too large for her
face. Eddie Wtllers was smiling the kind of smile that is a man’s
substitute for breaking into tears. Mr. Mowen looked stupefied. Paul
Larkin was staring at the floor. There was no expression on Bertram
ScuddeFs face — or on Lillian’s. She sat at the end of a row, her legs
crossed, a mink stole slanting from her right shoulder to her left hip;
she looked at Rearden, not moving.

In the complex violence of all the things he felt, he had time to
recognize a touch of regret and of longing: there was a face he had
hoped to see, had looked tor from the start of the session, had
wanted to be present more than any other face around him. But
Francisco d'Ancoma had not come.

“Mr. Rearden,” said the eldest judge, smiling affably, reproach-
fully and spreading his arms, “it is regrettable that you should have
misunderstood us so completely. That’s the trouble — that business-
men refuse to approach us in a spirit of trust and friendship. They
seem to imagine that we are their enemies. Why do you speak ot
human sacrifices? What made you go to such an extreme? We have
no intention of seizing your property or destroying your life. We do
not seek to harm your interests. We are fully aware of your distin-
guished achievements. Our purpose is only to balance social pres-
sures and do justice to all. This hearing is really intended, not as a
trial, but as a friendly discussion aimed at mulual understanding
and cooperation.”

“I do not co-operate at the point of a gun.”

“Why speak of guns? This matter is not serious enough to warrant
such references. We are fully aware that the guilt in this ease lies
chiefly with Mr. Kenneth Da nagger, who instigated this infungcmcnt
of the law, who exerted pressure upon you and who confessed his
guilt by disappearing in order to escape trial.”

“No. We did it by equal, mutual, voluntary agreement ”

“Mr. Rearden,” said the second judge, “you may not share some
of our ideas, but when all is said and done, we’re all working for
the same cause. For the good of the people. We realize that you weic
prompted to disregard legal technicalities by the critical situation ol
the coal mines and the crucial importance of fuel to the public
welfare.”

“No. I was prompted by my own profit and mv own interests
What effect it had on the coal mines and the public welfare is for
you to estimate. That was not mv motive.”

Mr. Mowen stared dazedly about him and whispered Ut Paul Lar
kin, “Something’s gone screwy here.”

“Oh, shut up!” snapped Larkin.

“I am sure, Mr. Rearden,” said the eldest judge, “that you do not
really believe— nor does the public— that we wish to ire^l you as a
sacrificial victim. If anyone has been laboring under such 4 misappre-
hension, we arc anxious to prove that if is not true.”

The judges retired to consider their verdict. They did not stay out

446

long: They returned to an ominously silent courtroom — and an-
nounced that a fine of $5,000 was imposed on Henry Rearden, but
that the sentence was suspended.

Streaks of jeering laughter ran through the applause that swept
the courtroom. The applause was aimed at Rearden, the laughter*—
at the judges.

Rearden stood motionless, not turning to the crowd, barely hearing
the applause. He stood looking at the judges. There was no triumph
in his face, no elation, only the still intensity of contemplating a
vision with a bitter wonder that was almost fear. He was seeing the
enormity of the smallness ot the enemy who was destroying the
world. He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of
devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful
engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the de-
spoiler. expecting to find a giant — and had found a rat eager to scurry
for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has
beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.

He was jolted back into the courtroom by the people pressing to
surround him. He smiled in answer to their smiles, to the frantic,
tragic eagerness of their faces; there was a touch of sadness in his
smile.

“God bless you, Mr. Rearden!” said an old woman with a ragged
shawl over hei head. "Can't you save us, Mr. Rearden? They're
eating us alive, and it’s no use fooling anybody about how it’s the
rich that they’re after -do you know what's happening to us?”

“Listen. Mr. Rearden.” said a man who looked like a factory
worker, “it's the rich who're selling us down the river. Tell those
wealthy bastards, who'ic so anxious to give everything away, that
when they give away their palaces, they’re giving away the skin off
our backs.”

“I know it.” said Rearden.

The guilt is ours, he thought. If we who were the movers, the
providers, the benefactors of mankind, were willing to let the brand
ot evil be stamped upon us and silently to bear punishment for our
viitues -what sort of “good” did we expect to triumph in the world?

He looked at the people around him. They had cheered him today;
they had cheered him by the side of the track of the John Galt Line,
but tomorrow they would clamor for a new directive from Wesley
Mouch and a free housing project from Orren Boyle, while Boyle’s
girders collapsed upon their heads. They would do it. because they
would be told to forget, as a sin, that which had made them cheer
flank Rearden.

Why were they ready to renounce their highest moments as a sin?
Why were they willing to betray the best within them? W'hat made
than believe that this earth was a realm of evil where despair was
their natural fate? He could not name the reason, but he knew that
a had to be named. He fell it as a huge question mark within the
courtroom, which it was now his duty to answer.

This jvas the real sentence imposed upon him, he thought — to
discover what idea, what simple idea available to the simplest man.
had made mankind accept the doctrines that led it to self-destruction.

447

“Hank* HI never think that it’s hopeless, not ever again,'’ said
Dagny that evening, after the trial. ‘Til never be tempted to quit.
You’ve proved that the right always works and always wins — ” She
stopped, then added “—provided one knows what is the right.”

Lillian said to him at dinner next day, "So you've won, have you?”
Her voice was noncommittal; she said nothing else; she was watching
him, as if studying a riddle.

The Wet Nurse asked him at the mills, "Mr. Rearden, what’s a
moral premise?” "What you’re going to have a lot of trouble with.”
The boy frowned, then shrugged and said, laughing, "God, that was
a wonderful show! What a beating you gave them, Mr. Rearden! I
sat by the radio and howled.” "How do you know it was a beating?"
"Well, it was. wasn’t it?” "Are you sure of it?” "Sure I’m sure.”
"The thing that makes you sure is a moral premise.”

The newspapers were silent. After the exaggerated attention they
had given to the case, they acted as if the trial were not worthy of
notice. They printed brief accounts on unlikely pages, worded in such
generalities that no reader could discover any hint of a controver-
sial issue.

The businessmen he met seemed to wish to evade the subject of
his trial. Some made no comment at all, hut turned away, their faces
showing a peculiar resentment under the effort to appear noncom-
mittal as if they feared that the mere act of looking at him would
be interpreted as taking a stand. Others ventured to comment: "In
my opinion, Rearden, it was extremely unwise of you. ... It seems
to me that this is hardly the lime to make enemies . . . We can’t
afford to arouse resentment."

"Whose resentment?” he asked.

"I don’t think the government will like it.”

"You saw the consequences of that."

"Well, i .don't know . . . The public won’t take it, there’s bound
to be a lot of indignation.”

"You saw how the public took it."

"Well, 1 don’t know . . We've been trying hard not to give any
grounds for all those accusations about selfish greed — and you’ve
given ammunition to the enemy.”

"Would you rather agree with the enemy that you have no right
to your profits and your property?”

"Oh, no, no, certainly not — but why go to extremes? There’s al-
ways a middle ground.”

"A middle ground between you and your murderers?'

"Now why use such words?”

"What I said at the trial, was it true or not?”

"It’s going to be misquoted and misunderstood.”

"Was it true or not?”

"The public is too dumb to grapple with such issues.”

"Was it true or not?”

"It s no time to boast about being rich — when the populace is
starving. It’s just goading them on to seize everything.”

448

“But telling them that you have no right to your wealth, while
they have— is what’s going to restrain them?'’ .

“Well, l don't know . .

“1 don’t like the things you said at your trial,” said another man.
in my opinion, I don’t agree with you at all. Personally, I’m proud
to believe that 1 am working for the public good, not just for my
own profit. I like to think that 1 have some goal higher than just
earning my three meals a day and my Hammond limousine,”

“And 1 don’t like that idea about no directives and no controls,”
said another. “I grant you they’re running hog-wild and overdoing
it But — no controls at all? 1 don’t go along with that. I think some
controls are necessary. The ones which are for the public good.”

“I am sorry, gentlemen,” said Rearden, “that I will be obliged to
save your goddamn necks along with mine.”

A group of businessmen headed by Mr. Mowen did not issue any
statements about the trial. But a week later they announced, with
an inordinate amount of publicity, that they were endowing the con-
struction of a playground for the children of the unemployed.

Bertram Scudder did not mention the trial in his column. But ten
days later, he wrote, among items of miscellaneous gossip: “Some
idea of the public value of Mr. Hank Rearden may be gathered from
the fact that of all social groups, he seems to be most unpopular
with his own fellow businessmen His old-fashioned brand of ruth-
Icssness seems to be too much even for those predatory barons of
piolit ”

On an evening in December— when the street beyond his window
was like a congested throat coughing with the horns of pre-Christmas
traffic -Rearden sat in his room at the Wayne-Palkland Hotel, fight-
ing an enemy more dangerous than weariness or tear: revulsion
against the thought ol having to deal with human beings.

He sat, unwilling to venture into the streets of the city, unwilling
to move, as if he were chained to his chair and to this room. He
had tried for hours to ignore an emotion that felt like the pull of
homesickness: his awareness that the only man whom he longed to
sec. was here, in this hotel, just a few floors above him

He had caught himself, in the past few weeks, wasting lime in the
lobby whenever he entered the hotel or left it, loitering unnecessarily
at the mail counter or the newsstand, watching the hurried currents
of people, hoping to see Francisco d’Anconia among them. He had
caught himself eating solitary dinners in the restaurant of the Wayne-
lalkland, with his eyes on the curtains of the entrance doorway.
Now he caught himself sitting in his room, thinking that the distance
was only a few floors.

i He rose to his feel, with a chuckle of amused indignation; he was
| Acting, he thought, like a woman who waits for a telephone call and
fights against the temptation to end the torture by making the first
move. There was no reason, he thought, why he could not go to
Francisco d’Anconia, if that was what he wanted. Yet when he told
, himself that he would, he felt some dangerous element of surrender
m the intensity of his own relief.

He made a step toward the phone, to call Francisco’s suite, but

449

stopped* It was not what he wanted; what he wanted was simply to
walk in, unannounced, as Francisco had walked into his office; it was
this that seemed to state some unstated right between them.

On his way to the elevator, he thought: He won’t be in or, if he
is, you’ll probably find him entertaining some floozie, which will
serve you right. But the thought seemed unreal, he could not make
it apply to the man he had seen at the mouth of the furnace — he
stood confidently in the elevator, looking up — he walked confidently
down the hall, feeling his bitterness relax into gaiety — he knocked
at the door.

Francisco’s voice snapped, “Come in!” It had a brusque, absent-
minded sound.

Rearden opened the door and stopped on the threshold. One ot
the hotel’s costliest satin-shaded lamps stood in the middle ol the
floor, throwing a circle of light on wide sheets of drafting paper,
Francisco d’Anconia. in shirt sleeves, a strand of hair hanging down
over his face, lay stretched on the floor, on his stomach, propped up
by his elbows, biting the end of a pencil in concentration upon some
point of the intricate tracing before him. He did not look up, he
seemed to have forgotten the knock. Rearden tried to distinguish the
drawing: it looked like the section of a smeltei. He stood watching in
startled wonder; had he had the power to bring into reality his own
image of Francisco d’Anconia. this was the picture he would have
seen: the figure of a purposeful young worker intent upon a diffi-
cult task.

In a moment, Francisco raised his head. In the next instant, he
flung his body upward to a kneeling posture, looking at Rearden
with a smile of incredulous pleasure. In the next, he seized the draw-
ings and threw them aside too hastily, face down.

“What did I interrupt?” asked Rearden.

“Nothing much. Come in.” He was grinning happily. Rearden felt
suddenly certain that Francisco had waited, too, had waited tor this
as for a victory which he had not quite hoped to achieve,

“What were you doing?” asked Rearden.

“Just amusing myself.”

“Lei me sec it.”

“No.” He rose and kicked the drawings aside.

Rearden noted that if he had resented as impertinence Francisco’s
manner of proprietorship in his office, he himself was now guilty ot
the same attitude— because he offered no explanation for his visit,
but crossed the room and sat down in an armchair, cusually, as if he
were at home.

“Why didn’t you come to continue what you had started?” he
asked.

“You have been continuing it brilliantly without my jhelp.”

“Do you mean, my trial?”

“I mean, your trial.”

“How do you know? You weren’t there.” »

Francisco smiled, because the tone of the voice confessed an added
sentence: I was looking for you. “Don’t you suppose if heard every
word of it on the radio?”

450

'‘You did? Well how did you like hearing your own lines come
over the air, with me as your stooge?”

‘You weren't, Mr. Rearden. They weren't my lines. Weren't they
the things you had always lived by?”

“Yes.”

“1 only helped you to see that you should have been proud to live
by them.”

“I am glad you heard it.”

“It was great, Mr. Rearden — and about three generations loo
late,”

“What do you mean?”

“If one single businessman had had the courage, then, to say that
he worked for nothing but his own profit — and to say it proudly —
he would have saved the world.”

“I haven't given up the world as lost.”

“It isn’t. It can never be. But oh God!* -what he would have
spared us!”

“Well, 1 guess we have to light, no matter what era we’re
caught in.”

“Yes . . . You know, Mr. Rearden, I would suggest that you get
a transcript of your trial and read what you said Then see whether
you are practicing it fully and consistently -or not.”

“You mean that I'm not?”

“See for yourself.”

“I know that you had a great deal to tell me, when we were
interrupted, that night at the mills. Why don’t you finish what you
had to say?"

“No. It’s too soon.”

Francisco acted as if there were nothing unusual about this visit,
as if he took it as a matter of natural course — as he had always acted
in Reardon’s presence. But Rearden noted that he was not so calm
as he wished to appear: he was pacing the room, in a manner that
seemed a release for an emotion he did not want to confess: he
had forgotten the lamp and it still stood on the floor as the room's
sole illumination.

“You've been taking an awful beating in the way of discoveries,
haven’t you?” said Francisco. “How did you like the behavior of
\our fellow businessmen?”

“I suppose it was to be expected.”

His voice tense with the anger of compassion, Francisco said, “It’s
been twelve years and yet I'm still unable to see it indifferently!” The
sentence sounded involuntarily, as if. trying to suppress the sound of
emotion, he had uttered suppressed words.

“Twelve years — since what?” asked Rearden.

There was an instant’s pause, but Francisco answered calmly,
“Since I understood what those men were doing.” He added, “I
know, what you're going through right now . . . and what’s still
ahead.”

“ Thanks,” said Rearden.

“For what?”

“For what you're trying so hard not to show. But don't worry

451

about me. I'm still able to stand it* . . . You know, I didn’t come
here because I wanted to talk about myself or even about the trial.”

*T11 agree to any subject you choose — in order to have you here.”
He said it in the tone of a courteous joke; but the tone could not
disguise it; he meant it. “What did you want to talk about?”

“You.”

Francisco stopped. He looked at Rearden for a moment, then an-
swered quietly, “AH right.”

If that which Rearden felt could have gone directly into words,
past the barrier of his will, he would have cried: Don’t let me down—
I need you — I am fighting all of them, 1 have fought to my limit and
am condemned to light beyond it— -and, as sole ammunition possible
to me, I need the knowledge of one single man whom I can trust,
respect and admire.

Instead, he said calmly, very simply— and the only note of a per*
sonal bond between them was that tone of sincerity which comes
with a direct, unqualifiedly rational statement and implies the same
honesty of mind in the listener — “You know, 1 think that the only
real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the
attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the
contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the con-
cept of rationality in his victim.”

“That’s true.”

“If I say that that is the dilemma you've put me in, would you
help me by answering a personal question?”

“I will try.”

“I don’t have to tell you™ l think you know it— that you are the
man of the highest mind 1 have ever met. I am coming to accept,
not as right, but at least as possible, the fact that you refuse to
exercise your great ability in the world of today. But what a man
does out of despair, rs not necessarily a key to his character. 1 have
always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his
enjoyment. And this is what 1 find inconceivable: no matter what
you’ve given up, so long as you chose to remain alive, how can you
find any pleasure in spending a life as valuable as yours on running
after cheap women and on an imbecile’s idea of diversions?”

Francisco looked at him with a fine smile of amusement, as it
saying: No? You didn’t want to talk about yourself? And what is it
that you’re confessing but the desperate loneliness which makes the
question of my character more important to you than any other
question right now?

The smile merged into a soft, good-natured chuckle, as if the ques-
tion involved no problem for him, no painful secret to reveal
"There’s a way to solve every dilemma of that kind, Mr. Rearden.
Check your premises.” He sat down on the floor, settjing himself
gaily, informally, for a conversation he would enjoy. “Is Jt your own
first-hand conclusion that I am a man of high mind?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know of your own first-hand knowledge thatjl spend my
life running after women ?” J

"You’ve never denied it.”

452

“Denied it? I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to create that impression*”

“Do you mean to say that it isn’t true?”

“Do I strike you as a man with a miserable inferiority complex?”

“Good God, no!”

“Only that kind of man spends his life running after women.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember what 1 said about money and about the men
vho seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? ITie men who try
o replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the
nan who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual ad*
/entures— -which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an
effect and an expression of a man's sense of his own value.”

“You’d belter explain that.”

“Did it ever occur to you that it’s the same issue? The men who
hink that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellec-
ual root or meaning, are the men who think — for the same reason —
hat sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one’s
nind, choice or code of values. They think that your body creates a
iesire and makes a choice for you just about in some such way as
t iron ore transformed itself into railroad rails of its own volition.
Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the
>ower of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man's sexual choice is the
vsult and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a
nan finds sexually attractive and l will tell you his entire philosophy
)t life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his
valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he's taught about
the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all
■ictx, an act which he cannot perforin for any motive but his own
,* n joy men t— -just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless
charity! — an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self*
exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy
of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well
as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. He
will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision
of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience —
or to fake— a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain
of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find,
the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer —
because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of
an achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut. He does not
seek to . . . What’s the matter?” he asked, seeing the look on Rear-
den's face, a look of intensity much beyond mere interest in an
abstract discussion.

Go on," said Reardon tensely.

“He does not seek to gam his value, he seeks to express it. There
i'- no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of
his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness
will be drawn to a woman he despises — because she will reflect his
own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in
which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his
°wn value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns

453

him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex
lives — and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as
their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our
response to our highest values — and can be nothing else. Let a man
corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love
is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride,
but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is
bom, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values,
but in response to flaws — and he will have cut himself in two. His
body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent
toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest
type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate
logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values,
he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attract him.
He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is
worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel
that vice is the only realm of pleasuie. Then he will scream that his
body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer,
that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of the spirit. And
then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and
sex — nothing but shame/'

Reardon said slowly, looking off. not realizing that he was thinkinu
aloud, "At least . . I've never accepted that other tenet l\c
never felt guillv about making money/’

Francisco missed the significance of the first two words; he smiled
and said eagerly, ‘You do see that it's the same issue? No, you d
never accept any part of their vicious creed. You wouldn't be able
to force it upon yourself. 11 you tried to damn sex as evil, you'd stdf
find yourself, against your will, acting on the proper moral premise
You’d be attracted to the highest woman you met. You'd alwav^
want a heroine. You'd be incapable of sclt-contempt You’d be un
able to believe that existence is evil and that you're a helpless crea-
ture caught in an impossible universe. You’re the man who’s spent
his life shaping matter to the purpose of his mind. You’re the man
who would know that just as an idea unexpressed in physical action
is contemptible hypocrisy, so is platonic love — and just as physical
action unguided by an idea is a fool’s self-fraud, so is sex when cut
off from one's code of values, ft’s the same issue, and you would
know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. >tou
would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised. Only the
man who extols the purity of a love devoid of desire, is capable ol
the depravity of a desire devoid of love. But observe that most peo-
ple are creatures cut in half who keep swinging desperately to one
side or to the other. One kind of half is the man Who despises
money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined
emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaniitg of life and
as his claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, becau;& he can feel
nothing for the woman he respects, but finds himself 4 bondage to
an irresistible passion for a slut from the gutter. He is ttje man whom
people call an idealist. The other kind of half is the man whom
people call practical, the man who despises principles. j abstractions.

454

art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of
material objects as the only goal of existence — and he laughs at the
need to consider their purpose or their source. He expects them to
give him pleasure— and he wonders why the more he gets, the less
he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe
the triple fraud which he perpetrates upon himself. He will not ac-
knowledge his need of self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept
as moial values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes
from believing that he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge,
but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to
personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the
effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries
to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to
him — and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character
nor judgment nor standard of value. He tells himself that all he’s
after is physical pleasure — but observe that he tires of his women in
a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he
loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great
exception for his sake. It is the feeling ot achievement that he seeks
and never finds. What glorv can there be in the conquest of a mind-
less body? Now that is your woman-chaser. Does the description
tit me'”'

“(Jod, no!”

“Then you can judge, without asking my word for it. how much
chasing of women I've done in my life.*'

“Hut what on earth have you been doing on the front pages of
newspapers for the last -isn’t it twelve— years?”

“I've spent a lot ot money on the most ostentatiously vulgar par-
ties 1 could think of, and a miserable amount ot time on being seen
with the appropriate sort of women. As tor the rest — ” He stopped,
then said. “I have some friends who know this, but you are the first
person to whom I am confiding it against my own rules: I have never
slept with any of those women, f have never touched one of them.”

“What is more incredible than that, is that I believe you,”

The lamp on the floor beside him threw broken bits of light across
Francisco’s face, as he leaned forward, the face had a look of guiltless
amusement. “If you care to glance over those front pages, you'll see
that I’ve never said anything. It was the women who were eager to
ru^h into print with stones insinuating that being seen with me at a
restaurant was the sign of a great romance. What do you suppose
those women are after but the same thing as the chaser — the desire
to gam their own value from the number and fame of the men they
conquer? Only it's one step phonier, because the value they seek is
not even in the actual fact, but in the impression on and the envy
of other women. Well, 1 gave those bitches what they wanted- -but
what they literally wanted, without the pretense that they expected,
the pretense that hides from them the nature of tbeir wish, Do you
think they wanted to sleep with me or with any man? They wouldn't
he capable of so real and honest a desire. They wanted food for
their vanity — and l gave it to them. I gave them the chance to boast
to their friends and to see themselves in the scandal sheets in the

455

roles of great seductress. But do you know that it works in exactly
the same way as what you did at your trial? If you want to defeat
any kind of vicious fraud — comply with it literally, adding nothing
of your own to disguise its nature. Those women understood. They
saw whether there's any satisfaction in being envied by others for a
feat. one has not achieved. Instead of self-esteem, their publicized
romances with me have given them a deeper sense of inferiority:
each one of them knows that she’s tried and tailed. If dragging me
into bed is supposed to be her public standard of value, she knows
that she couldn’t live up to it. i think those women hate me more
than any other man on earth. But my secret is safe — because each
one of them thinks that she was the only one who failed, while all
the others succeeded, so she’ll be the more vehement in swearing to
our romance and will never admit the truth to anybody.”

“But what have you done to your own reputation?”

Francisco shrugged. “Those whom I respect, will know the truth
about me, sooner or later. The others”— his face hardened — “the
others consider that which l really am as evil. Let them have what
they prefer — what I appear to be on the front pages.”

“But what for? Why did >ou do it? Just to teach them a lesson?”

“Hell, no! I wanted to be known as a playboy.”

“Why?”

“A playboy is a man who just can’t help letting money run through
his fingers.”

“Why did you want to assume such an ugly sort of role?”

“Camouflage.”

“For what?”

“For a purpose of my own.”

“What purpose?”

Francisco shook his head. “Don’t ask me to tell you that. Lve
told you mor6 than I should. You’ll come to know the rest of it
soon, anyway.”

“If it’s more than you should, why did you tell me?”

“Because, . . you’ve made me become impatient for the first time
in years.” The note of a suppressed emotion came back into his
voice. “Because I’ve never wanted anyone to know the truth about
me as l wanted you to know it. Because 1 knew that you’d despise
a playboy more than any other sort of man — as I would, too Play-
boy? I've never loved but one woman in my life and still do and
always will 1 ” It was an involuntary break, and he added, his voice
low, “I've never confessed that to anyone . . . not even to her.”

“Have you lost her?”

Francisco sat looking off into space; in a moment, he answered
toneiessly, “I hope not.”

The light of the lamp hit his face from below, and ReaiiJen could
not sec his eyes, only his mouth drawn in lines of endufance and
oddly solemn resignation. Reardcn knew that this was a vtound not
to be probed any further.

With one of his swift changes of mt>od, Francisco said, f‘Oh well,
it's just a little longer!” and rose to his feet, smiting.

“Since you trust me.” said Reardcn* “1 want to tell yo|i a secret

456

of mine in exchange. I want you to know how much 1 trusted you
before I came here. And l might need your help later, 1 "

“You’re the only man left whom Pd like to help.”

“There’s a great deal that 1 don’t understand about you, but I’m
certain of one thing: that you’re not a friend of the looters/’

“I’m not.” There was a hint of amusement in Francisco’s face, as
at an understatement.

“So l know that you won’t betray me if I tell you that Pm going
to continue selling Rearden Metal to customers of my own choice
in any amount I wish, whenever 1 see a chance to do it. Right now.
I’m getting ready to pour an order twenty times the s tec of the one
they tried me for.”

Sitting on the arm of a chair, a few feet away, Francisco leaned
torward to look at him silently, frowning, for a long moment. “Do
you think that you're fighting them by doing it?” he asked.

“Well, what would you call it? Co-operating?”

“You were willing to work and produce Rearden Metal for them
at the price of losing your profits, losing your friends, enriching stray
bastards who had the pull to rob you, and taking their abuse for the
privilege of keeping them alive. Now you’re willing to do it at the
pnee of accepting the position of a criminal and the risk of being
thrown m jail at any moment — for the sake of keeping in existence
a system which can be kept going only by its victims, only by the
breaking of its own laws,”

“It’s not for their system, but for customers whom 1 can’t abandon
to the mercy ot their system — I intend to outlast that system of
theirs — 1 don’t intend to let them stop me, no matter how hard they
make it for me— and I don’t intend to give up the world to them,
even it 1 am the last man left. Right now, that illegal order is more
important to me than the whole of my mills.”

Francisco shook his head slowly and did not answer; then he asked,

' To which one of your friends in the copper industry are you going
to give the valuable privilege of informing on you this time?”

Rearden smiled. “Not this time. This time. Pm dealing with a man
I can trust,”

“Really? Who is it?”

“You.”

Francisco sat up straight. “What?” he asked, his voice so low that
lie almost succeeded in hiding the sound of a gasp.

Rearden was smiling. “You didn’t know that Pm one of your
customers now? It was done through a couple of stooges and under
a phony name— but PH need your help to prevent anyone on your
staff from becoming inquisitive about it, 1 need that copper, I need
it on time —and 1 don’t care if they arrest me later, so long as 1 get
this through. 1 know that you've, lost all concern for your company,
\our wealth, your work, because you don’t care to deal with looters
Taggart and Hoyle. But if you meant all the things you taught
me, it I am the last man left whom you respect, you’ll help me to
survive and to beat them. I’ve never asked for anyone’s help. Pm
^kirtg tor yours. 1 need you. t trust you. You’ve always professed
vour admiration for me. Well, there’s my life in your hands — if you

457

want it. An order of d’Anconia copper is being shipped to me right
now. It left San Juan on December fifth.”

"What?!”

It was a scream of plain shock. Francisco had shot to his feet, past
any attempt to hide anything. “On December fifth?"

“Yes." said Rearden, stupefied.

Francisco leaped to the telephone. “I told you not to deal with
d’Anconia Copper!" It was the half-moaning, half-furious cry of
despair.

His hand was reaching for the telephone, but jerked back. He
grasped the edge of the table, as if to stop himself from lifting the
receiver, and he stood, head down, for how long a time neither he
nor Rearden could tell. Rearden was held numb by the fact of watch-
ing an agonized struggle with the motionless figure of a man as its
only evidence. He could not guess the nature of the struggle, he
knew only that there was something which Francisco had the power
to prevent in that moment and that it was a power which he would
not use.

When Francisco raised his head, Rearden saw a face drawn by so
great a suffering that its lines were almost an audible cry of pain,
the more terrible because the face had a look of firmness, as if the
decision had been made and this was the price ot it,

“Francisco . . . what’s the matter?”

“Hank, I . . He shook his head, stopped, then stood up straight,
“Mr. Rearden," he said, in a voice that had the strength, the despan
and the peculiar dignity of a plea he knew to be hopeless, “for the
time when you're going to damn me, when you're going to doubt
every word 1 said . . I swear to you — by the woman 1 love -that l
am your friend."

The memory of Francisco's face as it looked in that moment, came
back to Rearden three days later, through a blinding shock of loss
and hatred — U came back, even though, standing by the radio in his
office, he thought that he must now keep away from the Wayne-
Falkland or he would kill Francisco d’Anconia on sight — it kept com-
ing back to him, through the words he was hearing— -he was hearing
that three ships ot d'Anconia copper, bound Irom San Juan to New
York, had been attacked by Ragnar Danneskjold and sent to the
bottom of the ocean— it kept coming back, even though he knew thru
much more than the copper had gone down for him with those shipv

Chapter V ACCOUNT OVERDRAWN

It was the first failure in the history of Rearden Steel For the first
time, an order was not delivered as promised. Bui by February 15,
when the Taggart rail was due, it made no difference tn anyone
any longer.

Winter had come early, in the last days of November. ^People said
that it was the hardest winter on record and that no o$e could be
blamed for the unusual severity of the snowstorms. They did not
care to remember that there had been a time when snoWstorms did

458

not sweep, unresisted, down unlighted rends and upon the roofs of
unheated houses, did not stop the movement of trains, did not leave
a wake of corpses counted by the hundreds.

The first time that Danagger Coal was late in delivering fuel to
Taggart Transcontinental, in the last week of December, Danagger’s
cousin explained that he could not help it; he had had to cut the
workday down to six hours, he said, in order to raise the morale of
the men who did not seem to function as they had in the days of
his cousin Kenneth; the men had become listless and sloppy, he said,
because they were exhausted by the harsh discipline of the former
management; he could not help it if some of the superintendents and
foremen had quit him without reason, men who had been with the
company for ten to twenty years; he could not help it if there seemed
to be some friction between his workers and his new supervisory
slatf, even though the new men were much more liberal than the
old slave drivers; it was only a matter of readjustment, he said. He
could not help it, he said, il the tonnage intended for Taggart Trans-
continental had been turned over, on the eve of its scheduled deliv-
ery, to the Bureau of Global Relic! for shipment to the People’s
State of Lngland; it was an emergency, the people o( England were
starving, with all of their Slate factories dosing down— -and Miss
Taggart was being unreasonable, since it was only a matter of one
day’s delay,

ll was only one day's delay. It caused a three days' delay in the
run of Freight Train Number .*86, bound from California to New
York with (Uly-nme carloads of lettuce and oranges. Freight Train
Number 386 waited on sidings, at coaling stations, for the fuel that
had not arrived. When the train reached New York, the lettuce and
oranges had to be dumped into the Hast River: they had waited their
turn too long in the freight houses of California, with the train sched-
ules cut and the engines forbidden, by directive, to pull a train of
more than sixty cars. Nobody but their friends and trade associates
noticed that three orange growers in California went out of business,
as well as two lettuce farmers in Imperial Valley: nobody noticed
I he closing of a commission house m New York, of a plumbing com-
pany to which the commission house owed money, of a lead pipe
wholesaler who had supplied the plumbing company. When people
were starving, said the newspapers, one did not have to feel concern
over the failures of business enterprises which were only private
ventures for private profit.

The coal shipped across the Atlantic by the Bureau of Global
Relief did not reach the People’s State of England: it was seized by
Kagnar Danncskjftld.

The second time that Danagger Coal was late in delivering fuel to
Taggart Transcontinental, in mid-January, DanaggeCs cousin snarled
over the telephone that he could not help it: his mines had been
s hut down for three days, due to a shortage of lubricating oil for the
machinery. The supply of coal to Taggart Transcontinental was four
days late.

Mr. Quinn, of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company which had once
moved ’from Connecticut to Colorado, waited a week for the freight

459

train that carried his order to Rearden Steel. When the train arrived,
the doors of the Quinn Ball Bearing Company’s plant were closed.

Nobody traced the closing of a motor company in Michigan, that
bad waited for a shipment of ball bearings, its machinery idle, its
workers on full pay; or the closing of a sawmill in Oregon, that had
waited for a new motor, or the dosing of a lumber yard in Iowa,
left without supply; or the bankruptcy of a building contractor in
Illinois who, failing to get his lumber on time, found his contracts
cancelled and the purchasers of his homes sent wandering off down
snowswept roads in search of that which did not exist anywhere
any longer.

The snowstorm that came at the end of January blocked the passes
through the Rocky Mountains, raising white walls thirty feet high
across the main-line track of Taggart Transcontinental. The men who
attempted to clear the track gave up within the first few hours: the
rotary plows broke down, one after another: The plows had been
kept in precarious repair for two years past the span of their use-
fulness. The new plows had not been delivered: the manufacturer
had quit, unable to'obtain the steel he needed from Orren Boyle.

Three westbound trains were trapped on the sidings of Winston
Station, high in the Rockies, where the main line of Taggart Trans-
continental cut across the northwest corner of Colorado. For five
days, they remained beyond the reach of help. Trains could not ap-
proach them through the storm. The last of the trucks made by
Lawrence Hammond broke down on the frozen grades of the moun-
tain highways. The best of the airplanes once made by Dwight Sand-
ers were sent out. but never reached Winston Station; they were
worn past the stage of fighting a storm.

Through the driving mesh of snow, the passengers trapped aboard
the trains looked out at the lights of Winston's shanties. The lights
died in the night of the second day. By the evening of the third, the
lights, the heat and the food had given out aboard the trains. In the
brief lulls of the storm, when the white mesh vanished and left be-
hind it the’stiilness of a black void merging a lightless earth with a
starless sky — the passengers could see, many miles away to the south,
a small tongue of flame twisting in the wind. It was Wyatt’s Torch

By the morning of the sixth day, when the trains were able to
move and proceeded down the slopes of Utah, of Nevada, of Califor-
nia, the trainmen observed the smokeless stacks and the closed doors
of small tracksidc factories, which had not been closed on their
last run.

"Storms are an act of God,*’ wrote Bertram Scudder, "and nobody
can be held socially responsible for the weather.”

The rations of coal, established by Wesley Mouch, permitted the
heating of homes for three hours a day. There was no wood to burn,
no metal to make new stoves, no tools to pierce the vialls of the
houses for new installations. In makeshift contraptions off bricks and
oil cans, professors were burning the books of their libraries, and
fruit-growers were burning the trees of their orchards. ^Privations
strengthen a people’s spirit,” wrote Bertram Scudder, “and forge the

460

fine steel of social discipline. Sacrifice is the cement which unites
human bricks into the great edifice of society/’

“The nation which had once held the creed that greatness is
achieved by production* is now told that il is achieved by squalor,”
said Francisco d’Ancoma in a press interview. But this was not
printed.

The only business boom, that winter, came to the amusement in-
dustry. People wrenched their pennies out of the quicksands of their
food and heat budgets, and went without meals in order to crowd
into movie theaters, in order to escape for a few hours the state of
animals reduced to the single concern of terror over their crudest
needs. In January, all movie theaters, night dubs and bowling alleys
were closed by order of Wesley Mouch. for the purpose of conserv-
ing fuel. “Pleasure is not an essential of existence,” wrote Bertram
Scudder.

“You must learn to take a philosophical attitude,” said Dr. Simon
Pritchett to a young girl student who broke down into sudden, hys-
terical sobs in the middle of a lecture. She had just returned from a
volunteer relief expedition to a settlement on Lake Superior; she
had seen a mother holding the body of a grown son who had died
of hunger. “There are no absolutes,” said Dr. Pritchett. “Reality is
only an illusion. How does that woman know that her son is dead?
How does she know that he ever existed?”

People with pleading eyes and despciate faces crowded into tents
where evangelists cried in triumphant gloating that man was unable
to cope with nature, that his science was a fraud, that his mind was
a failure, that he was reaping punishment for the sin of pride, for
his confidence in his own intellect ~ and that only faith in the power
of mystic secrets could protect him from the fissure of a rail or from
the blowout of the last tire on his last truck. Love was the key to
the mystic secrets, they cried, love and selfless sacrifice to the needs
of others.

Orren Boyle made a selfless sacrifice to the needs of others. He
sold to the Bureau ol Global Relief, for shipment to the People's
State of Germany, ten thousand tons of structural steel shapes that
had been intended for the Atlantic Southern Railroad, “tl was a
difficult decision to make,” he said, with a moist, unfocused look of
righteousness, to the panic-stricken president of the Atlantic South-
ern, “but l weighed the fact that you're a rich corporation, while the
people of Germany are in a state of unspeakable misery. So l acted
on the principle that need comes first. When in doubt, it’s the weak
that must be considered, not the strong.” The president of the Atlan-
tic Southern had heard that Orren Boyle’s most valuable friend in
Washington had a friend m the Ministry of Supply of the People/s
State of Germany. But whether this had been Boyle’s motive or
whether it had been the principle of sacrifice, no one could tell and
it made no difference: if Boyle had been a saint of the creed of
selflessness, he would have had to do precisely what he had done.
This silenced the president of the Atlantic Southern; he dared not
admit that he cared for his railroad more than for the people of
Germany; he dared not argue against the principle of sacrifice.

461

The waters of the Mississippi had been rising all through the
month of January, swollen by the storms, driven by the wind into a
restless grinding of current and against every obstruction in their
way. On a night of lashing sleet, in the first week of February, the
Mississippi bridge of the Atlantic Southern collapsed under a passen-
ger train. The engine and the first live sleepers went down with the
cracking girders into the twisting black spirals of water eighty feet
below. The rest of the train remained on the fir-$t three spans of the
bridge, which held.

“You can’t have your cake and let your neighbor eat it, too,” said
Francisco d’Anconia. The fury of denunciations which the holders
of public voices unleashed against him was greater than their concern
over the horror at the river.

It was whispered that the chief engineer of the Atlantic Southern,
in despair over the company’s failure to obtain the steel he needed
to reinforce the bridge, had resigned six months ago, telling the com-
pany that the bridge was unsafe. He had written a letter to the
largest newspaper in New York, warning the public about it; the
letter had not been printed. It was whispered that the first three
spans of the bridge had held because they had been reinforced with
structural shapes of Rearden Metal; but five hundred tons of the
Metal was all that the railroad had been able to obtain under the
Fair Share Law.

As the sole result of official investigations, two bridges across the
Mississippi, belonging to smaller railroads, were condemned. One of
the railroads went out of business; the other closed a branch line,
tore up its rail and laid a track to the Mississippi bridge of Taggart
Transcontinental; so did the Atlantic Southern.

The great Taggart Bridge at Bedford, Illinois, had been built by
Nathaniel Taggart. He had fought the government for years, because
the courts had ruled, on the complaint of river shippers, that rail-
roads were a destructive competition to shipping and thus a threat
to the public welfare, and that railroad bridges across the Mississippi
were to be 'forbidden as a material obstruction; the courts had or-
dered Nathamal Taggart to tear down his bridge and to carry his
passengers across the river by means of barges. He had won that
battle by a majority of one voice on the Supreme Court. His bridge
was now the only major link left to hold the continent together. His
last descendant had made it her strictest rule that whatever else
was neglected, the Taggart Bridge would always be maintained in
flawless shape.

The steel shipped across the Atlantic by the Bureau of Global
Relief had not reached the People s State of Germany. It had been
seized by Ragnar Danneskjdld — but nobody heard of it qutsidc the
Bureau, because the newspapers had long since stopped Mentioning
the activities of Ragnar Danneskjdld.

It was not until the public began to notice the growing shortage,
then the disappearance from the market of electric ironjs, toasters,
washing machines and all electrical appliances, that pcopfc began to
ask questions and to hear whispers. They heard that no Aitp loaded

462

with d’Anconia copper was able to reach a port of the United States;
it could not get past Ragnar Danneskjdld.

In the foggy winter nights, on the waterfront, sailors whispered
the story that Ragnar Danneskjdld always seized the cargoes of relief
vessels, but never touched the copper: he sank the d’Anconta ships
with their loads; he let the crews escape in lifeboats, but the copper
went to the bottom of the ocean. They whispered it as a dark legend
beyond men’s power to explain; nobody could find a reason why
DanneskjOld did not choose to lake the copper.

In the second week of February, for the purpose of conserving
copper wire and electric power, a directive forbade the running of
elevators above the twenty-fifth floor. The upper floors of the build-
ings had to be vacated, and partitions of unpainted boards went up
to cut off the stairways. By special permit, exceptions were granted —
on the grounds of “essential need” — to a few of the larger business
enterprises and the more fashionable hotels. The tops of the cities
were cut down.

The inhabitants of New York had never had to be aware of the
weather. Storms had been only a nuisance that slowed the traffic and
made puddles m the doorways of brightly lighted shops. Stepping
against the wind, dressed in raincoats, furs and evening slippers, peo-
ple had felt that a storm was an intruder within the city. Now. facing
the gusts of snow that came sweeping down the narrow streets, peo-
ple felt in dim terror that they were the temporary intruders and
that the wind had the right-of-way.

“It won't make any difference to us now, torget it. Hank, it doesn't
matter,” said Dagny when Rearden told her that he would not be
able to deliver the rail; he had not been able to find a supplier of
copper “Forget it. Hank ” He did not answer her. He could not
torget the first failure of Rearden Steel.

On the evening of February 15, a plate cracked on a rail joint and
sent an engine off the track, half a mile from Winston, Colorado,
on a division which was to have been relaid with the new rail. The
station agent of Winston sighed and sent for a crew with a crane; it
was only one of the minor accidents that were happening in his
section every other day or so, he was getting used to it

Rearden, that evening, his coat collar raised, his hat slanted low
over his eyes, the snow drifts rising to his knees, was tramping
through an abandoned open-pit coal mine, in a forsaken corner of
Pennsylvania, supervising the loading of pirated coal upon the trucks
which he had provided. Nobody owned the mine, nobody could af-
ford the cost of working it. But a young man with a brusque voice
and dark, angry eyes, who came from a starving settlement, had
organized a gang of the unemployed and made a deal with Rearden
to deliver the coal. They mined it at night, they stored it in hidden
culverts, they were paid in cash, with no questions asked or an-
swered Guilty of a fierce desire to remain alive, they and Rearden
traded like savages, without rights, titles, contracts or protection,
with nothing but mutual understanding and a ruthlessly absolute ob-
servance of one’s given word. Rearden did not even know the name
of the* young leader. Watching him at the job of loading the track***,

m

Rearden thought that this boy. if born a generation earlier, would
have become a great industrialist: now, he would probably end his
brief life as a plain criminal in a few more years.

Dagny, that evening, was facing a meeting of the Taggart Board
of Directors.

They sat about a polished table in a stately Board room which
was inadequately heated. The men who, through the decades of their
careers, had relied for their security upon keeping their faces blank,
their words inconclusive and their clothes impeccable, were thrown
off-key by the sweaters stretched over their stomachs, by the mufllers
wound about their necks, by the sound of coughing that cut through
the discussion too frequently, like the rattle of a machine gun

She noted that Jim had lost the smoothness of his usual perfor-
mance. He sat with his head drawn into his shoulders, and his eyes
kept darting too rapidly from face to face.

A man from Washington sal at the table among them. Nobody
knew his exact job or title, but it was not necessary: they knew that
he was the man from Washington. His name was Mr. Weatherby,
he had graying temples, a long, narrow face and a mouth that looked
as if he had to stretch his facial muscles in order to keep it closed;
this gave a suggestion of primness to a face that displayed nothing
else. The Directors did not know whether he was present as the
guest, the adviser or the ruler of the Board; they preferred not to
find out.

‘it seems to me." said the chairman, “that the top problem for
us to consider is the fact that the track of our main line appears to
be in a deplorable, not to say critical, condition — “ He paused, then
added cautiously, “—while the only good rail we own is that of the
John Galt — I mean, the Rio Norte™ Line."

In the same cautious tone of waiting for someone else to pick up
the intended purpose of his words* another man said, “If we consider
our critical shortage of equipment, and if we consider that wc are
letting it wear out in the service of a branch line running at a loss™"
He stopped .and did not state what would occur if they considered it.

“In my opinion," said a thin, pallid man with a neat mustache,
“the Rio Norte Line seems to have become a financial burden which
the company might not be able to carry — that is, not unless certain
readjustments arc made, which — " He did not finish, but glanced at
Mr. Weatherby. Mr. Weatherby looked as if he had not noticed it.

“Jim," said the chairman, “1 think you might explain the picture
to Mr. Weatherby."

Taggart's voice still retained a practiced smoothness, but it was
the smoothness of a piece of cloth stretched tight over a broken
glass object, and the sharp edges showed through once in a while:
“i think it is generally conceded that the main factor attesting every
railroad in the country is the unusual rate of business failures. While
we all realize, of course, that this is only temporary, stjil, for the
moment, it has made the railroad situation approach a (stage that
may well be described as desperate. Specifically, the numjher of fac-
tories which have closed throughout the territory of tlje Taggart
Transcontinental system is so large that it has wrecked four entire

464

financial structure. Districts and divisions which had always brought
us our steadiest revenues, are now showing an actual operating loss,
A train schedule geared to a heavy volume of freight cannot be
maintained for three shippers where there had once been seven. We
cannot give them the same service — at least; not at . . , our present
rates.'’ He glanced at Mr. Weatherby, but Mr. Weatherby did not
seem to notice. "It seems to me,” said Taggart, the sharp edges
becoming sharper in his voice, "that the stand taken by our shippers
is unfair, Most of them have been complaining about their competi-
tors and have passed various local measures to eliminate competition
in their particular fields. Now most of them are practically in sole
possession of their markets, yet they refuse to realize that a railroad
cannot give to one lone factory the freight rates which had been
made possible bv the production of a whole region. We are running
our trains for them at a loss, yet they have taken a stand against
any . . . raise in rates ”

"Against any raise'*" said Mr. Weatherby mildly, with a good imi-
tation of astonishment. "That is not the stand they have taken.”

"It certain rumors, which 1 refuse to credit, are true — ” said the
chairman, and slopped one syllable after the tone of panic had be-
come obvious in his voice.

"Jim,” said Mr. Weatherby pleasantly, "I think it would be best
if we just didn't mention the subject of raising the rates.”

i wasn’t suggesting an actual raise at this time,” said Taggart
hastily. "I merely referred to it to round out the picture.”

‘But, Jim,” said an old man with a quavering voice, "l thought
that your influence— I mean, your friendship — with Mr. Mouch
would ensure . ”

He stopped, because the others were looking at him severely, in
icproof for the breach of an unwritten law: one did not mention a
failure of this kind, one did not discuss the mysterious ways of Jim’s
powerful friendships or why they had failed him.

"Fact is,” said Mr. Weatherby easily, "that Mr. Mouch sent me
here to discuss the demand of the railway unions for a raise in wages
and the demand of the shippers lor a cut in rates.”

He said it in a tone of casual firmness; he knew that all these men
had known it. that the demands had been discussed in the newspa-
pers for months; he knew that the dread in these men’s minds was
not of the fact, but of his naming it— as if the fact had not existed,
hut his words heltl the power to make it exist; he knew that they
hud waited to see whether he would exercise that power; he was
kiting them know that he would, -

l heir situation warranted an oulcty of protest; there was none;
nobody answered him. Then James Taggart said in that biting, ner-
vous tone which is intended to convey anger, but merely confesses
uncertainty, "1 wouldn't exaggerate the importance of Buzzy Watts
ol tfie National Shippers Council, He's been making a lot of noise
and giving a lot of expensive dinners in Washington, but I wouldn’t
advise taking it too seriously.”

‘Oh, 1 don’t know,” said Mr. Weatherby,

465

“Listen, Clem, T do know that Wesley refused to see him last
week.”

“That's true. Wesley is a pretty busy man."

“And l know that when Gene Lawson gave that big party ten
days ago, practically everybody was there, but Buzzy Watts was
not invited/'

“That's so," said Mr. Weatherby peaceably.

“So I wouldn’t bet on Mr Buz/y Walts, Clem. And l wouldn't let
it worry me."

“Wesley’s an impartial man." said Mr. Weatherby. “A man de-
voted to public duty, it’s the interests of the country as a whole that
he's got to consider above everything else." Taggart sat up; of alt
the danger signs he knew, this line of talk was the worst. “Nobody
can deny it, Jim, that Wesley feels a high regard for you as an
enlightened businessman, a valuable adviser and one of his closest
personal friends." Taggart's eyes shot to him swiftly: this was still
worse. “But nobody can say that Wesley would hesitate to sacrifice
his personal feelings and friendships— where the welfare of the public
is concerned/’

Taggart’s face remained blank: his terror came from things never
allowed to reach expression in words or in facial muscles. The terror
was his struggle against an unadmitted thought: he himself had been
“the public" for so long and in so many different issues, that he
knew what it would mean if that magic title, that sacred title no one
dared to oppose, were transferred, along with its “welfare," to the
person of Buzzy Watts

But what he asked, and he asked it hastily, was, “You're not im
plying that I would place my personal interests above the public
welfare, are you?"

“No. of course not," said Mr. Weatherby, with a look that was
almost a smile. “Certainly not. Not you, Jim. Your public-spirited
attitude — and understanding- -are too well known. That’s why Wes-
ley expects you to see every side of the picture."

“Yes, of course," said Taggart, trapped.

“Well, consider the unions’ side of it. Maybe you can't afford t<»
give them a raise, but how can they afford to exist when the cost ol
living has shot sky-high? They’ve got to eat. don’t they 7 That comes
first, railroad or no railroad." Mr. Wealherby’s tone had a kind of
placid righteousness, as if he were reciting a formula required lu
convey another meaning, dear to all of them; he was looking stiaight
at Taggart, in special emphasis of the unstated. “There are almost a
million members in the railway unions With families, dependents
and poor relatives— and, who hasn't got poor relatives these days? -
it amounts to about live million voles. Persons, l mean. Wesley has
to bear that in mind. He has to think of their psychology. And then,
consider the public. The rales you’re charging were established at a
time when everybody was making money. But the things arc
now, the cost of transportation has become a burden ; nobody can
afford. People are screaming about it all over the country." He
looked straight at Taggart; he merely looked, but his glance had the
quality of a wink. “There's an awfuMot of them, Jim. They're not

466

very happy at the moment about an awful lot of things. A govern-
ment that would bring the railroad rates down would make a lot of
folks grateful.’*

The silence that answered him was like a hole so deep that no
sound could be heard of the things crashing down to its bottom.
Taggart knew, as they all knew, to what disinterested motive Mr.
Mouch would always be Teady to sacrifice his personal friendships.

It was the silence and the fact that she did not want to say it, had
come here resolved not to speak, but could not resist it, that made
Dagny’s voice sound so vibrantly harsh:

“Got what you’ve been asking for, all these years, gentlemen?”

The swiftness with which their eyes moved to her was an involun-
tarv answer to an unexpected sound, but the swiftness with which
they moved away — to look down at the table, at the walls, anywhere
but at her— was the conscious answer to the meaning of the sounds.

In the silence of the next moment, she felt their resentment like
a starch thickening the air of the room, and she knew that it was
not resentment against Mr. Weatherby, but against her. She could
have borne it. if they had merely let her question go unanswered;
but what made her feel a sickening tightness in her stomach, was
their double iraud of pretending to ignore her and then answering
in their own kind of mannet.

The chairman said, not looking at her, his voice pointedly noncom-
mittal, vet vaguely purposeful at the same time, “It would have been
all right, everything would have worked out fine, it it weren't for
the wrong people m positions of power, such as Bu/zy Walts and
Thick Morrison.”

“Oh. I wouldn’t worn about < hick Morrison,” said the pallid man
with the mustache. “He hasn’t any lop-level connections. Not really.
!t\ imkv Holloway that’s poison.”

"I don’t see the picture as hopeless,” said a portly man who wore
a green muffler. “Joe Dunphy and Bud Ha/leton are very dose to
Wesley, If their influence prevails, we'll be all right. However, Kip
( halmers and Tinky Holloway are dangerous.”

“1 can take care of Kip Chalmers," said Taggart.

Mr. Weatheihv was the only person in the room who did not
mind looking at Dugny: but whenever his glance rested upon her. it
registered nothing; she was the only person in the room whom he
Hul not see.

“I am thinking,” said Mr. Weatherby casually, looking at Taggart,
‘that you might do Wesley a favor.”

“Wesley knows that he can always count on me."

“Well, my thought is that if you granted the unions’ wage raises —
we might drop the question of cutting the rates, for the time being.”

“I can't do that!” It was almost a cry. “The National Alliance of
Kmlroads has taken a unanimous stand against the raises and has
committed every member to refuse.”

“That’s just what 1 mean,” said Mr. Weatherby softly. “Wesley
needs to drive a wedge into that Alliance stand. If a railroad like
Taggart Transcontinental were to give in, the rest would be easy.
You would help Wesley a great deal: He would appreciate it,”

467

^But* good God, Clem! — I’d be open to court action for it, by the
Alliance rules!”

Mr. Weatherby smiled. “What court? Let Wesley take care of
that”

“But listen, Clem, you know — you know just as well as 1 do — that
we can't afford it!”

Mr. Weatherby shrugged. “That’s a problem for you to work out.”

“How, for Christ's sake?”

“1 don't know. That's your job, not ours. You wouldn't want the
government to start telling you how to run your railroad, would
you?”

“No, of course not! But — ”

“Our job is only to see that the people get fair wages and decent
transportation. It's up to you to deliver. But, of course, if you say
that you can't do the job, why then — ”

“l haven't said it!” Taggart cried hastily. “1 haven't said it at all!”

“Good,” said Mr. Weatherby pleasantly. “We know that you have
the ability to find some way to do it.”

He was looking at Taggart; Taggart was looking at Dagny.

“Well, it was just a thought,” said Mr. Weatherby, leaning back
in his chair in a manner of modest withdrawal. “Just a thought for
you to mull over. I’m only a guest here. 1 don't want to interfere.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the situation of the . . .
branch lines, 1 believe?”

“Yes,” said the chairman and sighed. “Yes. Now if anyone has a
constructive suggestion to offer — ” He waited; no one answered; “I
believe the picture is clear to all of us.” He wailed. “It seems to be
established that wc cannot continue to afford the operation of some
of our branch lines . the Rio Norte Line in particular . . . and,
therefore, some form of action seems to be indicated. ...”

“I think,” said the pallid man with the mustache, his voice unex-
pectedly confident, “that we should now hear from Miss Taggart.”
He leaned forward with a look of hopeful craftiness. As Dagny did
not answer, but merely turned to him, he asked, “What do you have
to say. Miss Taggart?”

“Nothing.”

“1 beg your pardon?”

“All I had to say was contained in the report which Jim has read
to you.” She spoke quietly, her voice clear and flat.

“But you did not make any recommendations.”

“I have none to make.”

“But, after all, as our Operating Vice-President, you have a vital
interest in the policies of this railroad.”

“I have no authority over the policies of this railroad.”

“Oh, but we are anxious to consider your opinion.”

“I have no opinions,”

“Miss Taggart,” he said, m the smoothly formal tone ^>f an order,
“you cannot fail to realize that our branch lines are running at a
disastrous deficit—and that we expect you to make them pay.”

“How?”

i don’t know. That is your job, not ours.”

468

“t have stated in my report the reasons why that is now impossible.
If there are facts which I have overlooked, please name them/ 1

“Oh, I wouldn’t know. We expect you to find some way to make
it possible. Our job is onty to see that the stockholders get a fair
profit. It's up to you to deliver. You wouldn't want us to think that
you’re unable to do the job and—”

“1 am unable to do it.’ 1

The man opened his mouth, but found nothing else to say; he
looked at her in bewilderment, wondering why the formula had
tailed.

“Miss Taggart," asked the man with the green muffler, “did you
imply in your report that the situation of the Rio Norte Line was
critical?”

“1 stated that it was hopeless.”

“Then what action do you propose?”

“1 propose nothing.”

“Aren’t you evading a responsibility?”

“What is it that you think you’re doing?” She spoke evenly, ad-
dressing them all: “Are you counting on my not saying that the
responsibility is yours, that it was your goddamn policies that brought
us where we are? Well, I’m saying it.”

“Miss Taggart, Miss Taggart,” said the chairman in a tone of
pleading reproach, “there shouldn’t be any hard feelings among us.
Does n matter now who was to blame? We don't want to quarrel
over past mistakes. We must all pull together as a team to carry our
railroad through this desperate emergency.”

A gray- haired man of patrician bearing, who had remained silent
throughout the session, with a look of the quietly bitter knowledge
that the entire performance was lufile, glanced at Dagny tn a way
which would have been sympathy had he still felt a remnant of hope.
He said, raising his voice just enough to betray a note of controlled
indignation, “Mr. Chairman, if it is practical solutions that we arc
considering, 1 should like to suggest that we discuss the limitation
placed upon the length and speed of our trains. Of any single prac-
tice, that is the most disastrous one. Its repeal would not solve all of
our problems, but it would be an enormous relief. With the desperate
shortage of motive power and the appalling shortage of fuel, it is
criminal insanity to send an engine out on the road with sixty cars
when it could pull a hundred and to take four days on a run which
could be made in three. 1 suggest that we compute the number of
shippers we have ruined and the districts we have destroyed through
the failures, shortages and delays of transportation, and then we — ”

“Don’t think of it,” Mr. Weatherby cut in snappily. “Don't try
di earning about any repeals. We wouldn’t consider it. We wouldn’t
even consider listening to any talk on the subject.”

“Mr. Chairman,” the gray- haired man asked quietly, “shall I
continue?”

The chairman spread out his hands, with a smooth smile, indicating
helplessness. “It would be impractical,” he answered.

“I think we'd better confine the discussion to the status of the Rio
Norte' Line,” snapped James Taggart.

469

There was a long silence.

The man with the green muffler turned to Dagny. '‘Miss Taggart,”
he asked sadly and cautiously, “would you say that if — this is just a
hypothetical question — if the equipment now in use on the Rio Norte
Line were made available, it would fill the needs of our transconti-
nental main-line traffic?”

“It would help.”

‘The rail of the Rio Norte Line,” said the pallid man with the
mustache, “is unmatched anywhere in the country and could not
now be purchased at any price, We have three hundred miles of
track, which means well over four hundred miles of vail of pure
Rearden Metal in that Line. Would you say, Miss Taggart, that we
cannot afford to waste that superlative rail on a branch that carries
no major traffic any longer 7 ”

“That is for you to judge.”

“Let me put it this way: would it be of value if that rail were
made available for our main-line track, which is m such urgent need
of repair?”

“It would help ”

"Miss Taggart,” asked the man with the quavering voice, “would
you say that there are any shippers ot consequence let l on the Rio
Norte Line?”

“There’s Ted Nielsen of Nielsen Motors. No one else ”

“Would you say that the operating costs of the Rio Norte Line
could be used to relieve the financial strain on the rest ol the
system?”

“It would help.”

“Then, as our Operating Vice-President . . ” He stopped: she
waited, looking at him; lie said, “Well?”

“What was vour question?”

“I meant to say . . . that is, well, as our Operating Vice-President,
don’t you have certain conclusions to draw 7 ”

She stood up. She looked at the faces around the table, “Gentle-
men,” she said, “I do not know by what sort of self-fraud you expect
to feel that if it’s 1 who name the decision you intend to make, it
will be 1 who’ll bear the responsibility for it. Perhaps you believe
that if my voice delivers the final blow, it will make me the murdcier
involved~~since you know r that this is the last act of a long-drawn-out
murder. I cannot conceive what it is you think you can accomplish by
a pretense of this kind, and I will not help to stage it The final blow
will be delivered by you. as were all the others.”

She turned to go. The chairman half-rose, asking helplessly, “But",
Miss Taggart —”

“Please remain seated. Please continue the discussion*- and take
the vote in which I shall have no voice. 1 shall abstain from voting.
I’ll stand by, if you wish me to, but only as an employed I will not
pretend to be anything else.” :

She turned away once more, but it was the voice of the gray-
haired man that stopped her. “Miss Taggart, this is notj an official
question, it is only my personal curiosity, but would you tell me your
view of the future of the Taggart Transcontinental system?”

470

She answered, looking at him in understanding, her voice gentler,
i have stopped thinking of a future or of a railroad system. 1 intend
to continue running trains so long as it is still possible to run them,

I don’t think that it will be much longer.”

She walked away from the table, to the window, to stand aside
and let them continue without her.

She looked at the city. Jim had obtained the permit which allowed
them the use ot electnc power to the top of the Taggart Building.
From the height of the room, the city looked like a flattened rem-
nant, with but a tew rare, lonely streaks of lighted glass still rising
through the darkness to the sky.

She did not listen to the voices of the men behind her. She did
not know for how long the broken snatches of their struggle kept
rolling past her -the sounds that nudged and prodded one another,
trying to edge back and leave someone pushed forward— a struggle,
not to assert one's own will, but to squeeze an assertion from some
unwilling victim —a battle in which the decision was to be pro-
nounced, not by the winner, but by the loser:

*ll seems to me , . . It is, I think ... It must, in rny opinion . , .

II we were to suppose . . 1 am merely suggesting ... I am not
implying, but If we consider both sides . . It is, in rny opinion,
indubitable ... It seems to me to be an unmistakable fact . .

She did not know whose voice it was, but she heard it when the
voice pronounced'

" . . . and, therefore, 1 move that the John Galt Line be closed/"

Something, she thought, had made him call the Line by its right
name.

You had to bear it, too, generations ago -and it was ju*sl as hard
lot you. just as bad. but you did not let it stop you — was it really as
bad as this? as ugly 0 -never mind, it's different forms, but it’s only
pain, and you were not stopped by pain, not by whatever kind it
was that you had to bear — you were not stopped — you did not give
in to it— you faced it and this is the kind l have to face— you fought
and l will have to — you did it— 1 will try . . . She heard, in her own
mind, the quiet intensity of the words of dedication — and it was some
time before she realized that she was speaking to Nat Taggart.

The next voice she heard was Mr Weathcrby’s: “Wait a minute,
hoys. Do you happen to remember that you need to obtain permis-
sion before you can close a branch line?”

‘Good God, Clem!” Taggart's cry was open panic: “Surely there’s
not going to be any trouble about — ”

“I wouldn't be too sure of it. Don’t forget that you’re a public
service and you're expected to provide transportation, whether you
make money or not.”

“But you know that it’s impossible!”

“Well, that's fine for you, that solves your problem, if you close
that Line — but what will it do to us? Leaving a whole state like
Colorado practically without transportation— what sort of public sen-
timent will it arouse? Now, of course, if you gave Wesley something
m return, to balance it, if you granted the unions' wage raises^-’*

”1 cAn’t! I gave my word to the National Alliance!”

471

“Your word? Well, suit yourself. We wouldn't want to force the
Alliance. We much prefer to have things happen voluntarily. But
these are difficult times and it’s hard telling what’s liable to happen.
With everybody going broke and the tax receipts falling, we might —
fact being that we hold well over fifty per cent of the Taggart
bonds — we might he compelled to call for the payment of railroad
bonds within .six months.”

"What?r screamed Taggart.

“ — or sooner.”

“But you can’t! Oh God. you can’t! It was understood that the
moratorium was for live years! It was a contract, an obligation! We
are counting on it!”

“An obligation? Aren't you old-fashioned, Jim* 7 There aren't any
obligations, except the necessity of the moment. The original owners
of those bonds were counting on their payments, too ”

Dagny burst out laughing.

She could not stop heiselt, she could not resist it, she could not
reject a moment’s chance to avenge Ellis Wyatt, Andrew Stockton,
Lawrence Hammond, all the others She said, torn bv laughter:

“Thanks, Mr. Weatherby!”

Mr. Weatherby looked at her in astonishment. “Yes?” he asked
coldly.

“I knew that we would have to pay for those bonds one way or
another. We’re paying.”

“Miss Taggart,” said the chairman severely, “don't you think that
Mokl-vou-so’s are futile? do talk of what would have happened il
we had acted differently is nothing bm purely theoretical speculation.
We cannot indulge in theory, we have to deal with the practical
reality of the moment.”

“Right,” said Mr. Weatherby. ‘That's what you ought to be
practical Now we offer you a trade. You do something for us and
we’H do something for you. You give the unions their wage raises
and we'll give you permission to close fhe Rio Norte Line ”

“All right.” said James Taggait. his voice choked.

Standing at the window', she heard them vote on their decision.
She heard them declare that the John Galt Line would end m six
weeks, on March 31.

It's only a matter of getting through the next few moments, she
thought; take care of the next few moments, and then the next, a
few at a time, and after a while il will be easier; you’ll gel over it,
after a while.

The assignment she gave herself lor the next few moments was to
put on her coat and be first to leave the room.

Then there was the assignment of riding in an elevator down the
great, silent length of the Taggart Building. Then there >was the as-
signment of crossing the dark lobby.

Halfway through the lobby, she stopped. A man stpod leaning
against the wall, in a manner of purposeful waiting — an{l it was she
who was his purpose, because he was looking straight {at her. She
did not recognize him at once, because she felt certain that the face
she saw could not possibly be there in that lobby at thik hour.

472

“Hi, Slug,” he said softly.

She answered, groping for some great distance that had once been
hers, “Hi, Frisco.”

“Have they finally murdered John Galt?”

She struggled to place the moment into some orderly sequence of
time. The question belonged to the present, but the solemn face
came from those days on the hill by the Hudson when he would
have understood all that the question meant to her.

“How did you know that they'd do it tonight?” she asked.

it’s been obvious for months that would be the next step at their
next meeting.”

“Why did you come here?”

“To see how you’d take it.”

“Want to laugh about it?”

“No, Dagny. I don't want to laugh about it.”

She saw no hint of amusement m hts face; she answered trustingly,
“I don’t know how I’m taking it.”

“1 do.”

“f was expecting it, J knew they’d have to do it, so now it's only
a matter ol getting through”- -tonight* she wanted to say, but said —
“all the work and details.”

He took her arm. “Let’s go some place where we can have a
drink together.”

“Francisco, why don’t you laugh at me? You've always laughed
about that Line.”

“1 will —tomorrow, when I see you going on with all the work and
details. Not tonight.”

“Why not r ’

“Come on. You're in no condition to talk about n.”

“I -** She wanted to protest, but said, “No, I guess I'm not.”

fie led her out to the street, and she found herself walking silently
m time with the .steady rhythm of his steps, the grasp of his fingers
on her arm unstressed and turn. He signaled a passing taxicab and
held the door open for her. She obeyed him without questions; but
Lit relief, like a swimmer who stops struggling. The spectacle of a
man acting with assurance, was a hie belt thrown to her at a moment
when she had forgotten the hope ol its existence. The relief was not
in the surrender of responsibility, but in the sight of a man able to
assume it.

“Dagny,” he said, looking at the city as it moved past their taxi
window, “think of the first man who thought of making a steel girder,
lie knew what he saw, what he thought and what he wanted. He
did not say, it seems to me,’ and he did not take orders from those
who say, in my opinion.’ ”

She chuckled, wondering at his accuracy: he had guessed the na-
ture of the sickening sense that held her. the sense of a swamp which
she had to escape.

“Look around you.” he said. “A city is the frozen shape of human
courage — the courage of those men who thought for the first time
of every bolt, rivet and power generator that went to make it. The
couragte to say, not it seems to me,’ but A lt is " — and to stake one’s

473

life on one's judgment. You're not alone. Those men exist. They
have always existed. There was a time when human beings crouched
in caves, at the mercy of any pestilence and any storm. Could men
such as those on your Hoard of Directors have brought them out of
the cave and up to this?*' He pointed at the city.

“God, no!”

“Then there's your proof that another kind of men does exist.”

“Yes,” she said avidly. “Yes.”

“Think of them and forget your Board of Directors.”

“Francisco, where are they now — the other kind of men?”

“Now they’re not wanted.”

“I want them. Oh God. how I want them!”

“When you do, you’ll find them.”

He did not question her about the John Galt Line and she did
not speak of it, until they sat at a table in a dimly lighted booth and
she saw the stem of a glass between her fingers. She had barely
noticed how they had come here. It was a quiet, costly place that
looked like a secret retreat; she saw a small, lustrous table under
her hand, the leather of a circular seat behind her shoulders, and a
niche of dark blue mirror that cut them oft from the sight of what-
ever enjoyment or pain others had come here to hide. Francisco was
leaning against the tabic, watching her, and she felt as if she were
leaning against the steady attentiveness of his eyes.

They did not speak ot the Line, hut she said suddenly, looking
down at the liquid in her glass:

“I’m thinking of the night when Nat Taggart was told lhal he
had to abandon the bridge he was building. The bridge across the
Mississippi. He had been desperately short of money- -because peo-
ple were afraid of the bridge, they called it an impractical venture
That morning, he was told that the river steamboat concerns had
filed suit against him. demanding that his bridge be destroyed as a
threat to the public welfare. There were three spans of the bridge
built, advancing across the river. That same day, a local mob attacked
the structure and set fire to the wooden scaffolding. His workers
deserted him, some because they were scared, some because they
were bribed by the steamboat people, and most of them because he
had had no money to pay them tor weeks. Throughout (hat day, he
kept receiving word that men who had subscribed to buy the stock
of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad were cancelling their sub-
scriptions, one after another. Toward evening, a committee, repre-
senting two banks that were his last hope of support, came to see
him. It was right there, on the construction site by the fiver, in the
old railway coach where he lived, with the door open to the view of
the blackened ruin, with the wooden remnants still smoking over the
twisted steel. He had negotiated a loan from those banks, but the
contract had not been signed. The committee told him that he would
have to give up his bridge, because he was certain to l&se the suit,
and the bridge would be ordered tom down by the tipie he com-
pleted it. If he was willing to give it up. they said, and! to ferry his
passengers across the river on barges, as other raihroadsfwere doing,
the contract would stand and he would get the money J to continue

474

his line west on the other shore; if not, then the loan was oft What
was his answer? — they asked. He did not say a word, he picked up
the contract, tore it across, handed it to them and walked out. He
walked to the bridge, along the spans, down to the last girder. He
knelt, he picked up the tools his men had left and he started to clear
the charred wreckage away from the steel structure. His chief engi-
neer saw him there, axe in hand, alone over the wide river, with the
sun setting behind him in the west where his line was to go. He
woiked there all night. By morning, he had thought out a plan of
what he would do to find the right men, the men of independent
judgment — to find them, to convince them, to raise the money, to
continue the bridge.’’

She spoke in a low, fiat voice, looking down at the spot of light
that shimmered in the liquid as her fingers turned the stem of her
glass once in a while. She showed no emotion, but her voice had the
intense monotone of a prayer:

‘Francisco ... if he could live through that night, what right have
I to complain? What does it matter, how l feel just now? He built
that bridge. 1 have to hold it foi him. 1 can't let it go the way of the
bridge of the Atlantic Southern. 1 feel almost as if he’d know it, if
l let that happen, he'd know it that night when he was alone over
the river . . . no. that’s nonsense, but here's what 1 feel: any man
who knows what Nat Taggart fell that night, any man living now
and capable of knowing it — it’s him that 1 would betray if 1 let it
happen . . . and I can’t."

“Dagnv, if Nat Taggait were living now, what would he do?"

She answered involuntarily, with a swift, bitter chuckle, "He
wouldn't last a minute!"— then corrected herself: "No, he would. He
would find a way to fight them "

‘‘How?’'

“1 don’t know."

She noticed some tense, cautious quality in the attentive way he
watched her as he leaned forward and asked, "Dagny. the men of
\our Board of Directors are no match for Nat Taggart, are they?
There's no form of contest in which they could beat him, there's
nothing he'd have to tear from them, there’s no mind, no will, no
power in the bunch of them to equal one- thousandth of his "

’No, ot course not."

’ I hen why is it that throughout man's history the Nat Taggarts,
who make the world, have always won — and always lost it to the
men ol the Board?"

1 . . don't know."

“How could men who re afraid to hold an unqualified opinion
about the weather, fight Nat Taggart? How could they seize his
achievement, if he chose to defend it? Dagny, he fought with every
weapon he possessed, except the most important one. They could
not have won, if we — he and the rest of us— had not given the world
■way to them."

/‘Yes. You gave it away to them. Ellis Wyatt did. Ken Danagger
did. I won't,"

He smiled. "Who built the John Galt Line for them?"

475

He saw only the faintest contraction of her mouth, but he knew
that the question was like a blow across an open wound. Yet she
answered quietly, “1 did.”

"For this kind of end?”

“For the men who did not hold out, would not light and gave up.”

“Don’t you see that no other end was possible?”

“No,”

“How much injustice are you wilting to take?”

“As much as Tm able to fight.”

“What will you do now? Tomorrow?”

She said calmly, looking straight at him with the faintly proud look
of stressing her calm. “Start to tear it up.”

“What?”

“The John Galt Line. Start to tear it up as good as with my own
hands with my own mind, by my own instructions. Get it ready to
be dosed, then tear it up and use its pieces to teinforce the transcon-
tinental track. There's a lot of work to do. It will keep me busy.”
The calm cracked a little, in the faintest change of her voice: “You
know, Tin looking forward to it. I'm glad that Til have It) do it
myself. That's why Nat Taggart worked all that night just to Keep
going. It’s not so bad as long as there's something one can do. And
I’ll know, at least, that I'm saving the main line.”

“Dagny,” he asked very quietly — and she wondered what made
her feel that he looked as if his personal fate hung on her answer,
“what if it were the main line that you had to dismember?”

She answered irresistibly. “Then I’d let the fast engine run over
me!” — but added, “No. That's just self-pity 1 wouldn't.”

He said gently. “I know you wouldn't. But you’d wish you could.'

“Yes.”

He smiled, not looking at her; it was a mocking smile, but it was
a smile of pain and the mockery was directed at himself. She won-
dered what made her certain of it; but she knew his face so well that
she would always know what he felt, even though she could not guess
his reasons any longer. She knew his face as well, she thought, as she
knew every line of his body, as she could still see it, as she was suddenly
aware of it under his clothes, a few feet away, in the crowding intimacy
of the booth. He turned to i<x>k at her and some sudden change in his
eyes made her certain that he knew what she was thinking. He looked
away and picked up his glass.

“Well — ” he said, “to Nat Taggart.”

“And to Sebastian d’Anconia?” she asked— -then regretted it, be
cause it had sounded like mockery, which she had not intended.

But she saw a look of odd, bright clarity in his eyes and he an-
swered firmly, with the faintly proud smile of stressing? his firmnes>.
“Yes — and to Sebastian d’Anconia.”

Her hand trembled a little and she spilled a few drops bn the square
of paper lace that lay on the dark, shining plastic of tpe table. She
watched him empty his glass in a single gesture; the brusque, brief
movement of his hand made it look like the gesture jof some sob
emu pledge.

476

She thought suddenly that this was the first time in twelve years
that he had come to her of his own choice.

He had acted as if he were confidently in control, as if his confi-
dence were a transfusion to let her recapture hers, heJiad given her
no time to wonder that they should be here together. Now she felt,
unaccountably, that the reins he had held were gone. It was only the
silence of a few blank moments and the motionless outline of his
forehead, cheekbone and mouth, as he sat with his face turned away
from her— but she felt as if it were he who was now struggling for
something he had to recapture.

She wondered what had been his purpose tonight— and noticed
that he had, perhaps, accomplished it: he had carried her over the
worst moment, he had given her an invaluable defense against de-
spair— the knowledge that a living intelligence had heard her and
understood. But why had he wanted to do it? Why had he cared
about her hour of despair — after the years of agony he had given
her? Why had it mattered to him how she would take the death of
the John Galt Lane? She noticed that this was the question she had
not asked him in the lobby of the Taggart Building.

This was the bond between them, she thought: that she would
never be astonished if he came when she needed him most, and that
he would always know when to come. This was the danger: that she
would trust him, even while knowing that it could be nothing but
some new kind of trap, even while remembering that he would al-
ways betray those who trusted him.

He sal. leaning forward with his arms crossed on the table, looking
straight ahead. He said suddenly, not turning to her:

“I am thinking ot the fifteen years that Sehasti&n d'Anconia had
to wait for the woman he loved: He did not know whether he would
ever find her again, whether she would survive . . . whether she
would wait for him. But he knew that she could not live through his
battle and that he could not call her to him until it was won. So he
waited, holding his love in the place of the hope which he had no
right to hold. But when he carried her across the threshold of his
house, as the first Sefiora d’Anconia of a new world, he knew that
the battle was won, that they were free, that nothing threatened her
and nothing would ever hurt her again/"

In the days of their passionate happiness, he had never given her
a hint that he would come to think of her as Sefiora d’Anconia. For
one moment, she wondered whether she had known what she had
meant to him. But the moment ended in an invisible shudder: she
would not believe that the past twelve years could allow the things
she was hearing to be possible. This w as the new trap, she thought.

Francisco/’ she asked, her voice hard, “what have you done to
Hank Reardcn?”

He looked startled that she should think of that name at that
moment, “Why?” he asked.

“He told me once that you were the only man he’d ever liked.
But last time 1 saw him, he said he would kill you on sight/’

“He did not tell you why?"

“No.”

477

'‘He told you nothing about it?’'

“No." She saw him smiling strangely, a smile of sadness, gratitude
and longing. “I warned him that you would hurt him — when he told
me that you were the only man he liked."

His words came like a sudden explosion: “He was the only man —
with one exception — to whom l could have given my life!"

“Who is the exception?"

“The man to whom l have."

“What do you mean?"

He shook his head, as if he had said more than he intended, and
did not answer.

“What did you do to Rearden?"

“Ill tell you some time. Not now."

“Is that what you always do to those who , . . mean a great deal
to you?"

He looked at her with a smile that had the luminous sincerity of
innocence and pam. “You know," he said gently, “I could say that
that is what they always do to me." He added, “Rut I won’t. The
actions — and the knowledge — were mine."

He stood up. “Shall we go? HI take you home."

She rose and he held her coat for her: it was a wide, loose gaimcnt,
and his hands guided it to enfold her body. She felt his arm remain
about her shoulders a moment longer than he intended hot to notice

She glanced back at him. But he was standing oddly still, staring
intently down at the table. In rising, they had brushed aside the mats
of paper lace and she saw' an inscription cut into the plastic ol the
table top. Attempts had been made to erase it, but the inscription
remained, as the graven voice of some unknown dtunk's despair'
“Who is John Galt?"

With a brusque movement of anger, she flicked the mat back to
cover the words He chuckled

“l can answer it," he said. “1 can tell you who is John Galt."

“Really? Everybody seems to know him, but they never tell the
same story twice."

“They’re all true, though — all the stones you’ve heard about him."

“Well, what’s yours? Who is he?"

“John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind After centuries
of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the
fire of the gods, he broke his chains- -and he withdrew his lire — until
the day when men withdraw their vultures."

* *

The band of crossties swept in wide curves around gianite corners,
dinging to the mountainsides of Colorado. Dagny walked down the
ties, keeping her hands in her coal pockets, and her eyes on the
meaningless distance ahead; only the familiar movement ol straining
her steps to the spacing of the ties gave her the physical sense of an
action pertaining to a railroad,

A gray cotton, which was neither quite fog nor ck^uus, hung in
sloppy wads between sky and mountains, making the %ky look like
an old mattress spilling its stuffing down the sides of jthe peaks. A
crusted snow covered the ground, belonging neither to winter nor to

47 H

spring. A net of moisture hung in the air, and she felt an icy pinprick
on her face once in a while, which was neither a raindrop nor a
snowflake. The weather seemed afraid to take a stand and clung
noncommittally to some sort of road’s middle; Board of Directors’
weather, she thought. The light seemed drained and she could not
tell whether this was the afternoon or the evening of March 31 . But
she was very certain that it was March 31; that was a certainty not
to be escaped

She had come to Colorado with Hank Rearden, to buy whatever
machinery could still be found in the dosed factories. It had been
like a hurried search through the sinking hulk of a great ship before
it was to vanish out of reach. They could have given the task to
employees, but they had come, both prompted by the same uncon*
fessed motive: they could not resist the desire to attend the run of
the last train, as one cannot resist the desire to give the last salute
by attending a funeral, even while knowing that it is only an act of
self-torture.

They had been buying machinery from doubtful owners in sales
of dubious legality, since nobody could tell who had the right to
dispose of the great, dead properties, and nobody would come to
challenge the transactions. They had bought everything that could
be moved from the gutted plant of Nielsen Motors. Ted Nielsen had
quit and vanished, a week after the announcement that the Line was
to be closed.

She had felt like a scavenger, but the activity ot the hunt had
made her able to bear these past few days. When she had found
that three empty hours remained before the departure of the last
train, she had gone to walk through the countryside, to escape, the
stillness ol the town She had walked at random through twisting
mountain trails, alone among rocks and snow, trying to substitute
motion lor thought, knowing that she had to get through this day
without thinking ot the summer when she had ridden the engine of
the first train. But she found herself walking back along the roadbed
of the John Galt Line — and she knew that she had intended it, that
she had gone out foi that purpose.

It was a spur track which had already been dismembered. There
were no signal lights, no switches, no telephone wires, nothing but
a long band of wooden strips on the ground— a chain of ties without
rail, like the remnant of a spine —and, as its lonely guardian, at an
abandoned grade crossing, a pole with slanted arms saying; “Stop.
Look Listen.”

An early darkness mixed with fog was slipping down to fill the
\ alleys, when she came upon the factory. There was an inscription
high on the lustrous tile ot its fiont wall: ‘ Roger Marsh. Electrical
Appliances." T he man who had wanted to chain himself to his desk
in order not to leave this, she thought. The building stood intact,
hke a corpse in that instant when its eyes have just closed arul one
Mill waits to see them open again. She felt that the lights would flare
up at any moment behind the great sheets of windows, under the
long, flat roofs. Then she saw one broken pane, pierced by a stone
for some young moron’s enjoyment — and she saw the tall, dry stem

479

of a single weed rising from the steps of the main entrance. Hit by a
sadden, blinding hatred, in rebellion against the weed’s impertinence,
knowing of what enemy this was the scout, she ran forward, she fell
on her knees and jerked the weed up by its roots. Then, kneeling
on the steps of a dosed factory, looking at the vast silence of moun-
tains, brush and dusk, she thought: What do you think you're doing?

It was almost dark when she reached the end of the ties that led
her back to the town of Marshville. Marshville had been the end
of the Line for months past; service to Wvatt Junction had been
discontinued long ago; Dr. Ferris' Reclamation Project had been
abandoned this winter.

The street lights were on, and they hung in mid-air at the intersec-
tions, in a long, diminishing line of yellow globes over the empty
streets of Marshville. All the better homes were closed — the neat.
Sturdy houses of modest cost, well built and well kept; there were
faded “For Sale” signs on their lawns. But she saw lights in the
windows of the cheap, garish structures that had acquired, within a
few years, the slovenly dilapidation of slum hovels; the homes of
people who had not moved, the people who never looked beyond
the span of one week. She saw a large new television set in the
lighted room of a house with a sagging roof and cracking walls. She
wondered how long they expected the electric power companies of
Colorado to remain in existence. Then she shook her head: those
people had never known that power companies existed.

The main street of Marshville was lined by the black windows of
shops out of business. Alt the luxury stores are gone —she thought,
looking at their signs; and then she shuddered, realizing what things
she now called luxury, realizing to what extent and in what manner
those things, once available to the poorest, had been luxuries: Dry
Cleaning — Electrical Appliances— Gas Station— Drug Store -Five
and Ten. The only ones left open were grocery stores and saloons.

The platform of the railroad station was crowded. The glaring arc
lights seemed to pick it out of the mountains, to isolate and focus
it, like a small stage on which every movement was naked to the
sight of the unseen tiers rising in the vast, encircling night. People
were carting luggage, bundling their children, haggling at ticket win-
dows, the stilled panic of their manner suggesting that what they
really wanted to do was to fall down on the ground and scream with
terror. Their terror had the evasive quality of guilt: it was not the tear
that comes from understanding, but from the refusal to understand.

The last train stood at the platform, its windows a long, lone streak
of light. The steam of the locomotive, gasping tensely through the
wheels, did not have its usual joyous sound of energy released lor a
sprint; it had the sound of a panting breath that one dreads to hear
and dreads more lo stop hearing. Far at the end of the lighted win-
dows, she saw the small red dot ot a lantern attached to h$r private
car. Beyond the lantern, there was nothing but a black void.

The train was loaded to capacity, and the shrill notes of hysteria
in the confusion of voices were the pleas for space in vestibules and
aisles. Some people were not leaving, but stood in vapid icuriosity.
watching the show; they had come, as if knowing that tb& was the

480

last event they would ever witness in their community and, perhaps,
in their lives.

She walked hastily through the crowd, trying not to look at any-
one. Some knew who she was, most of them did not. She saw an
old woman with a ragged shawl on her shoulders and the graph of
a lifetime’s struggle on the cracked skin of her face; the woman’s
glance was a hopeless appeal foe help. An unshaved young man with
gold-rimmed glasses stood on a crate under an arc light, yelling to
the faces shifting past him, “What do they mean, no business! Look
at that train! It’s full of passengers! There’s plenty of business! it’s
just that there’s no profits for them— -that's why they’re letting you
perish, those greedy parasites!” A disheveled woman rushed up to
Dagny, waving two tickets and screaming something about the wrong
date. Dagny found herself pushing people out of the way, fighting
to reach the end of the train — but an emaciated man, with the staring
eyes of years of malicious futility, rushed at her, shouting, “It’s all
right for you, you’ve got a g(x)d overcoat and a private car, but you
won’t give us any trains, you and all the selfish He stopped
abruptly, looking at someone behind her. She felt a hand grasping
her elbow: it was Hank Rcatdcn. He held her arm and led her
toward her car: seeing the look on his face, she understood why
people got out of their way. At the end of the platform, a pallid,
plum pish man stood saying to a crying woman, “That’s how it’s
always been in this world. There will be no chance for the poor,
until the rich are destroyed.” High above the town, hanging in black
space like an uncooled planet, the flame of Wyatt’s Torch was twist-
ing iri the wind.

Rcardcn went inside her car, but she remained on the steps of the
vestibule, delaying the finality of turning away. She heard the “All
aboard!" She looked at the people who remained on the platform
as one looks at those who watch the departure of the last lifeboat.

The conductor stood below, at the loot of the steps, with his lan-
tern in one hand and his watch in the other. He glanced at the watch,
then glanced up at her face. She answered by the silent affirmation
of closing her eyes and inclining her head. She saw his lantern cir-
cling through the air, as she turned away— and the first jolt of the
wheels, on the rails of Rearden Metal, was made easier for her by
the sight of Rearden. as she pulled the door open and went into
her car

* *■

When lames Taggart telephoned l Jllian Rearden from New York
and said, “Why, no — no special reason, just wondered how you were
and whether you ever came to the city — haven't seen you for ages and
just thought we might have lunch together next time you’re in New
York"— she knew that he had some very special reason in mind.

When she answered lazily, “Oh, let me sec — what day is this?
April second? — lei me look at my calendar — why, it just so happens
that, I have some shopping to do in New York tomorrow, so I’ll be
delighted to let you save me my lunch money”— he knew that she
had no , shopping to do and that the luncheon would be the only
purpose of her trip to the city,

481

They met in a distinguished, high-priced restaurant, much too dis-
tinguished and high-priced ever to be mentioned in the gossip col-
umns; not the kind of place which James Taggart, always eager for
personal publicity, was in the habit of patronizing; he did not want
them to bo seen together, she concluded.

The half-hint of half-secret amusement remained on her face while
she listened to him talking about their friends, the theater and the
weather, carefully building for himself the protection of the unim-
portant. She sat gracetully not quite straight, as if she were leaning
back, enjoying the futility of his performance and the fact that he
had to stage it for her benefit. She waited with patient curiosity to
discover his purpose,

“1 do think that you deserve a pat on the back or a medal or
something. Jim.’' she said. “for being remarkably cheerful in spite
of all the messy trouble you’re having. Didn't you just close the best
branch of your railroad‘d’

“Oh. it's only a slight financial setback, nothing more. One has to
expect retrenchments at a time like this. Considering the general
stale of the country, we're doing quite well. Beltei than the rest of
them." He added, shrugging, “Besides, it’s a matter of opinion
whether the Rio Norte Line was our best branch. It is only my sister
who thought so. It was her pet project.”

She caught the tone of pleasure blurring the drawl ot his syllables.
She smiled and said, “l see."

Looking up at her from under his lowered forehead, as if stressing
that he expected her to understand, Taggart asked. “How is he tak-
ing it?"

“Who?” She understood quite well.

“Your husband."

“Taking what?"

“The closing of that Line."

She smiled gaily. “Your guess is as good as mine, Jim - and mine
is very good indeed/'

“What do you mean?"

“You know how he would take it just as you know how your sistei
is taking it. So your cloud has a double silver lining, hasn't it?”

“What had he been saying in the last few days?"

“He's been away m Colorado for over a week, so I — " She
stopped; she had started answering lightly, but she noticed that \ ag~
gart's question had been too specific while his tone had been too
casual, and she realized that he had struck the first note leading
toward the purpose of the luncheon, she paused lor the briefest
instant, then finished, still more lightly, “so I wouldn't know. But
he’s coming back any day now."

“Would you say that his attitude is still what one '(might call
recalcitrant?"

“Why, Jim, that would be an understatement!" r

“It was to be hoped that events had, perhaps, taugfit him the
wisdom of a mellower approach." r

It amused her to keep him in doubt about her understanding. “Oh

482

yes,” she said innocently, “it would be wonderful if anything could
ever make him change.”

“He is making things exceedingly hard for himself-”

“He always has.”

“But events have a way of beating us all into a more . . . pliable
frame of mind, sooner or later.”

“I’ve heard many characteristics ascribed to him, but ‘pliable' has
never been one of them. 5 ’

“Well, things change and people change with them. After all, it is
a law of nature that animals must adapt themselves to their back-
ground. And I might add that adaptability is the one characteristic
most stringently required at present by laws other than those of
nature. We’re in for a very difficult time, and 1 would hale to see
you suffer the consequences of his intransigent attitude. I would
hate — as your friend — to see you in the kind of danger he’s headed
lor, unless he learns to cooperate.”

“How sweet of you, Jim,” she said sweetly.

He was doling his sentences out with cautious slowness, balancing
himself between word and intonation to hit the- right degree of semi-
clarity. He wanted her to understand, but he did not want her to
understand fully, explicitly, down to the root — since the essence of
that modern language, which he had learned to speak expertly, was
never to let oneself or others understand anything down to the root.

He had not needed many words to understand Mr. Weatherby.
On his last trip to Washington, he had pleaded with Mr. Weatherby
that a cut in the rates of the railroads would be a deathblow; the
wage raises had been granted, but the demands for the cut in rates
were still heard in the press- -and Taggart had known what it meant,
it Mr. Mouch still permitted them to be heard; he had known that
the knife was still poised at his throat. Mr. Weatherby had not an-
swered his pleas, but had said, in a tone of idly irrelevant speculation,
“Wesley has so many tough problems. If he is to give everybody a
breathing spell, financially speaking, he’s got to put into operation a
certain emergency program of which you have some inkling. But you
know what hell the unprogressive elements of the country would
i, use about it. A man like Reardon, for instance. We don’t want any
more stunts of the sort he’s liable to pull. Wesley would give a lot
tor somebody who could keep Reardon in line. But I guess that’s
something nobody can deliver. 'Hiough I may be wrong You may
know better, Jim, since Rearden is a sort of friend of yours, who
comes to your parties and all that.”

Looking at Ullian across the tabic, Taggart said, “Friendship, 1
lind, is the most valuable thing in life — and i would be amiss if I
didn't give you proof of mine.”

" But I've never doubted it.”

He lowered his voice to the tone of an ominous warning: “I think
i I should tell you, as a favor, to a friend, although it’s confidential,
I that your husband’s attitude is being discussed in high places — very
1 high places. I’m sure you know what l mean.”

This was why he hated Lillian Rearden, thought Taggart: she knew
Ihe game, but she played it with unexpected variations of her own.

483

it was against all rules to look at him suddenly, to laugh in his face,
and — after all those remarks showing that she understood too little —
to say bluntly, showing that she understood too much. “Why, darling,
of course l know what you mean. You mean that the purpose of
this very excellent luncheon was not a favor you wanted to do me,
but a favor you wanted to get from me. You mean that it’s you who
are in danger and could use that favor to great advantage for a trade
in high places. And you mean that you are reminding me of my
promise to deliver the goods/'

“The sort of performance he put on at his trial was hardly what
I'd call delivering the goods/' he said angrily. “It wasn't what you
had led me to expect/'

“Oh my. no, it wasn’t," she said placidly. “It certainly wasn't. But,
darling, did you expect me not to know that after that performance
of his he wouldn't be very popular in high places? Did you really
think you had to tell me that as a confidential favor?"

“But it's true. I heard him discussed, so l thought I'd tell you."

“I'm sure it’s true. I know that they would be discussing him. I
know also that if there were anything they could do to him, they
would have done it right after his trial. My, would they have been
glad to do it! So l know that he’s the only one among you who is
in no danger whatever, at the moment I know that it's they who
are afraid of him. Do you see how well l understand what you
mean, darling?"

“Well, if you think you do, I must say that for my part I don’t
understand you at all. I don’t know what it is you're doing."

“Why, I'm just setting things straight-* so that you’ll know that 1
know how much you need me. And now that it's straight. I’ll tell
you the truth in my turn: I didn’t double-cross you, 1 merely failed.
His performance at the trial — 1 didn’t expect it any more than you
did. Less. I had good reason not to expect it. But something went
wrong. I don’t know what it was. I am trying to find out. When I
do, I will Tceep my promise. Then you'll be free to take full credit
for it and to tell your friends in high places that it's you who’ve
disarmed him."

“Lillian/' he said nervously, “l meant it when I said that 1 was
anxious to give you proof of my friendship — so »f thcie’s anything I
can do for** "

She laughed. “There isn’t. I know you mean it. But there's nothing
you can do for me. No favor of any kind. No trade. I'm a truly non-
commercial person, I want nothing in return, lough luck, Jim. You'll
just have to remain at my mercy."

“But then why should you want to do it at all? What are you
getting out of it?"

She leaned back, smiling. “This lunch. Just seeing y^u here. Just
knowing that you had to come to me."

An angry spark flashed in Taggart’s veiled eyes, the|i his eyelids
narrowed slowly and he, too, leaned back in his chairf his face re-
laxing to a faint look of mockery and satisfaction. Eveit from within
that unstated, unnamed, undefined muck which represented his code

484

of values, he was able to realize which one of them was the more
dependent on the other and the more contemptible.

When they parted at the door of the restaurant, she went to Rear*
den's suite at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, where she stayed occasion-
ally in his absence. She paced the room for about half an hour* in
a leisurely manner of reflection. Then she picked up the telephone,
with a smoothly casual gesture, but with the purposeful air of a
decision reached. She called Rearden’s office at the mills and asked
Miss Ives when she expected him to return.

“Mr. Rearden will be in New York tomorrow, arriving on the
Comet, Mrs, Rearden,” said Miss Ives’ clear, courteous voice.

“Tomorrow? That's wonderful. Miss Ives, would you do me a
favor? Would you call Gertrude at the house and tell her not to
expect me for dinner? I’m staying in New York overnight.”

She hung up, glanced at her watch and called the florist of the
Wayne-Falkland. “This is Mrs. Henry Rearden,” she said. “1 should
like to have two dozen Rises delivered to Mr. Rearden’s drawing
room aboard the Comet. . . . Yes, today, this afternoon, when the
Cornel reaches Chicago. . . . No, without any card — just the
flowers. . . . Thank you ever so much.”

She telephoned James Taggart. “Jim. will you send me a pass
to your passenger platforms? I want to meet my husband at the
station tomorrow ”

She hesitated between Balph Eubank and Bertram Scudder, chose
Balph Eubank, telephoned him and made a date for this evening’s
dinner and a musical show. Then she went to take a bath, and lay
relaxing in a tub of warm water, reading a magazine devoted to
problems of political economy.

It was late afternoon when the florist telephoned her. “Our Chi-
cago office sent word that they were unable to deliver the flowers,
Mrs. Rearden,” he said, “because Mr. Rearden is not aboard the
Comet.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Quite sure, Mrs. Rearden. Our man found at the station in Chi-
cago that there was no compartment on the train reserved in Mr.
Rearden's name. We checked with the New York office of Taggart
Transcontinental, just to make certain, and were told that Mr. Rear-
den's name is not on the passenger list of the Comet.”

“I see. . . . Then cancel the order, please. . . . Thank you.”

She sat by the telephone for a moment, frowning, then called Miss
Ives. “Please forgive me for being slightly scatterbrained. Miss Ives,
but 1 was rushed and did not write it down, and now I’m not quite
certain ot what you said. Did you say that Mr, Rearden was aiming
back tomorrow? On the Comet?”

“Yes, Mrs. Rearden.”

“You have not heard of any delay or change in his plans?”

“Why, no. In fact. 1 spoke to Mr. Rearden about an hour ago. He
telephoned from the station in Chicago, and he mentioned that he
had to hurry back aboard, as the Comet was about to leave.”

“f see. Thank you.”

She leaped to her feet as soon as the click of the instrument re-

485

stored her to privacy. She started pacing the room, her steps now
unrhythm ieally tense. Then she stopped, struck by a sudden thought.
There was only one reason why a man would make a train reserva-
tion under an assumed name: if he was not traveling alone.

Her facial muscles went flowing slowly into a smile of satisfaction:
this was an opportunity she had not expected.

* *

Standing on the Terminal platform, at a point halfway down the
length of the train, Lillian Rearden watched (he passengers descend-
ing from the Comet. Her mouth held the hint of a smile: there was
a spark of animation in her lifeless eyes; she glanced from one face
to another, jerking her head with the awkward eagerness of a school-
girl. She was anticipating the look on Rearden’s face when, with his
mistress beside him, he would see her standing there.

Her glance darted hopefully to every flashy young female stepping
off the train. It was hard to watch: within an instant after the first
few figures, the tram had seemed to burst at the seams, flooding the
platform with a solid current that swept in one direction, as if pulled
by a vacuum; she could barely distinguish separate persons. The
lights were more glare than illumination, picking this one strip out
of a dusty, oily darkness. She needed an eftoit to stand still against
the invisible pressure of motion.

Her first sight of Rearden in the crowd came as a shock* she had
not seen him step out of a car, but there he was. walking in her
direction lrom somewhere far down the length ol the train. He was
alone. He was walking with his usual puiposetul speed, his hands in
the pockets of his trencheoat. I here was no woman beside him. no
companion of any kind, except a porter hurrying along with a bag
she recognized as his.

in a fury of incredulous disappointment, she looked frantically for
an> single feminine figure he could have left behind. She felt certain
that she would recognize his choice. She saw none that could be
possible. And then she saw that the last car of the train was a private
car, and that 'the figure standing at us door, talking to some station
official — a figure wearing, not minks and veils, but a rough sports
coat that stressed the incomparable grace ol a slender body m the
confident posture of this station's owner and center — was Dagny
Taggart. Then Lillian Rearden understood.

“Lillian! What's the matter?’'

She heard Rearden’s voice, she felt his hand grasping her arm; she
saw him looking at her as one looks at the object of a sudden emer-
gency. He was looking at a blank face and an unfocused glance
of terror.

“What happened? What are you doing here?”

“I . . . Hello, Henry ... I just came to meet you . . . Np special
reason ... I just wanted to meet you.” The terror was gepte from
her face, but she spoke in a strange, flat voice. “1 wantejd to sec
you, it was an impulse, a sudden impulse and I couldn’t iTesist it,
because —

“But you look . . . looked ill.”

“No . . . No, maybe I felt faint, it’s stuffy here. . . . f couldn’t

486

resist coming, because it made me think of the days when you would
have been glad to see me ... it was a moment’s illusion to re-create
for myself. . . .” The words sounded like a memorized lesson.

She knew that she had to speak, while her mind was fighting to
grasp the full meaning of her discovery. r rhe words were pari of the
plan she had intended to use, if she had met him after he had found
the roses in his compartment.

He did not answer, he stood watching her, frowning.

“1 missed you, Henry. I know what 1 am confessing: But I don’t
expect it to mean anything to you any longer.” The words did not
fit the tight face, the lips that moved with effort, the eyes that kept
glancing away from him down the length of the platform. *T
wanted ... I merely wanted to surprise you.” A look of shrewdness
and purpose was returning to her face.

He took her arm, but she drew back, a little too sharply.

“Aren't you going to say a word to me, Henry?”

‘‘What do you wish me to say?”

“Do you hate it as much as that — having your wife come to meet
you at the station?” She glanced down the platform: Dagny Taggart
was walking toward them; he did not see her.

“Let's go,” he said.

She would not move. “Do you?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you hate it 7 ”

“No, I don't hate it. I merely don't understand it.”

“Tell me about your trip. I'm sure you've had a very enjoyable
trip ”

“Come on We can talk at home.”

“When do 1 ever have a chance to talk to you at home?” She was
drawling her words impassively, as if she were stretching them to fill
time, for some reason which lie could not imagine. “I had hoped to
catch a few moments of your attention- -like this — between trains
and business appointments and all those important matters that hold
you day and night, all those great achievements of yours, such as . . .
Hello, Miss Taggart!” she said sharply, her voice loud and bright.

Reardon whirled around. Dagny was walking past them, but she
^topped.

“How do you do,” she said to Lillian, bowing, her face express-
ionless.

“1 am so sorry. Miss Taggart,” said Lillian, smiling, “you must
forgive me if I don’t know the appropriate formula of condolences
for the occasion.” She noted that Dagny and Rearden had not
greeted each other. “You’re returning from what was, in effect, the
funeral of your child by my husband, aren't you?”

Dagny’s mouth showed a faint line of astonishment and of con-
tempt. She inclined hei head, by way of leave-taking, and walked on.

Lillian glanced sharply at Rcarden’s face, as if in deliberate em-
phasis. He looked at her indifferently, puz/led.

She said nothing. She followed him without a word when he turned
to go. ‘She remained silent in the taxicab, her face half-turned away
horn him, while they rode to the Wayne-Faikland Hotel. He felt

487

certain, as he looked at the tautly twisted set of her mouth, that
some uncustomary violence was racing within her. He had never
known her to experience a strong emotion of any kind.

She whirled to face him, the moment they were alone in his room.

“So that's who it is?” she asked.

He had not expected it. He looked at her, not quite believing that
he had understood it correctly.

“It’s Dagny Taggart who's your mistress, isn't she?*'

He did not answer.

“1 happen to know that you had no compartment on that train.
So I know where you’ve slept for the last four nights. Do you want
to admit it or do you want me to send detectives to question her
train crews and her house servants? Is it Dagny Taggart?"

“Yes.” he answered calmly.

Her mouth twisted into an ugly chuckle: she was staring past him.
“I should have known it. I should have guessed. That’s why it
didn't work!”

He asked, in blank bewilderment, “What didn't work?”

She stepped back, as il to remind hcrselt of his presence. “Had
you — when she was in our house, at the party — had you. then . . . 7”

“No. Since.”

“The great businesswoman," she said, “above reproach and femi-
nine weaknesses. The great mind detached from any concern with
the body . . She chuckled “The bracelet . . she said, with the
still look that made it sound as it the words were dropped acciden-
tally out of the torrent in her mind. “That's what she meant to you.
That’s the weapon she gave you."

“If you really understand what you’re saying - yes.”

“Do you think I’ll let you get away with it?”

“Get away . . *>” He vas looking at her incredulously, in cold,
astonished curiosity.”

“That’s w'hy, at your trial — ” She stopped

“What about my trial?”

She was trembling. “You know, of course, that 1 won’t allow this
to continue ”

“What does it have to do with my trial?"

“I won’t permit you to have her Not her. Anyone but her,”

He let a moment pass, then asked evenly. “Why?”

“I won’t permit it! You’ll give it up!” He was looking at her
without expression, but the steadiness of his eyes hit her as his most
dangerous answer. “You’ll give it up, you'll leave her, you'll never
see her again!”

“Lillian, if you wish to discuss it. there’s one thing you’d better
understand: nothing on earth will make me give it up.”

“But I demand it!”

“I told you that you could demand anything but that.” ,

He saw the look of a peculiar panic growing in her cy£s: it was
not the look of understanding, but of a ferocious refusal Jo under-
stand — as if she wanted to turn the violence of her emotion into a
fog screen, as if she hoped, not that it would blind her (jo reality,
but that her blindness would make reality cease to exist.

488

“Bui I have the right to demand it! 1 own your life! It’s my prop-
erty. My property — by your own oath. You swore to serve my happi-
ness. Not yours — mine! What have you done for me? You’ve given
me nothing, you've sacrificed nothing, you've never been concerned
with anything but yourself — your work, your mills, your talent, your
mistress! What about me? f hold first claim! I’m presenting it tor
collection! You're the account I own!”

It was the look on his face that drove her up the rising steps of
her voice, scream by scream, into terror. vShe was seeing, not anger
or pain or guilt, but the one inviolate enemy: indifference.

“Have you thought of me?” she screamed, her voice breaking
against his face. “Have you thought of what you're doing to me?
You have no right to go on, if you know that you’re putting me
through hell every time you sleep with that woman! I can't stand it,

I can't stand one moment of knowing it! Will you sacrifice me to
your animal desire? Are you as vicious and selfish as that? Can you
buy your pleasure at the price of my suffering? (’an you have it, if
this is what it does to me?”

Feeling nothing but the emptiness of wonder, he observed the
thing which he had glimpsed briefly in the past and was now seeing
m the full ugliness of its futility: the spectacle of pleas for pity deliv-
ered, in snarling hatred, as threats and as demands.

“Lillian,” he said very quietly, “I would have it, even if it took
your life.”

She heard it She heard more than he was ready to know and to
hear in his own words. r fhe shock, to him, was that she did not
scream in answer, but that he saw her, instead, shrinking down into
calm. ‘You have no right . . she said dully. It had the embarrassing
helplessness of the words of a person who knows her own words to
be meaningless.

“Whatever claim you ma> have on me,” he said, “no human being
can hold on another a claim demanding that he wipe himself out
of existence,”

“Does she mean as much as that to you?”

“Much more than that.”

The look of thought was returning to her face, bur in her face it
had the quality of a lwk of cunning. She remained silent.

“Lillian, I'm glad that you know the truth. Now you can make a
choice with full understanding. You may divorce me — or you may
ask that we continue as we are. That is the only choice you have. U
is all I can offer you. I think you know f want you to divorce me.
But 1 don’t ask for sacrifices. I don’t know what sort of comfort you
tan find in our marriage, but if you do, l won’t ask you to give it
up. 1 don’t know why you should want to hold me now, I don’t know
what it is that I mean to you. I don’t know what you're seeking,
what form of happiness is yours or what you will obtain from a
situation which 1 see as intolerable lor both of us. By every standard
of mine, you should have divorced me long ago. By every standard
mine, to maintain our marriage will be a vicious fraud But my
standards are not yours. I do not understand yours, l never have,
hut I will accept them. If this is the manner of your love for me. if

489

bearing the name of my wife will give you some form of content-
ment, 1 won’t take it away from you. It’s I who’ve broken my word,
so I will atone for it to the extent l can. You know, of course, that
I could buy one of those modern judges and obtain a divorce any
time I wished. 1 won’t do it. I will keep my word, if you so desire,
but this is the only form in which 1 can keep it. Now make your
choice — but if >ou choose to hold me, you must never speak to me
about her. you must never show her that you know, if you meet her
in the future, you must never touch that part of my life."

She stood still, looking up at him, the posture of her body slouched
and loose, as if its sloppiness were a form of defiance, as if she did
not care to resume for his sake the discipline of a graceful bearing.

"Miss Dagny Taggart . . she said, and chuckled. “The super-
woman whom common, average wives were not supposed to suspect.
77ie woman who cared for nothing but business and dealt with men
as a man. The woman of great spirit who admired you platonically,
just for your genius, your mills and your Metal!” She chuckled. ”1
should have known that she was just a bitch who wanted you in the
same way as any bitch would want you — because you are fully as
expert m bed as you are at a desk, if 1 am a judge of such matters.
But she would appreciate that better than I, since she worships ex-
pertness of any kind and since she had probably been laid by eveiy
section hand on her railroad!"

She stopped, because she saw, for the first time in her life, by
what sort of look one learns that a man is capable of killing. But he
was not looking at her. She was not sure whether he was seeing her
at all or hearing her voice.

He was hearing his own voice saying her words— saving them to
Dagny in the sun-striped bedroom of Ellis Wyatt’s house, fie was
seeing, in the nights behind him, Dagnv’s face in those moments
when, his body leaving hers, she lay still with a look of radiance that
was more than a smile, a look of youth, of early morning, of gratitude
to the fact of one’s own existence. And he was seeing Lillian’s face,
as he had seen it in bed beside him. a lifeless face with evasive eyes,
with some feeble sneer on its lips and the look of sharing some
smutty guilt. He saw who was the accuser and who the accused — he
saw the obscenity of letting impotence hold itself as virtue and damn
the power of living as a sin— he saw, with the clarity of direct percep-
tion, in the shock of a single instant, the terrible ugliness of that
which had once been his own belief.

it was only an instant, a conviction without words, a knowledge
grasped as a feeling, left unsealed by his mind. The shock brought
him back to the sight of Lillian and to the sound of her words She
appeared to him suddenly as some inconsequential presence that had
to be dealt with at the moment.

"‘Lillian," he said, in an unstressed voice that did noi grant her
even the honor of anger, "you are not to speak of her tojme. If you
ever do it again, 1 will answer you as 1 would answer a poodlum: I
will beat you up. Neither you nor anyone else is to discuss her."

She glanced at him. "Really?" she said. It had an odd, casual
sound — as if the word were tossed away, leaving some hook im~

490

planted in her mind. She seemed to be considering some sudden
vision of her own.

He said quietly, in weary astonishment, “1 thought you would be
glad to discover the truth. I thought you would prefer to know— for
the sake of whatever love or respect you felt for me — that if l be-
trayed you, it was not cheaply and casually, it was not for a chorus
girl, hut for the cleanest and most serious feeling of my life.”

The ferocious spring with which she whirled to him was involun-
tary, as was the naked twist of hatred in her face. “Oh, you god-
damn fool!”

He remained silent.

Her composure returned, with the faint suggestion of a smile of
secret mockery. “I believe you’re waiting for my answer?” she said.
“No, 1 won’t divorce you. Don’t ever hope for that. We shall con-
tinue as we are— if that is what you offered and if you think it can
continue. See whether you can (lout all moral principles and get
away with it!”

He did not listen to her while she reached for her coat, telling
him that she was going back to their home. He barely noticed it
when the door closed after her. He stood motionless, held by a
feeling he had never experienced before. He knew that he would
have to think lalei. to think and understand, but for the moment he
wanted nothing but to obseive the wonder of what he felt.

It was a sense ol freedom, as if he stood alone in the midst of an
endless sweep of dean air, with only the memory of some weight
that had been torn off his shoillders. It was the feeling of an immense
deliverance. It was the knowledge that it did not matter to him what
Lillian felt, what she suffered or what became of her. and more: not
only that it did not matter, but the shining, guiltless knowledge that
it did not have to matter.

Chapter V! MIRACLE METAL

“But can we get away with it?” asked Wesley Mouch. His voice was
high with anger and thin with fear.

Nobody answered hint. James T aggart sat on the edge of an arm-
chair not moving looking up at him from under his forehead. Orrcn
Boyle gave a vicious tap against an ashtray, shaking the ash off his
cigar. Dr. Floyd Ferris smiled Mr. Weathcrby folded his lips and
hands. Fred Kinnan, head of the Amalgamated Labor of America,
slopped pacing the office, sat down on the window sill and crossed
his arms. Eugene L^awson, who had sat hunched downward, absent-
mindedly rearranging a display of flowers on a low glass table, raised
his torso resentfully and glanced up. Mouch sat at his desk, with his
fist on a sheet of paper.

It was Eugene Lawson who answered. “That’s not, it seems to me,
the way to put it. We must not let vulgar difficulties obstruct our
feeling that it’s a noble plan motivated solely by the public welfare.
It’s fen* the good of the people. The people need it. Need comes first*
so we don’t have to consider anything else.”

491

Nobody objected or picked it up; they looked as if Lawson had
merely made it harder to continue the discussion. But a small man
who sat unobtrusively in the best armchair of the room, apart from
the others, content to be ignored and fully aware that none of them
could be unconscious of his presence, glanced at Lawson, then at
Mouch, and said with brisk cheerfulness, “That’s the line, Wesley.
Tone it down and dress it up and get your press boys to chant it —
and you won’t have to worry.”

“Yes, Mr. Thompson,” said Mouch glumly.

Mr. Thompson, the Head of the State, was a man who possessed
the quality of never being noticed. In any group of three, his person
became indistinguishable, and when seen alone it seemed to evoke
a group of its own, composed of the countless persons he resembled.
The country had no dear image of what he looked like/ his photo-
graphs had appeared on the covers of magazines as frequently as
those of his predecessors in office, but people could never be quite
certain which photographs were his and which were pictures of “ a
mail clerk” or “n white-collar worker,” accompanying articles about
the daily life of the undifferentiated — except that Mr. Thompson’s
collars were usually wilted. He had broad shoulders and a slight
body. He had stringy hair, a wide mouth and an elastic age range
that made him look like a harassed forty or an unusually vigorous
sixty. Holding enormous official powers, he schemed ceaselessly to
expand them, because it was expected of him by those \vho had
pushed him into office. He had the cunning of the unintelligent and
the frantic energy of the lazy. The sole secret of his rise in life was
the fact that he was a product of chance and knew it and aspired to
nothing else.

“It’s obvious that measures have to be taken. Drastic measures,”
said James Taggart, speaking, not to Mr. Thompson, but to Wesley
Mouch. “We can’t let things go the way they’re going much longer.”
His voice was belligerent and shaky.

“Take it efcsy, Jim,” said Orren Boyle.

“Something’s got to be done and done fast!”

“Don’t look at me,” snapped Wesley Mouch. “I can’t help it. I
can’t help it if people refuse to co-operate. I’m tied. I need wider
powers.”

Mouch had summoned them all to Washington, as his friends and
personal advisers, for a private, unofficial conference on the national
crisis. But, watching him, they were unable to decide whether his
manner was overbearing or whining, whether he was threatening
them or pleading for their help.

“Fact is,” said Mr. Weathcrby primly, in a statistical torn? of voice,
“that in the twelve-month period ending on the first of thi$ year, the
rate of business failures has doubled, as compared with the jpreceding
twelve-month period. Since the first of this year, it has trebled.”

“Be sure they think it’s their own fault,” said Dr. Ferri£ casually.

“Huh?” said Wesley Mouch, his eyes darting to Ferris. ?

“Whatever you do, don’t apologize,” said Dr. Ferris. “Make them
feel guilty.”

492

‘Tm not apologizing!” snapped Mouch. ‘Tin not to blame. 1 need
wider powers/’

“But it is their own fault,” said Eugene Lawson, turning aggros*-
sivcly to Dr. Ferris. “It’s their lack of social spirit. They refuse to
recognize that production is not a private choice, but a public duty.
They have no right to fail, no matter what conditions happen to
come up. They’ve got to go on producing. It’s a social imperative.
A man’s work is not a personal matter, it’s a social matter. There’s
no such thing as a personal matter — or a personal life. That's what
we’ve got to force them to learn.”

“Gene Lawson knows what I’m talking about,” said Dr. Ferris,
with a slight smile, “even though he hasn’t the faintest idea that
he does.”

“What do you think you mean?” asked Lawson, his voice rising.

“Skip it,” ordered Wesley Mouch.

“1 don’t care what you decide to do. Wesley,” said Mr. Thompson,
“and I don’t care if the businessmen squawk about it. Just he sure
you’ve got the press with you. Be damn sure about that.”

“I’ve got ’em,” said Mouch.

“One editor who’d open his trap at the wrong time could do us
more harm than ten disgruntled millionaires.”

“That’s true, Mr. Thompson/' said Dr. Ferris. “But can you name
one editor who knows it?”

“Guess not/’ said Thompson; he sounded pleased.

“Whatever type ot men weTe counting on and planning for,” said
Dr. Ferris, “there’s a certain old-fashioned quotation which wc may
safely forget: the one about counting on the wise and the honest.
We don’t have to consider them. They’re out of date.”

James Taggart glanced at the window There were patches of blue
in the sky above the spacious streets of Washington, the faint blue
of mid-April, and a few beams breaking through the clouds. A monu-
ment stood shining in the distance, hit by a ray of sun: it was a tall,
white obelisk, erected to the memory of the man Dr. Ferris was
quoting, the man in whose honor this city had been named. James
Taggart looked away.

“1 don't like the professor’s remarks.” said Lawson loudly and
sullenly.

“Keep still,” said Wesley Mouch. “Dr. Ferris is not talking theory,
but practice.”

“Well, if you want to talk practice,” said Fred Kinnan, “then let
me tell you that we can’t worry about businessmen at a time like
this. What we’ve got to think about is jobs. More jobs tor the people.
In my unions, every man who’s working is feeding five who aren't,
run counting his own pack of starving relatives. If you want my
advice — oh, I know you won’t go for it, but it’s just a thought — issue
a directive making it compulsory to add, say, onc~third more men
to every payroll m the country.”

‘Good God!” yelled Taggart. “Are you crazy? We can barely
meet our payrolls as it is! There’s not enough work for the men
we’ve* got now! One-third more? We wouldn’t have any use for
them whatever!”

493

“Who cares whether you’d have any use for them?” said Fred
Kinnan. “They need jobs. That’s what comes first— need — doesn’t
it? — not your profits.”

“It’s not a question of profits!” yelled Taggart hastily. “I haven’t
said anything about profits. I haven’t given you any grounds to insult
me. It’s just a question of where in hell we’d get the money to pay
your men — when half our trains are running empty and there’s not
enough freight to fill a trolley car.” His voice slowed down suddenly
to a tone of cautious thoughtfulness: “However, we do understand
the plight of the working men, and — it’s just a thought — we could,
perhaps, take on a certain extra number, if we were permitted to
double our freight rates, which — ”

“Have you lost your mind?” yelled Orren Boyle. “I’m going broke
on the rates you’re charging now, 1 shudder every time a damn
boxcar pulls in or out of the mills, they’re bleeding me to death, 1
can’t afford it — and you want to double it?”

“It is not essential whether you can afford it or not,” said Taggart
coldly. “You have to be prepared to make some sacrifices. The public
needs railroads. Need comes first — above your profits.”

“What profits?” yelled Orren Boyle. “When did 1 ever make any
profits? Nobody can accuse me of running a profit-making business!
Just look at my balance sheet — and then look at the books of a
certain competitor of mine, who’s got all the customers, all the raw
materials, all the technical advantages and a monopoly on secret
formulas — then tell me who’s the profiteer! . . . But, of course, the
public does need railroads, and perhaps I could manage to absorb a
certain raise in rales, if I were to get — it’s just a thought— if I were
to get a subsidy to carry me over the next year or two, until I catch
my stride and — ”

“What? Again?” yelled Mr. Weatherby, losing his primness. “How
many loans have you got from us and how many extensions, suspen-
sions and moratoriums? You haven’t repaid a penny — and with all
of you boys going broke and the tax receipts crashing, where do you
expect us to get the money to hand you a subsidy?”

“There arc people who aren’t broke,” said Boyle slowly. “You
boys have no excuse for permitting all that need and misery to spread
through the country — so long as there are people who aren’t broke.”

“I can’t help it!” yelled Wesley Mouch. “I can’t do anything about
it! I need wider powers!”

They could not tell what had prompted Mr. Thompson to attend
this particular conference. He had said little, but had listened with
interest. It seemed as if there was something which he had wanted
to learn, and now he looked as if he had learned it. He stood up
and smiled cheerfully.

“Go ahead, Wesley,” he said. “Go ahead with Number 10-289.
You won’t have any trouble at all.”

They had all risen to their leel, in gloomily reluctant Reference.
Wesley Mouch glanced down at his sheet of paper, then! said in a
petulant tone of voice, “If you want me to go ahead, you)l have to
declare a state of total emergency.”

“I’ll declare it any time you’re ready.”

494

‘"There are certain difficulties, which — ”

“HI leave it to you. Work it out any way you wish. It’s your job.
Let me see the rough draft, tomorrow or next day, but don’t bother
me about the details. I’ve got a speech to make on the radio in half
an hour.”

“The chief difficulty is that Fm not sure whether the law actually
grants us the power to put into effect certain provisions of Directive
Number 10-289. I fear they might be open to challenge.”

“Oh, hell, we’ve passed so many emergency laws that if you hunt
through them, you’re sure to dig up something that will cover it.”

Mr. Thompson turned to the others with a smile of good fellow-
ship. “I’ll leave you boys to iron out the wrinkles,” he said, “f ap-
preciate your coming to Washington to help us out. Glad to have
seen you.”

They waited until the door closed after him, then resumed their
seals; they did not look at one another.

They had not heard the text of Directive No. 10-289. but they
knew what it would contain. They had known it for a long time, in
that special manner which consisted of keeping secrets from oneself
and leaving knowledge untranslated into words. And, by the same
method, they now wished it were possible for them not to hear the
words of the directive. It was to avoid moments such as this that all
the complex twistings of their minds had been devised.

They wished the directive to go into effect. They wished it could
be put into effect without words, so that they would not have to
know that what they were doing was what it was. Nobody had ever
announced that Directive No. 10-289 was the final goal of his efforts.
Yet, for generations past, men had worked to make it possible, and
lor months past, every provision of it had been prepared for by count-
less speeches, articles, sermons, editorials — by purposeful voices that
screamed with anger if anyone named their purpose.

“The picture now is this,” said Wesley Mouch. “The economic
condition of the country was better the year before last than it was
last year, and last year it was better than it is at present. It’s obvious
that we would not be able to survive another year of the same pro-
gression. Therefore, our sole objective must now be to hold the fine.
To stand still in order to catch our stride. To achieve total stability.
Freedom has been given a chance and has failed. Therefore, more
stringent controls are necessary. Since men are unable and unwilling
to solve their problems voluntarily, they must be forced to do it.”
He paused, picked up the sheet of paper, then added in a less forma!
tone of voice, “Hell, what it comes down to is that we can manage
to exist as and where we are, but we can’t afford to move! So we’ve
got to stand still. We’ve got to stand still. We’ve got to make those
bastards stand still!”

His head drawn into his shoulders, he was looking at them with
the anger of a man declaring that the country’s troubles were a
personal affront to him. So many men seeking favors had been afraid
of him that he now acted as if his anger were a solution to everything,
as if his anger were omnipotent, as if all he had to do was to get
angry. Yet, facing him, the men who sat in a silent semicircle before

495

his desk were uncertain whether the presence of fear in the room
was their own emotion or whether the hunched figure behind the
desk generated the panic of a cornered rat.

Wesley Mouch had a long, square face and a flat-topped skull,
made more so by a brush haircut. His lower lip was a petulant bulb
and the pale, brownish pupils of his eyes looked like the yolks of
eggs smeared under the not fully translucent whites. His facial mus-
cles moved abruptly, and the movement vanished, having conveyed
no expression. No one had ever seen him smile.

Wesley Mouch came from a family that had known neither poverty
nor wealth nor distinction for many generations; it had clung, how-
ever, to a tradition of its own: that of being college-bred and, there-
fore, of despising men who were in business. The family’s diplomas
had always hung on the wall in the manner of a reproach to the
world, because the diplomas had not automatically produced the
material equivalents of their attested spiritual value. Among the fam-
ily’s numerous relatives, there was one rich uncle. He had married
his money and, in his widowed old age, he had picked Wesley as his
favorite from among his many nephews and nieces, because Wesley
was the least distinguished of ibe lot and therefore, thought Uncle
Julius, the safest. Uncle Julius did not care for people who were
brilliant. He did nut care for the trouble of managing his money,
either; so he turned the job over to Wesley. By the time Wesley
graduated from college, there was no money to manage. Uncle Julius
blamed it on Wesley’s cunning and cried that Wesley was an unscru-
pulous schemer. But there had been no scheme about it; Wesley
could not have said just where the money had gone. In high school,
Wesley Mouch had been one of the worst students and had passion-
ately envied those who were the best. College taught him that he
did not have to envy them at all. After graduation, he took a job m
the advertising department of a company that manufactured a bogus
corn-cure. The cure sold well and he rose to be the head ol his
department. He left it to take charge of the advertising of a hair-
restorer, then of a patented brassiere, then of a new soap, then of
a soft drink — and then he became advertising vice president of an
automobile concern. He tried to sell automobiles as if they were a
bogus corn-cure. They did not sell He blamed it on the insufficiency
of his advertising budget. It was the president of the automobile
concern who recommended him to Reardon. It was Rearden who
introduced him to Washington — Rearden, who knew no standard by
which to judge the activities of his Washington man. It was James
Taggart who gave him a start in the Bureau of Economic Planning
and National Resources — in exchange for double-crossing Rearden
in order to help Orren Boyle in exchange for destroying Pan Con-
way, From then on, people helped Wesley Mouch to advance, for
the same reason as that which had prompted Unde Julius: they were
people who believed that mediocrity was safe. The men ) who now
sat in front of his desk had been taught that the law of causality was
a superstition and that one had to deal with the situation of the
moment without considering its cause. By the situation of the mo-
ment, they had concluded that Wesley Mouch was a man of superla-

496

tive skill and cunnings since millions aspired to power, but he was
the one who had achieved it. It was not within their method of
thinking to know that Wesley Mouch was the zero at the meeting
point of forces unleashed in destruction against one another.

“This is just a rough draft of Directive Number 10-289," said
Wesley Mouch, “which Gene, Clem and I have dashed off just to
give you the general idea. We want to hear your opinions, sugges-
tions and so forth— you being the representatives of labor, industry,
transportation and the professions."

Fred Kinnan got off the window sill and sat down on the arm of
a chair. Orren Boyle spit out the butt of his cigar. James Taggart
looked down at his own hands. Dr. Ferris was the only one who
seemed to be at case.

“In the name of the general welfare/’ read Wesley Mouch, “to
protect the people’s security, to achieve full equality and total stabil-
ity. it is decreed for the duration of the national emergency that —

“Point One. All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind
whatsoever shall hencelorth be attached to their jobs and shall not
leave not be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a
term in jail. The penalty shall be determined by the Unification
Board, such Board to he appointed by the Bureau of Economic
Planning and National Resources. All persons reaching the age of
twenty-one shall report to the Unification Board, which shall assign
them to where, in its opinion, their services will best serve the inter-
ests of the nation.

“Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and busi-
ness establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth re-
main in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not
quit nor leave nor retire, nor dose, sell or transfer their business,
under penalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of
any and all of their property.

“Point Three. AH patents and copyrights, pertaining to any de-
vices. inventions, formulas, processes and works of any nature what-
soever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency
gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the
owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board
shall then license the use ot such patents and copyrights to all appli-
cants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of elimi-
nating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products and
making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks,
brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Eveiv formerly pat-
ented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manu-
lacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the
Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are
hereby abolished.

“Point Four. No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of
any nature whatsoever, not now on the market, shall be produced,
invented, manufactured or sold after the date of this directive. The
Office of Patents and Copyrights is hereby suspended.

"Point Five. Every establishment, concern, corporation or person
engaged in production of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth

497

produce the same amount of goods per year as it, they or he pro-
duced during the Basic Year, no more and no less. The year to be
known as the Basic or Yardstick Year is to be the year ending on
the date of this directive. Over or under production shall be fined,
such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.

“Point Six. Every person of any age, sex, class or income, shall
henceforth spend the same amount of money on the purchase of
goods per year as he or she spent during the Basic Year, no more
and no less. Over or under purchasing shall be fined, such fines to
be determined by the Unification Board.

'‘Point Seven. All wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits, interest
rates and forms of income of any nature whatsoever, shall be frozen
at their present figures, as of the date of this directive.

“Point Eight. AH cases arising from and rules not specifically pro-
vided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the
Unification Board, whose decisions will be final.”

There was, even within the four men who had listened, a remnant
of human dignity, which made them siL still and feci sick for the
length of one minute.

James Taggart spoke first. His voice was low, but it had the
trembling intensity of an involuntary scream: '‘Well, why not? Why
should they have it, if we don’t? Why should they stand above us?
If we are to perish, let’s make sure that we all perish together. Let’s
make sure that we leave them no chance to survive!”

“That’s a damn funny thing to say about a very practical plan that
will benefit everybody,” said Orren Boyle shrilly, looking at Taggart
in frightened astonishment.

Dr. Ferris chuckled.

Taggart’s eyes seemed to focus, and he said, his voice louder, “Yes,
of course. It’s a very practical plan. It’s necessary, practical and just.
It will solve everybody's problems. It will give everybody a chance
to feel safe. A chance to rest.”

“It will give security to the people,” said Eugene Lawson, his
mouth slithering into a smile. “Security — that’s what the people
want. If they want it, why shouldn’t they have it? Just because a
handful of rich will object?”

“It’s not the rich who’ll object,” said Dr. Ferris lazily. “The rich
drool for security more than any other sort of animal — haven't you
discovered that yet?”

“Well, who’ll object?” snapped Lawson.

Dr. Ferris smiled pointedly, and did not answer.

Lawson looked away. “To hell with them! Why should we worry
about them ? We’ve got to run the world for the sake of the little
people. It’s intelligence that’s caused all the troubles of humanity.
Man’s mind is the root of all evil. This is the day of tho heart. It’s
the weak, the meek, the sick and the humble that must >e the only
objects of our concern.” His lower lip was twisting in sof^, lecherous
motions. “Those who’ re big are here to serve those who aren’t. If
they refuse to do their moral duty, we’ve got to lorce t|em. There
once was an Age of Reason, but we’ve progressed beydnd it. This
is the Age of Love.”

498

“Shut up!” screamed James Taggart.

They all stared at him. “For Christ’s sake, Jim, what’s the matter?'*
said Orren Boyle, shaking.

“Nothing,” said Taggart, “nothing . . . Wesley, keep him still,
will you?”

Mouch said uncomfortably, “But I fail to see — ”

“Just keep him still. We don’t have to listen to him, do we?”

“Why, no, but — ”

“Then let’s go on.”

“What is this?” demanded Lawson. “1 resent it I most emphati-
cally — ” But he saw no support in the faces around him and stopped,
his mouth sagging into an expression of pouting hatred.

“Let's go on,” said Taggart feverishly.

“What's the matter with you?” asked Orren Boyle, trying not to
know what was the matter with himself and why he felt frightened.

“Genius is a superstition, Jim,” said Dr. Ferris slowly, with an odd
kind of emphasis, as if knowing that he was naming the unnamed in
all their minds. “There’s no such thing as the intellect A man's brain
is a social product. A sum of influences that he’s picked up from
those around him. Nobody invents anything, he merely reflects
what's floating in the social atmosphere A genius is an intellectual
scavenger and a greedy hoarder of the ideas which rightfully belong
to society, from which he stole them. All thought is theft, if we do
away with private fortunes, we’ll have a taircr distribution of wealth.
11 we do away with genius, we ll have a fairer distribution of ideas.”

**/\re we here to talk business or are we here to kid one another?”
asked Fred Kinnnn.

7 hey turned to him He was a muscular man with large features,
hut his face had the astonishing property of finely drawn lines that
raised the corners of his mouth into the permanent hint of a wise,
sardonic grin He sat on the arm of the chair, hands in pockets,
looking at Mouch with the smiling glance of a hardened policeman
at a shoplifter.

“All I’ve got to say is that you'd better staff that Unification Board
with my men,” he said “Better make sure of it, brother — or I'll blast
your Point One to hell.”

“1 intend, of course, to have a representative of labor on that
Board,” said Mouch dryly, “as well as a representative of industry,
of the professions and of every cross-section of--"

“No cross-sections,” said Fred Kinnau evenly. “Just representa-
tives of labor. Period.”

“What the hell!” yelled Orren Boyle. “That’s stacking the cards,
isn't it *”

“Sute,” said Fred Kinnan.

“But that will give you a stranglehold on every business in the
country!”

“What do you think I'm after?”

“That’s unfair!” yelled Boyle. “I won't stand for it! You have no
right!* You — ”

“Right?” said Kinnan innocently. “Are we talking about rights?”

499

“But, I mean, after all, there are certain fundamental property
rights which — ”

"‘Listen, pal, you want Point Three, don’t you?”

“Well, I — ”

“Then you’d better keep your trap shut about property rights from
now on. Keep it shut tight.”

“Mr. Kinnan,” said Dr. Ferris, “you must not make the old-
fashioned mistake of drawing wide generalizations. Our policy has
to be flexible. There are no absolute principles which — ”

“Save it for Jim Taggart, Doc,” said Fred Kinnan. “I know what
I’m talking about. That’s because 1 never went to college.”

‘i object,” said Boyle, “to your dictatorial method of — ”

Kinnan turned his back on him and said, “Listen, Wesley, my boys
won’t like Point One. If I get to run things. I’ll make them swallow
it. If not, not. Just make up your mind.”

"Well — ” said Mouch. and stopped.

“For Christ's sake, Wesley, what about us?” yelled Taggart.

“You'll come to me,” said Kinnan, “when you’ll need a deal to
fix the Board. But I’ll run that Board. Me and Wesley.”

“Do you think the country will stand for it?” yelled Taggart.

“Stop kidding yourself,” said Kinnan. “The country? If there
aren't any principles any more —and 1 guess the doc is right, because
there sure aren’t if there aren’t any rules to this game and it's only
a question of who robs whom — then I've got more votes than the
bunch of you, there are more workers than employers, and don’t
you forget it, boys!”

“That's a funny altitude to take.” said Taggart haughtily, “about
a measure which, after all, is not designed for the selfish benefit of
workers or employers, but for the general welfare of the public.”

“Okay,” said Kinnan amiably, “let’s talk your lingo. Who is the
public? If you go by quality— then it ain't you, Jim, and it ain’t Orrie
Boyle. If you go by quantity — then it sure is me, because quantity is
what I've got behind me.” His smile disappeared, and with a sudden,
bitter look of weariness he added, “Only I’m not going to say that
Fm working for the welfare of my public, because I know I’m not.
I know that Fm delivering the poor bastards into slavery, and that’s
ail there is to it. And they know it, too. But they know that Fll have
to throw them a crumb once in a while, if I want to keep my racket,
while with the rest of you they wouldn’t have a chance in hell. So
that’s why. if they’ve got to be under a whip, they’d Tather / held
it, not you — you drooling, tear-jerking, mealy-mouthed bastards of
the public welfare! Do you think that outside of your college-bred
pansies there’s one village idiot whom you're fooling? Fm a racke-
teer — but I know it and my boys know it, and they kno^ that I’ll
pay off. Not out of the kindness of iny heart, either, and pot a cent
more than I can get away with, but at least they can coupt on that
much. Sure, it makes me sick sometimes, it makes me sick bright now,
but it’s not me who’s built this kind of world — you ditl — so Fm
playing the game as you’ve set it up and Fm going to plaiy it for as
long as it lasts — which isn’t going to be long for any of us!”

500

He stood up. No one answered him. He let his eyes move slowly
from face to face and stop on Wesley Mouch.

“Do I get the Board, Wesley?” he asked casually.

“The selection of the specific personnel is only a technical detail,”
said Mouch pleasantly, “Suppose we discuss it later, you and I?”

Everybody in the room knew that this meant the answer Yes.

“Okay, pal,” said Kinnan. He went back to the window, sat down
on the sill and lighted a cigarette.

For some unadmitted reason, the others were looking at Dr. Ferns,
as if seeking guidance.

“Don’t be disturbed by oratory.” said Dr. Ferris smoothly. “Mr.
Kinnan is a fine speaker, but he has no sense of practical reality. He
is unable to think dialectically.”

There was another silence, then James Taggart spoke up suddenly.
“I don’t care. It doesn't matter. He’ll have to hold things still. Every-
thing will have to remain as it is. Just as it is. Nobody will be permit-
ted to change anything. Except — ” He turned sharply to Wesley
Mouch. “Wesley, under Point Four, we’ll have to close all research
departments, experimental laboratories, scientific foundations and all
the rest of the institutions of that kind. They'll have to be forbidden.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Mouch. i hadn’t thought of that. We’ll
have to stick m a couple of fines about that ” He hunted around for
a pencil and made a few scrawls on the margin of his paper.

“It will end wasteful competition,” said James Taggart. “We'll stop
scrambling to beat one another to the untried and the unknown. We
won’t have to worry about new inventions upsetting the market. We
won'! have to pour money down the drain in useless experiments
lust to keep up with overambitious competitors.”

“Yes,” said Orren Boyle. “Nobody should be allowed to waste
money on the new until everybody has plenty of the old. Close all
I hose damn research laboratories — and the sooner, the better.”

“Yes,” said Wesley Mouch. “We'll close them. AU of them,”

“The State Science Institute, loo?” asked Fred Kinnan.

“Oh, no!” said Mouch. “Thai’s different That’s government. Be-
sides, it's a non-profit institution. And it will be sufficient to take
care of all scientific progress.”

“Quite sufficient,” said Dr. Ferris,

“And what will become of all the engineers, professors and such,
when you close all those laboratories?” asked Fred Kinnan. “What
are they going to do for a living, with all the other jobs and busi-
nesses frozen?”

“Oh,” said Wesley Mouch. He scratched his head. He turned to
Mr Weatherby. “Do we put them on relief, Clem?”

“No,” said Mr. Weatherby. “What for? There's not enough of
them to raise a squawk. Not enough to matter.'’

“1 suppose,” said Mouch, turning to Dr. Ferris, “that you’ll be
able to absorb some of them, Floyd?”

“Some,” said Dr. Ferris slowly, as if relishing every syllable of his
answer. “Those who prove co-operative.”

‘ What about the rest?” said Fred Kinnan.

501

“They'll have to wait till the Unification Board finds some use for
them," said Wesley Mouch.

“What will they eat while they're waiting?"

Mouch shrugged. “There's got to be some victims in times of na-
tional emergency. It can't be helped."

“We have the right to do it!" cried Taggart suddenly, in defiance
to the stillness of the room. "We need it. We need it, don't we?"
There was no answer. “We have the right to protect our livelihood!"
Nobody opposed him, but he went on with a shrill, pleading, insis-
tence. "We'll be safe for the first time in centuries. Everybody will
know his place and job, and everybody elsc’s place and job — and we
won’t be at the mercy of every stray crank with a new idea. Nobody
will push us out of business or steal our markets or undersell us or
make us obsolete. Nobody will come to us offering some damn new
gadget and putting us on the spot to decide whether we'll lose our
shirt if we buy it, or whether we'll lose our shirt if we don't but
somebody else does! We won't have to decide. Nobody will be per-
mitted to decide anything. It will be decided once and for all." His
glance moved pleadingly from face to face. “There's been enough
invented already — enough for everybody's comfort — why should
they be allowed to go on inventing? Why should we permit them to
blast the ground from under our feet every few steps? Why should
we be kept on the go in eternal uncertainty? Just because of a tew
restless, ambitious adventurers? Should we sacrifice the contentment
of the whole of mankind to the greed of a few non-conformists? We
don't need them. We don’t need them at all. 1 wish we'd get rid of
that hero worship! Heroes? They’ve done nothing but harm, all
through history They’ve kept mankind running a wild race, with no
breathing spell, no rest, no ease, no security Running to catch up
with them . . . always, without end . . Just as we catch up, they’re
years ahead. . They leave us no chance . . . They've never left us
a chance. . . His eyes were moving restlessly; he glanced at the
window, but looked hastily away: he did not want to see the white
obelisk in the. distance. “We’re through with them. We've won. This
is our age. Our world. We're going to have security — for the first
time in centuries — for the first lime since the beginning of the indus-
trial revolution 1 "

“Well, this, I guess," said Fred Kinnan, “is the anti-industrial
revolution."

“That’s a damn funny thing for you to say!" snapped Wesley
Mouth. “We can't be permitted to say that to the public."

"Don’t worry, brother. I won’t say it to the public."

“It ? s a total fallacy," said Dr. Ferris. “It’s a statement prompted
by ignorance. Every expert has conceded long ago that a planned
economy achieves the maximum of productive efficiency and that
centralization leads to super-industrialization." *

“Centralization destroys the blight of monopoly," said Boyle.

“How’s that again?" drawled Kinnan.

Boyle did not catch the tone of mockery, and answered Earnestly,
“It destroys the blight of monopoly. It leads to the democratization
of industry. It makes everything available to everybody. How, for

502

instance, at a time like this, when there’s such a desperate shortage of
iron ore, is there any sense in my wasting money, labor and national
resources on making old-fashioned steel, when there exists a much
better metal that I could be making? A metal that everybody wants,
but nobody can get. Now is that good economics or sound social
efficiency or democratic justice? Why shouldn’t f be allowed to man-
ufacture that metal and why shouldn't the people get it when they
need it? Just because of the private monopoly of one selfish individ-
ual? Should we sacrifice our rights to his personal interests?”

‘Skip it, brother,” said Fred Kinnan. “Fve read it all in the same
newspapers you did.”

“I don't like your altitude.'' said Boyle, in a sudden tone of righ-
teousness, with a look which, in a barroom, would have signified a
prelude to a fist fight. He sat up straight, buttressed by the columns
ot paragraphs on yellow tinged paper, which he was seeing in his
mind:

“At a time of crucial public need, are we to waste social
effort on the manufacture of obsolete products? Are we
to let the many remain in want while the few withhold
from us the better products and methods available? Are
we to be stopped by the superstition of patent rights?”

“Is it not obvious that private industry is unable to cope
with the present economic crisis? How long, for instance,
are we going to put up with the disgraceful shortage of
Reardon Metal? Thetc is a crying public demand for it,
which Reardon has failed to supply."’

“When are we going to put an end to economic injustice
and special privileges? Why should Rearden be the only
one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?”

“1 don’t like your attitude,” said Orren Boyle “So long as we
icspect the rights of the workers, we'll want you to respect the rights
of the industrialists.”

“Which rights of which industrialists?” drawled Kinnan.

“I'm inclined to think,” said Dr. Ferris hastily, “that Point Two,
perhaps, is the most essential one of all at present. We must put an
end to that peculiar business of industrialists retiring and vanishing.
We must stop them. It’s playing havoc with our entire economy ”

“Why are they doing it?” asked Taggart nervously. “Where are
they all going?”

“Nobody knows,” said Dr. Ferris. “We've been unable to find any
information or explanation. But it must be stopped. In times of crisis,
economic service to the nation is just as much of a duty as military
service. Anyone who abandons it should be regarded as a deserter.
I have recommended that we introduce the death penalty for those
men, but Wesley wouldn’t agree to it”

“Take it easy, boy,” said Fred Kinnan in an odd. slow voice. He
sat suddenly and perfectly still, his arms crossed, looking at Ferris
in a manner that made it suddenly real to the room that Ferris had

503

proposed murder. “Don't let me hear you talk about any death pen-
alties in industry."

Dr. Ferris shrugged.

“We don’t have to go to extremes,” said Mouoh hastily. ‘‘We don't
want to frighten people We want to have them on our side. Our
top problem is. will they . . . will they accept it at all?”

“They will,” said Dr. Ferris.

‘Tm a little worried," said Eugene Lawson, “about Points Three
and Four. Faking over the patents is line. Nobody’s going to defend
industrialists. But I'm worried about taking over the copyrights.
That’s going to antagonize the intellectuals. It’s dangerous. It’s a
spiritual issue. Doesn't Point Four mean that no new books are to
be written or published from now on?”

“Yes,” said Mouch, “it does. But we can’t make an exception for
the book-publishing business. It s an industry like any other. When
we say ‘no new products,’ it's got to mean no new products.' ”

“But this is a matter ot the spirit,” said Lawson; his voice had a
tone, not of rational respect, but of superstitious awe.

“We’re not interfering with anybody’s spirit. But when you print
a book on paper, it becomes a material commodity— and if we grant
an exception to one commodity, we won't be able to hold the others
in line and we won't be able to make anything stick.”

“Yes. that’s ttue. But — ”

“Don’t be a chump. Gene," said Dj. Ferris. “You don't want some
recalcitrant hacks to come out with treatises that wall wreck oui
entire program, do >ou? If you breathe the word ‘censorship’ now,
they'll all scream bloody murdei They're not ready for it— as yet.
But if you leave the spirit alone and make it a simple material issue -
not a matter of ideas, but just a matter ot paper, ink and printing
presses — you accomplish your purpose much more smoothly. You'll
make sure that nothing dangerous gets printed 01 heard- -and no-
body is going to light over a matenal issue.”

“Yes, but . . . but l don’t think the writers will like it.”

“Are you* sure?” asked Wesley Mouch. with a glance that was
almost a smile. “Don’t forget that under Point Five, the publishers
will have to publish as many books as they did in the Basic Yeai.
Since there will be no new ones, they will have to reprint and the
public will have to buy some ot the old ones. There aie many very
worthy books that have never had a fair chance.”

“Oh,” said Lawson; he remembered that he had seen Mouch
lunching with Balph Eubank two weeks ago. 1 hen he shook his head
and frowned. “Still, I'm worried The intellectuals are our friends.
We don't want to lose them. They can make an awful lot of trouble.”

“They won’t,” said Fred Kinnan. “Your kind of intellectuals are
the first to scream when it’s safe— and the first to shut their traps at
the first sign of danger. They spend years spitting at the; man who
feeds them— and they lick the hand of the man who slaps their drool-
ing faces. Didn’t they deliver every country of Europe.ume after
another* to committees of goons, just like this one here? Ijidn’t they
scream their heads off to shut out every burglar alarm an& to break
every padlock open for the goons? Have you heard a peep out of

504

them since? Didn’t they scream that they were the friends of labor?
Do you hear them raising their voices about the chain gangs* the
slave camps, the fourteen-hour workday and the mortality from
scurvy in the People’s States of Europe? No, but you do hear them
telling the whip-beaten wretches that starvation is prosperity, that
slavery* is freedom, that torture chambers are brother-love and that
if the wretches don’t understand it, then it’s their own fault that they
suffer, and it's the mangled corpses in the jail cellars who re to blame
for all their troubles, not the benevolent leaders! Intellectuals? You
might have to worry about any other breed of men. but not about
the modern intellectuals: they’ll swallow anything. 1 don’t feel so safe
about the lousiest wharf rat in the longshoremen’s union: he’s liable
to remember suddenly that he is a man — and then 1 won’t be able to
keep him in line. Hut the intellectuals? That’s the one thing they’ve
forgotten long ago. I guess it’s the one thing that all their education
was aimed to make them forget. Do anything you please to the
intellectuals. They’ll take it.”

“For once,” said Dr. Ferris, “1 agree with Mr. Kinnan. 1 agree
with his facts, if not with his feelings. You don't have to worry about
the intellectuals, Wesley. Just put a few of them on the government
payioll and ‘send them out to preach precisely the sort of thing Mr.
Kinnan mentioned: that the blame rests on the victims. Give them
moderately comfortable salaries and extremely loud titles— and
they'll forget their copyrights and do a better job for you than whole
squads of enforcement officers."

“Yes,” said Mouch. “I know/’

“The danger that I'm worried about will come from a different
quaiter.” said Dr Ferris thoughtfully. “You might run into quite a
bit of trouble on that ‘voluntary Gift C ertificate’ business, Wesley.”

“I know,” said Mouch glumly. "That’s the point I wanted Thomp-
son to help us out on. But I guess he can’t. We don't actually have
the legal power to seize the patents. Oh, there's plenty of clauses in
dozens of laws that can be stretched to cover it — almost, but not
quite. Any tycoon who'd want to make a test case would have a
vety good chance to beat us. And we have to preserve a semblance
of legality — or the populace won't take it.”

“Precisely,” said Dr Ferris. “It’s extremely important to get those
patents turned over to us voluntarily. Even if we had a law permitting
outright nationalization, it would be much better to get them as a
gift. We want to leave the people the illusion that they're still pre-
serving their private property rights. And most of them will play
along. They'll sign the Gift Certificates. Just raise a lot of noise about
its being a patriotic duty and that anyone who refuses is a prince of
gieed. and they’ll sign. But — ” He stopped.

“I know,” said Mouch; he was growing visibly mote nervous.
“There will be. I think, a few old-fashioned bastards here and there
who’ll refuse to sign — but they won’t be prominent enough to make
a noise, nobody will hear about it, their own communities and friends
will turn against them for their being selfish, so it won’t give us any
trouble*. We’ll just take the patents over, anyway— and those guys

505

won’t have the nerve or the money to start a test case; But — ” He
stopped.

James Taggart leaned back in his chair, watching them; he was
beginning to enjoy the conversation.

“Yes,'’ said Dr, Ferris, “I’m thinking of it, too. I’m thinking of a
certain tycoon who is in a position to blast us to pieces. Whether
we’ll recover the pieces or not, is hard to tell. God knows what is
liable to happen at a hysterical time like the present and in a situa-
tion as delicate as this. Anything can throw everything off balance.
Blow up the whole works. And if there’s anyone who wants to do
it. he does. He does and can. He knows the real issue, he knows the
things which must not be said — and he is not afraid to say them.
He knows the one dangerous, fatally dangerous weapon. He is our
deadliest adversary.’’

“Who?” asked Lawson.

Dr. Ferris hesitated, shrugged and answered, “The guiltless man.”

Lawson stared blankly. “What do you mean and whom are you
talking about?”

James Taggart smiled.

“I mean that there is no way to disarm any man,” said Dr. Ferris,
“except through guilt. Through that which he himself has accepted
as guilt. If a man has ever stolen a dime, you can impose on him
the punishment intended for a bank robber and he will take it. He’ll
bear any form of misery, he’ll feel that he deserves no better. If
there's not enough guilt in the world, we must create it. If we teach
a man that it’s evil to look at spring flowers and he believes us and
then does it — we’ll be able to do whatever we please with him. He
won’t defend himself. He won't feel he’s worth it. He won’t fight.
But save us from the man who lives up to his own standards. Save
us from the man of clean conscience. He’s the man who’ll beat us.”

“Are you talking about Henry Rearden?” asked Taggart, his voice
peculiarly clear.

The one name they had not wanted to pronounce struck them into
an instant’s silence.

“What if I were?” asked Dr. Ferris cautiously.

^Oh, nothing,” said Taggart. “Only, if you were, 1 would tell you
that I can deliver Henry Rearden. He’ll sign.”

By the rules of their unspoken language, they all knew — from the
tone of his voice — that he was not bluffing.

“God, Jim! No!” gasped Wesley Mouch.

“Yes,” said Taggart. “I was stunned, too, when I learned — what
I learned. I didn't expect that. Anything but that.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mouch cautiously. “It’s a constructive
piece of information. It might be very valuable indeed.” t

“Valuable — yes,” said Taggart pleasantly. “When do yoki plan to
put the directive into effect?”

“Oh, we have to move fast. We don't want any news orit to leak
out. I expect you all to keep this most strictly confidential. I’d say
that we’ll be ready to spring it on them in a couple of w^eks.”

“Don’t you think it would be — advisable — before all prices are

506

frozen — to adjust the matter of the railroad rates? I was thinking of
a raise. A small but most essentially needed raise.”

“We’ll discuss it, you and l,” said Mouch amiably. “It might be
arranged.” He turned to the others; Boyle’s face was sagging. “There
are many details still to be worked out, but I’m sure that our pro-
gram won’t encounter any major difficulties. ’ He was assuming the
tone and manner of a public address; he sounded brisk and almost
cheerful. “Rough spots are to be expected. If one thing doesn’t work,
we’ll try another. Trial-and-error is the only pragmatic rule of action.
We’ll just keep on trying. Jf any hardships come up. remember that
it’s only temporary. Only for the duration of the national emer-
gency.’’

“Say,” asked Kinnan. “how is the emergency to end if everything
is to stand still?”

“Don’t be theoretical,” said Mouch impatiently. “We've got to
deal with the situation of the moment. Don't bother about minor
details, so long as the broad outlines of our policy are clear. We’ll
have the power We’ll be able to solve any problem and answer
any question.”

Fred Kinnan chuckled. “Who is John Galt?”

“Don’t say that!” cried Taggart.

“1 have a question to ask about Point Seven,” said Kinnan. “It
says that all wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits and so forth
will be frozen on the date of the directive. Taxes, too?”

“Oh no!” cried Mouch. “How can wc tell what funds we ll need in
the future?” Kinnan seemed to be smiling. “Well?” snapped Mouch.
“What about it?”

“Nothing,” said Kinnan. “I just asked.”

Mouch leaned back in his chair. “I must say to all of you that I
appreciate your coming here and giving us the benefit of your opin-
ions. It has been very helpful.” He leaned forward to look at his
desk calendar and sat over it for a moment, toying with his pencil.
1 hen the pencil came down, struck a date and drew a circle around
it “Directive 10-289 will go into effect on the morning of May first.”

All nodded approval. None looked at his neighbor.

James Taggart rose, walked to the window and pulled the blind
down over the white obelisk,

♦ *

In the first moment of awakening. Dagny was astonished to find
herself looking at the spires of unfamiliar buildings against a glowing,
pale blue sky. Then she saw the twisted scam of the thin stocking
on her own leg, she felt a wrench of discomfort in the muscles of
her waistline, and she realized that she was lying on the couch in
her office, with the clock on her desk saying 6:15 and the first rays
of the sun giving silver edges to the silhouettes of the skyscrapers
beyond the window. The last thing she remembered was that she
had dropped down on the couch, intending to rest for ten minutes,
when the window was black and the clock stood at 3:30.

She twisted herself to her feet, feeling an enormous exhaustion.
1 he lighted lamp on the desk looked futile in the glow of the morn-
ing, over the piles of paper which were her cheerless, unfinished task.

507

She tried not to think of the work for a few minutes longer, while
she dragged herself past the desk to her washroom and let handfuls
of cold water run over her face.

The exhaustion was gone by the time she stepped back into the
office. No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a
morning when she did not feci the rise of a quiet excitement that
became a tightening energy in her body and a hunger for action in
her mind — because this was the beginning of day and it was a day
of her life. She looked down at the city. The streets were still empty,
it made them look wider, and in the luminous cleanliness of the
spring air they seemed to be waiting for the promise of all the great*
ness that would take form in the activity about to pour through
them. The calendar m the distance said: May 1.

She sat down at her desk, smiling in defiance at the distastefulness
of her job. She hated the reports that she had to finish reading, but
it was her job, it was her railroad, it was morning. She lighted a
cigarette, thinking that she would finish this task before breakfast;
she turned off the lamp and pulled the papers forward.

There were reports from the general managers of the tour Regions
of the Taggart system, their pages a typewritten cry of despair over
the breakdowns of equipment. There was a report about a wreck on
the main line near Winston, Colorado. There was the new budget
of the Operating Department, the revised budget based on the raise
in rates which Jim had obtained last week. She tried to choke the
exasperation of hopelessness as she went slowly over the budget's
figures; all those calculations had been made on the assumption that
the volume of freight would remain unchanged and that the raise
would bring them added revenue by the end of the year; she knew
that the freight tonnage would go on shrinking, that the raise would
make little difference, that by the end of this year their losses would
be greater than ever.

When she looked up from the pages, she saw with a small jolt of
astonishment that the clock said 9:25. She had been dimly aware of
the usual sound of movement and voices in the anteroom of her
office, as her staff had arrived to begin their day; she wondered why
nobody had entered her office and why her telephone had remained
silent; as a daily rule, there should have been a rush of business by
this hour. She glanced at her calendar; there was a note that the
McNeil Car Foundry of Chicago was to phone her at nine am in
regard to the new freight cars which Taggart Transcontinental had
been expecting for six months.

She flicked the switch of the interoffice communicator fo call her
secretary. The girl's voice answered with a startled little glisp: “Miss
Taggart! Are you here, in your office?” s

“f slept here last night, again. Didn’t intend to, but did. fWas there
a call for me from the McNeil Car Foundry?”

“No, Miss Taggart.”

“Put them through to me immediately, when they call.

“Yes, Miss Taggart.”

Switching the communicator off, she wondered whethef she imag-

508

incd it or whether there had been something strange in the girl’s
voice: it had sounded unnaturally tense.

She felt the faint light-headedness of hunger and thought that she
should go down to get a cup of coffee, but there was still the report
of the chief engineer to finish, so she lighted one more cigarette,

.The chief engineer was out on the road, supervising the reconstruc-
tion of the main track with the Rearden Metal rail taken from the
corpse at the John Galt Line; she had chosen the sections most
urgently in need of repair. Opening his report, she read — with a
shock of incredulous anger — that he had stopped woTk in the moun-
tain section of Winston, Colorado. He recommended a change of
plans: he suggested that the rail intended for Winston be used, in-
stead, to repair the track of their Washington-to-Miami branch. He
gave his reasons: a derailment had occurred on that branch last week,
and Mr. Tmky Holloway of Washington, I raveling with a party of
friends, had been delayed for three hours; it had been reported to the
chief engineer that Mr. Holloway had expressed extreme displeasure.
Although, from a purely technological viewpoint- -.said the chief en-
gineer’s report — the rail of the Miami branch was in better condition
than that of the Winston section, one had to remember, from a
sociological viewpoint, that the Miami branch earned a much more
important class of passenger traffic; therefore, the chief engineer sug-
gested that Winston could be kept waiting a little longer, and recom-
mended the sacrifice of an obscure section of mountain trackage for
the sake of a branch where "Taggart Transcontinental could not
afford to cicate an unfavorable impression.”

She read, slashing lutious pencil marks on the margins of the
pages, thinking that her first duty of the day, ahead of any other,
was to slop this particular piece of insanity

The telephone rang.

"Yes?” she asked, snatching the receiver. “McNeil C ar Foundry?”

“No," said the voice of her secretary. “Seilor Francisco d Anconia.”

She looked at the phone’s mouthpiece for the instant ot a brief
shock, “All right. Put him on ”

'The next voice she heard was Francisco’s. “J see that you're in
your office just the same," he said; his voice was mocking, harsh
and tense.

“Where did you expect me to be?”

“How do you like the new suspension?”

“What suspension?”

“The moratorium on brains.”

“What aie you talking about?"

“Haven’t you seen today’s newspapers?”

“No.”

I here was a pause; then his voice came slowly, changed and grave:
"better take a look at them, Dagny.”

."All right.”

‘i’ll call you later.”

She hung up and pressed the switch of the communicator on her
desk. “Get me a newspaper,” she said to her secretary'

509

u Yes, Miss Taggart/ 1 the secretary's voice answered grimly.

It was Eddie Willers who came in and put the newspaper down
on her desk. The meaning of the look on his face was the same as
the tone she had caught in Francisco’s voice: the advance notice of
some inconceivable disaster.

“None of us wanted to be first to tell you/’ he said very quietly
and walked out.

When she rose from her desk, a few moments later, she felt that
she had full control of her body and that she was not aware of her
body’s existence. She felt lifted to her feet and it seemed to her that
she stood straight, not touching the ground. There was an abnormal
clarity about every object in the room: yet she was seeing nothing
around her, but she knew that she would be able to see the thread
of a cobweb if her purpose required it, just as she would be able to
walk with a somnambulist’s assurance along the edge of a roof. She
could not know that she was looking at the room with the eyes of
a person who had lost the capacity and the concept of doubt, and
what remained to her was the simplicity of a single perception and
of a single goal. She did not know that the thing which seemed so
violent, yet felt like such a still, unfamiliar calm within her, was the
power of full certainty — and that the anger shaking her body, the
anger which made her ready, with the same passionate indifference,
either to kill or to die, was her love of rectitude, the only love to
which all the years of her life had been given.

Holding the newspaper in her hand, she walked out of her office
and on toward the hall. She knew, crossing the anteroom, that the
faces of her staff were turned to her, but they seemed to be many
years away.

She walked down the hall, moving swiftly but without effort, with
the same sensation of knowing that her feet were probably touching
the ground but that she did not feel it. She did not know how many
rooms she crossed to reach Jim’s office, or whether there had been
any people in her way, she knew the direction to take and the door
to pull open to enter unannounced and walk toward his desk.

The newspaper was twisted into a roll by the time she stood before
him. She threw it at his face, it struck his cheek and fell down to
the carpet.

“There’s my resignation, Jim,” she said. "I won’t work as a slave
or as a slave-driver.”

She did not hear the sound of his gasp; it came with the sound of
the door dosing after her.

She went back to her office and, crossing the anteroom, signaled
Eddie to follow her inside.

She said, her voice calm and clear, “I have resigned.”

He nodded silently,

“1 don’t know as yet jvhat I’ll do in the future. I’m going away,
to think it over and to dedde. If you want to follow me,| I’ll be at
the lodge in Woodstock.” It was an old hunting cabin in a forest of
the Berkshire Mountains, which she had inherited from her father
and had not visited for years.

510

“I want to follow/’ he whispered, “I want to quit, and . . . and 1
can’t. I can’t make myself do it.”

“Then will you do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t communicate with me about the railroad. 1 don’t want to
hear it. Don’t tell anyone where l am, except Hank Rcarden. If he
asks, tell him about the cabin and how to get there. But no one else,

1 don’t want to see anybody.”

“All right.”

“Promise?”

“Of course.”

“When I decide what’s to become of me. I’ll let you know.”

“Pll wait.”

“That’s all Eddie.”

He knew that every word was measured and that nothing else
could be said between them at this moment. He inclined his head,
letting it say the rest, then walked out of the office.

She saw the chief engineer’s report still lying open on her desk,
and thought that she had to order him at once to resume work on
the Winston section, then remembered that it was not her problem
any longer. She felt no pain. She knew that the pain would come
later and that it would be a tearing agony of pain, and that the
numbness of this moment was a rest granted to her, not after, but
before, to make her ready to bear it. But it did not matter. If that
is required of me, then I'll bear it — she thought.

She sat down at her desk and telephoned Rearden at his mills
in Pennsylvania.

“Hello, dearest,” he said. He said it simply and clearly, as if he
wanted to say it because it was real and right, and he needed to
hold on to the concepts of reality and rightness.

“Hank. I’ve quit.”

“I see.” He sounded as if he had expected it.

“Nobody came to get me, no destroyer, perhaps there never was
any destroyer, after all. 1 don’t know what I'll do next, but I have
to got away, so that 1 won’t have to see any of them for a while.
Then I'll decide. I know that you can't go with me right now.”

“No. 1 have two weeks in which they expect me to sign their Gift
Certificate. I want to be right here when the two weeks expire.”

“Do you need me — for the two weeks?”

“No. It s worse for you than for me. You have no way to fight
them. I have. I think I’m glad they did it. It’s clear and final. Don't
worry about me. Rest. Rest from all of it, first.”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the country. To a cabin l own in the Berkshires. If you want
U> see me, Eddie Willers will tell you the way to get there. Til be
hack in two weeks.”

* “Will you do me a favor?”

“Yes.”

“Don't come back until I come for you.”

“But I want to be here, when it happens.”

511

“Leave that up to me/*

“Whatever they do to you, I want it done to me also/*

“Leave it up to me. Dearest, don't you understand? I think that
what I want most right now is what you want; not to see any of
them. But I have to stay here for a while. So it will help me if 1
know that you, at least, are out of their reach. I want to keep one
dean point in my mind, to lean against. It will be only a short while —
and then I’ll come for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my darling. So long.”

It was weightlessly easy to walk out of her office and down the
stretching halls of Taggart Transcontinental. She walked, looking
ahead, her steps advancing with the unbroken, unhurried rhythm of
finality. Her face was held level and it had a look of astonishment,
of acceptance, of repose.

She walked across the concourse of the Terminal. She saw the
statue of Nathaniel Taggart. But she felt no pain from it and no
reproach, only the rising fullness of her love, only the feeling that
she was going to join him, not in death, but in that which had been
his life.

* *

The first man to quit at Rearden Steel was Tom Colby, rolling
mill foreman, head of the Rearden Steel Workers Union. For ten
years, he had heard himself denounced throughout the country, be-
cause his was a “company union” and because he had never engaged
in a violent conflict with the management. TTiis was true: no conflict
had ever been necessary; Rearden paid a higher wage scale than any
union scale in the country, for which he demanded — and got — the
best labor force to be found anywhere.

When Tom Colby told him that he was quitting. Rearden nodded,
without comment or questions.

“I won’t work under these conditions, myself,” Colby added qui-
etly, “and l won’t help to keep the men working. They trust me. I
won’t be the Judas goat leading them to the stockyards.”

“What are you going to do for a living?” asked Rearden.

“I’ve saved enough to last me for about a year.”

“And after that?”

Colby shrugged.

Rearden thought of the boy with the angry eyes, who mined coal
at night as a criminal. He thought of all the dark roads, the alleys,
the back yards of the country, where the best of the country’s men
would now exchange their services in jungle barter, in chance jobs,
in unrecorded transactions. He thought of the end of that road.

Tom Colby seemed to know what he was thinking. “You’re on
your way to end up right alongside of me, Mr Rearden^’ he said.
“Are you going to sign your brains over to them?”

“No.”

“And after that?”

Rearden shrugged.

Colby’s eyes watched him for a moment, pale, shrewdi eyes in a
furnace-tanned face with soot-engraved wrinkles. “They’vi been tell-

512

ing us for years that it’s you against me, Mr. Rearden. But it isn't.
It’s Orren Boyle and Fred Kinnan against you and me.”

“I know it.”

The Wet Nurse had never entered Rearden’s office, as if sensing
that that was a place he had no right to enter. He always waited to
catch a glimpse of Rearden outside. The directive had attached him
to his job, as the mills* official watchdog of over-or-underproduction.
He stopped Rearden, a few days later, in an alley between the rows
of open-hearth furnaces. There was an odd look of fierceness on the
boy’s face.

“Mr. Rearden,” he said, “I wanted to tell you that if you want to
pour ten times the quota of Rearden Metal or steel or pig iron or
anything, and bootleg it all over the place to anybody at any price —
I wanted to tel! you to go ahead. I’ll fix it up. I’ll juggle the books.
I’ll fake the reports. I’ll get phony witnesses. I’ll forge affidavits. I’ll
commit peijury — so you don’t have to worry, there won’t be any
trouble!”

“Now why do you want to do that?” asked Rearden, smiling, but
his smile vanished when he heard the boy answer earnestly:

“Because 1 want, for once, to do something moral.”

“That’s not the way to be moral — ” Rearden started, and stopped
abruptly, realizing that it was the way, the only way left, realizing
through how many twists of intellectual corruption upon corruption
this boy had to struggle toward his momentous discovery.

“I guess that’s not the word,” the boy said sheepishly. “1 know
it’s a stuffy, old-fashioned word: That's not what I meant. I meant — ”
It was a sudden, desperate cry of incredulous anger: “Mr. Rearden,
they have no right to do it!”

“What?”

“Take Rearden Meta! away from you.”

Rearden smiled and, prompted by a desperate pity, said, “Forget
it, Non-Absolute. There are no rights.”

“I know there aren’t. But I mean . . what 1 mean is that they
can’t do it.”

“Why not?” He could not help smiling.

“Mr. Rearden, don’t sign the Gift Certificate! Don’t sign it, on
principle.”

“I won’t sign it. But there aren't any principles.”

“1 know there aren’t.” He was reciting it in full earnestness, with
the honesty of a conscientious student: “I know that everything is
relative and that nobody can know anything and that reason is an
illusion and that there isn’t any reality. But I’m just talking about
Rearden Metal. Don’t sign, Mr. Rearden. Morals or no morals, prin-
ciples or no principles, just don’t sign it — because it isn’t right!”

No one else mentioned the directive in Rearden's presence. Si-
lence was the new aspect about the mills. The men did not speak to
him when he appeared in the workshops, and he noticed that they
did not speak to one another, lire personnel office received no for-
mal resignations. But every other morning, one or two men failed
to appear and never appeared again. Inquiries at their homes found
the homes abandoned and the men gone. The personnel office did

513

not report these desertions, as the directive required; instead. Rear-
den began to see unfamiliar faces among the workers, the drawn,
beaten faces of the long-unemployed, and heard them addressed by
the names of the men who had quit. He asked no questions.

There was silence throughout the country. He did not know how
many industrialists had retired and vanished on May l and 2, leaving
their plants to be seized. He counted ten among his own customers,
including McNeil of the McNeil Car Foundry in Chicago. He had no
way of learning about the others; no reports appeared in the newspa-
pers. The front pages of the newspapers were suddenly full of stones
about spnng floods, traffic accidents, school picnics and golden-
wedding anniversaries.

There was silence in his own home. Lillian had departed on a
vacation trip to Florida, in mid-April; it had astonished him, as an
inexplicable whim; it was the fiTst trip she had taken alone since
their marriage. Philip avoided him, with a look of panic. His mother
stared at Rearden in reproachful bewilderment; she said nothing, but
she kept bursting into tears in his presence, her manner suggesting
that her tears were the most impoitant aspect to consider in whatever
disaster it was that she sensed approaching.

Oft the morning of May 15, he sat at the desk in his office, above
the spread of the mills, and watched the colors of the smoke rising
to the clear, blue sky. Inhere were spurts of transparent smoke, like
waves of heat, invisible but for the structures that shivered behind
them; there were streaks of red smoke, and sluggish columns of
yellow, and light, floating spirals of blue — and the thick, tight, swiftly
pouring coils that looked like twisted bolts of satin tinged a mother-
of-pearl pink by the summer sun.

The buzzer rang on his desk, and Miss Ives’ voice said, “Dr. Floyd
Ferris to see you, without appointment, Mr. Rearden.” Jn spite of
its rigid formality, her tone conveyed the question- Shall I throw
him out?

There was a faint movement of astonishment in ReardeiTs face,
barely above the line of indifference; he had not expected that partic-
ular emissary. He answered evenly, “Ask him to come in.”

Dr. Ferris did not smile as he walked toward Rearden’s desk; he
merely wore a look suggesting that Rearden knew full well that he
had good reason to smile and so he would abstain from the obvious.

He sat down in front of the desk, not waiting for an invitation; he
carried a briefcase, which he placed across his knees; he acted as if
words were superfluous, since his reappearance in this office had
made everything clear.

Rearden sat watching him in patient silence.

“Since the deadline for the signing of the national Gift Certificates
expires tonight at midnight,” said Dr. Ferris, in the tone of a sales-
man extending a special courtesy to a customer, “I have come to
obtain your signature, Mr. Rearden.” ;

He paused, with an air of suggesting that the formula no?w called
for an answer.

“Go on,” said Rearden. “I am listening.” %

“Yes, I suppose I should explain,” said Dr. Ferris, “that^we wish

514

to get your signature early in the day in order to announce the fact
on a national news broadcast. Although the gift program has gone
through quite smoothly, there are still a few stubborn individualists
left, who have failed to sign — small fry, really, whose patents arc of
no crucial value, but we cannot let them remain unbound; as a matter
of principle, you understand. They are, we believe, waiting to follow
your lead. You have a great popular following, Mr. Rearden, much
greater than you suspected or knew how to use. Therefore, the an-
nouncement that you have signed will remove the last hopes of resis-
tance and, by midnight, will bring in the last signatures, thus
completing the program on schedule.”

Rearden knew that of all possible speeches, this was the last Dr.
Ferris would make if any doubt of his surrender remained in the
man's mind.

“Go on,” said Rearden evenly. “You haven’t Finished.”

“You know — as you have demonstrated at your trial — how impor-
tant it is. and why, that we obtain all that property with the voluntary
consent of the victims.” Dr. Ferris opened his briefcase. “Here is
the Gift Certificate, Mr. Rearden. We have filled it out and all you
have to do is to sign your name at the bottom.”

The piece of paper, which he placed in front of Rearden, looked
like a small college diploma, with the text printed in old-tashioned
script and the particulars inserted by typewriter. The thing stated
that he, Henry Rearden, hereby transferred to the nation all rights
to the metal alloy now known as “Rearden Metal,” which would
henceforth be manufactured by all who so desired, and which would
bear the name of “Miracle Metal,” chosen by the representatives of
the people. Glancing at the paper, Rearden wondered whether it
was a deliberate mockery of decency, or so low an estimate of their
victims’ intelligence, that had made the designers of this paper print
the text across a faint drawing of the Statue of Liberty.

His eyes moved slowly to Dr. Ferris’ face. “You would not have
come here.” he said, “unless you had some extraordinary kind of
blackjack to use on me. What is it?”

“Of course,” said Dr. Ferris. “I would expect you to understand
that. That is why no lengthy explanations are necessary.” He opened
his briefcase. “Do you wish to see my blackjack? I have brought a
few samples.”

In the manner of a cardsharp whisking out a long fan of cards
with one snap of the hand, he spread before Rearden a line of glossy
photographic prints. They were photostats of hotel and auto court
registers, bearing in Reardcn’s handwriting the names of Mr. and
Mrs. J. Smith.

“You know, of course,” said Dr. Ferris softly, “but you might wish
to see whether we know it, that Mrs. J. Smith is Miss Dagny
Taggart.”

He found nothing to observe in Rearden ’s face. Rearden had not
moved to bend over the prints, but sat looking down at them with
grave attentiveness, as if, from the perspective of distance, he were
discovering something about them which he had not known.

“We have a great deal of additional evidence,” said Dr. Ferris,

515

and tossed down on the desk a photostat of the jeweler's bill for the
ruby pendant. “You wouldn't care to see the sworn statements of
apartment-house doormen and night clerks — they contain nothing
that would be new to you, except the number of witnesses who know
where you spent your nights in New York tor about the last two
years. You mustn't blame those people too much. It’s an interesting
characteristic of epochs such as ours that people begin to be afraid
of saying the things they want to say — and afraid, when questioned,
to remain silent about things they'd prefer never to utter. That is to
be expected. But you would be astonished if you knew who gave us
the original tip.”

“1 know it,” said Rearden, his voice conveyed no reaction. The
trip to Florida was not inexplicable to him any longer.

“There is nothing m this blackjack of mine that can harm you
personally,” said Dr. Ferris. “We knew that no form of personal
injury would ever make you give in. Therefore. I am telling you
frankly that this will not hurt you at all. It will only hurt Miss
Taggart.”

Rearden was looking straight at him now, but Dr. Ferns wondered
why it seemed to him that the calm, closed face was moving away
into a greater and greater distance.

"If this affair of yours is spread from one end of the country to
the other,” said Dr. Ferris, “by such experts in the art of smearing
as Bertram Scudder, it will do no actual damage to your reputation.
Beyond a few glances ot curiosity and a few raised eyebrows in a
few of the stuffier drawing rooms, you will get off quite easily. Affairs
of this sort arc expected of a man. In fact, it will enhance your
reputation. It will give you an aura of romantic glamour among the
women and, among the men. it will give you a certain kind of pics-
tige, in the nature of envy for an unusual conquest. But what it will
do to Miss Taggart — with her spotless name, her reput at ion for being
above scandal, her peculiar position of a woman in a strictly mascu-
line business — what it will do to her, what she will sec m the eyes
of everyone sfve meets, what she will hear from every man she deals
with — 1 will leave that up to youi own mind to imagine. And to
consider.”

Rearden felt nothing but a great stillness and a great clarity It
was as if some voice were telling him sternly: This «s the nine— the
scene is lighted — now look. And standing naked in the great light;
he was looking quietly, solemnly, stripped of fear, of pain, of hope,
with nothing left to him but the desire to know.

Dr. Ferris was astonished to hear him say slowly, in the dispassion-
ate tone of an abstract statement that did not seem to be addressed
to his listener, "But all your calculations rest on the fact that Miss
Taggart is a virtuous woman, not the slut you’re going to call her.”

“Yes, of course,” said Dr. Ferris.

“And that this means much more to me than a casual affair.”

“Of course.”

“If she and I were the kind of scum you're going to jmakc us
appear, your blackjack wouldn't work*”

“No, it wouldn't.”

516

“If our relationship were the depravity you’re going to proclaim
it to be, you’d have no way to harm us.”

“No.”

“We’d be outside your power.”

“Actually— yes.”

It was not to Dr. Ferris that Rearden was speaking. He was seeing
a long line of men stretched through the centuries from Plato on-
ward, whose heir and final product was an incompetent little profes-
sor with the appearance of a gigolo and the soul of a thug.

“I offered you, once, a chance to join ns,” said Dr. Ferris. “You
refused. Now you can see the consequences. How a man of your
intelligence thought that he could win by playing it straight, l can’t
imagine.”

“But if 1 had joined you,” said Rearden, with the same detach-
ment, as if he were not speaking about himself, “what would I have
found worth looting from Orren Boyle?”

“Oh hell, there's always enough suckers to expropriate in the
world!”

“Such as Miss Taggart? As Ken Danagger? As F.llis Wyatt? As I?”

“Such as any man who wants to be impractical ”

“You mean that u is not practical to live on earth, is it?”

He did not know whether Dr. Ferris answered him. He was not
listening any longer. He was seeing the pendulous face of Orren
Boyle with the small slits of pig’s eyes, the doughy face of Mr.
Mowen with the eyes that scurried away from any speaker and any
fact— he was seeing them go through the jerky motions of an ape
performing a routine it had learned to copy by muscular habit, per-
forming it in order to manufacture Rearden Metal, with no knowl-
edge and no capacity to know what had taken place in the
experimental laboratory of Rearden Steel through ten years of pas-
sionate devotion to an excruciating effort. It was proper that they
should now call it “Miracle Metal”- -a miracle was the only name
they could give to those ten years and to that faculty from which
Rearden Metal was born —a miracle was all that the Metal could be
in their eyes, the product of an unknown, unknowable cause, an
object in nature, not to be explained, but to be seized, like a stone
or a weed, theirs for the seizing— “are we to let the many remain
in want while the few withhold from us the better products and
methods available?”

If I had not known that my life depends on my mind and my
effort — he was saying soundlessly to the line of men stretched
through the centuries — if 1 had not made it my highest moral purpose
to exercise the best of my effort and the fullest capacity of my mind
in order to support and expand my life, you would have found noth-
ing to loot from me, nothing to support your own existence: It is not
my sins that you're using to injure me, but my virtues — my virtues
by your own acknowledgment, since your own life depends on them,
since you need them, since you do not seek to destroy my achieve-
ment but to seize it.

He remembered the voice of the gigolo of science saying to him:
“We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but

517

we know the real trick.” We were not after power — he said to the
gigolo's ancestors-in-spirit — and we did not live by means of that
which we condemned. We regarded productive ability as virtue — and
we let the degree of his virtue be the measure of a man’s reward.
We drew no advantage from the things we regarded as evil — we did
not require the existence of bank robbers in order to operate our
banks, or of burglars in order to provide for our homes, or of mur-
derers in order to protect our lives. But you need the products of a
man's ability — yet you proclaim that productive ability is a sellish
evil and you turn the degree of a man’s productiveness into the
measure of his loss. We lived by that which we held to be good and
punished that which we held to be evil. You live by that which you
denounce as evil and punish that which you know to be good.

He remembered the formula of the punishment that Lillian had
sought to impose on him, the formula he had considered too mon-
strous to believe — and he saw it now in its full application, as a
system of thought, as a way of life and on a world scale. There it
was: the punishment that required the victim's own virtue as the fuel
to make it work — his invention of Rearden Metal being used as the
cause of his expropriation— -Dagny’s honor and the depth of their
feeling for each other being used as a tool of blackmail, a blackmail
from which the depraved would be immune — and, in the People's
States of Europe, millions of men being held in bondage by means
of their desire to live, by means of their energy drained m forced
labor, by means of their ability to feed their masters, by means of
the hostage system, of their love for their children or wives or
friends — by means of love, ability and pleasure as the fodder for
threats and the bait for extortion, with love tied to fear, ability to
punishment, ambition to confiscation, with blackmail as law, with
escape from pain, not quest for pleasure, as the only incentive to
effort and the only reward of achievement — men held enslaved by
means of whatever living power they possessed and of whatever joy
they found in life. Such was the code that the world had accepted
and such was the key to the code: that it hooked man’s love of
existence to a circuit of torture, so that only the man who had noth-
ing to offer would have nothing to fear, so that the virtues which
made life possible and the values which gave it meaning became the
agents of its destruction, so that one’s best became the tool of one’s
agony, and man’s life on earth became impractical.

“Yours was the code of life,” said the voice of a man whom he
could not forget. “What, then, is theirs?”

Why had the world accepted it? — he thought. How had the victims
come to sanction a code that pronounced them guilty of the fact of
existing? . . , And then the violence of an inner blow* became the
total stillness of his body as he sat looking at a sudden vfsion: Hadn't
he done it also? Hadn’t he given his sanction to the Code of self-
damnation? Dagny — he thought— and the depth of thefr feeling for
each other . . . the blackmail from which the depraved would be
immune , . . hadn’t he, too, once called it depravity? Hadn’t he been
first to throw at her all the insults which the human scum was now

518

threatening to throw at her in public? Hadn't he accepted as guilt
the highest happiness he had ever found?

“You who won’t allow one per cent of impurity into an alloy of
metal,” the unforgotten voice was saying to him, “what have you
allowed into your moral code?”

“Well, Mr. Rearden?” said the voice of Dr. Ferris. “Do you under-
stand me now? Do we get the Metal or do we make a public show-
place out of Miss Taggart’s bedroom?”

He was not seeing Dr. Ferris. He was seeing — in the violent clarity
that was like a spotlight tearing every riddle open to him — the day
he met Dagny for the first time.

It was a few months after she had become Vice-President of Tag-
gart Transcontinental. He had been hearing skeptically, for some
time, the rumors that the railroad was run by Jim Taggart’s sister.
That summer, when he grew exasperated at Taggart’s delays and
contradictions over an order of rail for a new cutoff, an order which
Taggart kept placing, altering and withdrawing, somebody told him
that if he wished to get any sense or action out of Taggart Transcon-
tinental, he’d better speak to Jim’s sister. He telephoned her office
to make an appointment and insisted on having it that same after-
noon. Her secretary told him that Miss Taggart would be at the
construction site of the new cutoff, that afternoon, at Milford Station
between New York and Philadelphia, but would be glad to see him
there if he wished. He went to the appointment resentfully; he did
not like such businesswomen as he had met, and he felt that railroads
were no business for a woman to play with; he expected a spoiled
heiress who used her name and sex as substitute for ability, some
eyebrow-plucked, overgroomed female, like the lady executives of
department stores.

He got off the last car of a long train, far beyond the platform of
Milford Station: There was a clutter of sidings, freight cars, cranes
and steam shovels around him, descending from the main track down
the slope of a ravine where men were grading the roadbed of the
new cutoff. He started walking between the sidings toward the sta-
tion building. Then he stopped.

He saw a girl standing on top of a pile of machinery on a flatcar.
She was looking off at the ravine, her head lifted, strands of disor-
dered hair stirring in the wind. Her plain gray suit was like a thin
coating of metal over a slender body against the spread of sunflooded
space and sky. Her posture had the lightness and unself-conscious
precision of an arrogantly pure self-confidence. She was watching the
work, her glance intent and purposeful, the glance of competence
enjoying its own function. She looked as if this were her place, her
moment and her world, she looked as if enjoyment were her natural
state, her face was the living form of an active, living intelligence, a
young girl’s face with a woman’s mouth, she seemed unaware of her
body except as of a taut instrument ready to serve her purpose in
any manner she wished.

Had he asked himself a moment earlier whether he carried in his
mind an image of what he wanted a woman to look like, he would
have answered that he did hot; yet, seeing her, he knew that this

519

was the image and that it had been for years. But he was not looking
at her as at a woman. He had forgotten where he was and on what
errand, he was held by a child’s sensation of joy in the immediate
moment, by the delight of the unexpected and undiscovered, he was
held by the astonishment ot realizing how seldom he came upon a
sight he truly liked, liked in complete acceptance and for its own
sake, he was looking up at her with a faint smile, as he would have
looked at a statue or a landscape, and what he felt was the sheer
pleasure of the sight, the purest esthetic pleasure he had ever
experienced.

He saw a switchman going by and he asked, pointing, “Who is
that?’*

“Oagny Taggart.” said the man, walking on.

Rearden felt as if the words struck him inside his throat. He fell
the start of a current that cut his breath for a moment, then went
slowly down his body, carrying m its wake a sense of weight, a
drained heaviness that left him no capacity but one. He was aware - -
with an abnormal clarity —of the place, the woman’s name, and ev-
erything it implied, but all of it had receded into some outer ring
and had become a pressure that left him alone in the center, as the
ring’s meaning and essence— and his only reality was the desire to
have this woman, now, here, on top of the flatcar in the open sun —
to have her before a word was spoken between them, as the first act
of their meeting, because it would say everything and because they
had earned it long ago.

She turned her head. In the slow curve of the movement, her eyes
came to his and stopped. He felt certain that she saw the nature of
his glance, that she was held by it, yet did not name it to herself.
Her eyes moved on and be saw her speak to some man who stood
beside the flatcar, taking notes.

Two things struck him together: his return to his normal reality,
and the shattering impact of guilt. He felt a moment’s approach to
that which no man may feel fully and survive: a sense of self hatred-
the more terrible because some part of him refused to accept it and
made him feel guiltier, it was not a progression of words, but the
instantaneous verdict of an emotion, a verdict that told him: This,
then, was his nature, this was his depravity — that the shameful desire
he had never been able to conquer, came to him in response to the
only sight of beauty he had found, that it came with a violence he
had not known to be possible, and that the only freedom now left
to him was to hide it, and to despise himself, but never to be rid of
it so long as he and this woman were alive.

He did not know how long he stood there or what devastation
that span of time left within him. All that he could prescivq was the
will to decide that she must never know it.

He waited until she had descended to the ground and jlhe man
with the notes had departed; then he approached her and sajd coldly:

“Miss Taggart? 1 am Henry Rcardcn.”

“Ohl” It was just a small break, then he heard the quietly natural
“How do you do, Mr. Rearden.”

He knew, not admitting it to himself, that the break cajme from

520

some faint equivalent of his own feeling: she was glad that a face
she had liked belonged to a man she could admire. When he pro-
ceeded to speak to her about business, his manner was more harshly
abrupt than it had ever been with any of his masculine customers.

Now, looking from the memory of the girl on the flatcar to the
Gift Certificate lying on his desk, he felt as if the two met in a single
shock, fusing all the days and doubts he had lived between them,
and, by the glare of the explosion, in a moment’s vision of a final
sum, he saw the answer to all his questions.

He thought: Guilty? — guiltier than f had known, far guiltier than
1 had thought, that day - guilty of the evil of damning as guilt that
which was my best. I damned the fact that my mind and body were
a unit, and that my body responded to the values of my mind. I
damned the fact that joy is the core of existence, the motive power
of cveiy living being, that it is the need of one's body as it is the
goal of one’s spirit, that my body was not a weight of inanimate
muscles, but an instrument able to give me an experience of superla-
tive joy to unite my flesh and my spirit. That capacity, which 1
damned as shameful, had left me indilfeient to sluts, but gave me
my one desire in answer to a woman’s greatness. That desire, which
I damned as obscene, did not come from the sight of her body, but
from the knowledge that I he lovely f orm 1 saw did express the spirit
1 was seeing” it was not her body that 1 wanted, but her person— it
was not the girl in gray that I had to possess, but the woman who
ran a rail toad

But 1 damned my body’s capacity to express what T felt, 1 damned,
as an affront to her, the highest tubule 1 could give her just as they
damn my ability to translate the work ot my mind into Reardon
Metal, just as they damn me for the power to transform matter to
serve my needs l accepted their code and believed, as they taught
me, that the values of one’s spirit must remain as an impotent long-
ing, unexpressed in action, untranslated into reality, while the life of
one’s body must be lived in misery, as a senseless, degrading perfor-
mance, and those who attempt to enjoy it must be branded as infe-
rior animals.

1 broke their code, but I tell into the trap they intended, the trap
of a code devised to be broken. 1 took no pride in my rebellion, l
took it as guilt, l did not damn them, I damned myself, I did not
damn their axle. I damned existence — and I hid my happiness as a
shameful secret. I should have lived it openly, as of our right — or
made her my wife, as in truth she was. But I branded my happiness
as evil and made her bear it as a disgrace. What they want to do to
her now, 1 did it first, I made it possible.

I did it- -in the name of pity for the most contemptible woman I
know. That, too, was their code, and I accepted it. i believed that
one person owes a duty to another with no payment for it in return.
1 believed that it was my duty to love a woman who gave me nothing,
who betrayed everything 1 lived for, who demanded her happiness
at the price of mine. [ believed that love is some static gift which,
once granted, need no longer be deserved— just as they believe that
wealth is a static possesion which can be seized and held without

521

further effort. I believed that love is a gratuity, not a reward to be
earned just as they believe it is their right to demand an unearned
wealth. And just as they believe that their need is a claim on my
energy, so I believed that her unhappiness was a claim on my life.
For the sake of pity, not justice, I endured ten years of self-torture.
I placed pity above my own conscience, and this is the core of my
guilt. My crime was committed when I said to her, “By every stan-
dard of mine, to maintain our marriage will be a vicious fraud. But
my standards are not yours. I do not understand yours, I never have,
but 1 will accept them.”

Here they are, lying on my desk, those standards I accepted with-
out understanding, here is the manner of her love for me, that love
which I never believed, but tried to spare. Here is the final product
of the unearned. I thought that it was proper to commit injustice, so
long as I would be the only one to suffer. But nothing can justify
injustice. And this is the punishment for accepting as proper that
hideous evil which is self-immolation. I thought that I would be the
only victim. Instead. I’ve sacrificed the noblest woman to the vilest.
When one acts on pity against justice, it is the good whom one
punishes for the sake of the evil; when one saves the guilty from
suffering, it is the innocent whom one forces to suffer. There is no
escape from justice, nothing can be unearned and unpaid for in the
universe, neither in matter nor in spirit — and if the guilty do not
pay, then the innocent have to pay it.

It was not the cheap little looters of wealth who have beaten me —
it was I. They did not disarm me — I threw away my weapon. This
is a battle that cannot be fought except with clean hands — because
the enemy’s sole power is in the sores of one’s conscience — and I
accepted a code that made me regard the strength of my hands as
a sin and a stain.

“Do we get the Metal, Mr. Rearden?”

He looked from the Gift Certificate on his desk to the memory
of the girl on the flatcar. He asked himself whether he could deliver
the radiant being he had seen in that moment, to the looters of the
mind and the thugs of the press. Could he continue to let the inno-
cent bear punishment? Could he let her take the stand he should
have taken? Could he now defy the enemy’s code, when the disgrace
would be hers, not his — when the muck would be thrown at her, not
at him — when she would have to fight, while he’d be spared? Could
he let her existence be turned into a hell he would have no way
of sharing?

He sat still, looking up at her. 1 love you, he said to the girl on
the flatcar, silently pronouncing the words that had been the meaning
of that moment four years ago, feeling the solemn happiness that
belonged with the words, even though this was how he bad to say
it to her for the first time. {

He looked down at the Gift Certificate. Dagny, he thought, you
would not let me do it if you knew, you will hate me fo < it if you
learn — but I cannot let you pay my debts. The fault was Jmine and
I will not shift to you the punishment which is mine to t*ke. Even
if I have nothing else now left to me, 1 have this much: that 1 see

522

the truth, that 1 am free of their guilt, that I cum now stand guiltless
in my own eyes, that 1 know 1 am right, right fully and for the first
time — and that I will remain faithful to the one commandment of
my code which I have never broken: to be a man who pays his
own way.

1 love you, he said to the girl on the flatcar, feeling as if the fight
of that summer’s sun were touching his forehead, as if he, too, were
standing under an open sky over an unobstructed earth, with nothing
left to him except himself.

“Well, Mr. Rearden? Are you going to sign?” asked Dr. Ferris.

Rearden’s eyes moved to him. He had forgotten that Ferris was
there, he did not know whether Ferris had been speaking, arguing
or waiting in silence.

“Oh, that?” said Rearden.

He picked up a pen and with no second glance, with the easy
gesture of a millionaire signing a check, he signed his name at the
fool of the Statue of Liberty and pushed the Gift Certificate across
the desk.

Chapter VII THE MORATORIUM ON BRAINS

“Where have you been all this time?” Eddie Willers asked the
worker in the underground cafeteria, and added, with a smile that
was an appeal, an apology and a confession of despair, “Oh, 1 know
it s I whoVe stayed away from here for weeks.” The smile looked
like the effort of a crippled child groping for a gesture that he could
not perform any longer. ‘I did come here once, about two weeks
ago, but you weren't here that night. I was afraid you'd gone . . so
many people are vanishing without notice. I hear there’s hundreds
of them roving around the country. The police have been arresting
(hem tor leaving their jobs —they’re called deserters — but there's too
many of them and no food to feed them in jail, so — nobody gives a
damn any mote, one way or another. I heard the deserters are just
wandering about, doing odd jobs or worse-— who's got any odd jobs
to offer these days? . . It’s our best men that we're losing, the kind
who’ve been with the company for twenty years or more. Why did
they have to chain them to their jobs? T hose men never intended
to quit — but now they’re quitting at the slightest disagreement, just
dropping their tools and walking off, any hour of the day or night,
leaving us in all sorts of jams — the men who used to leap out of bed
and come running if the railroad needed them. . . . You should see
the kind ot human driftwood we’re getting to fill the vacancies. Some
of them mean well, but they’re scared of their own shadows. Others
are the kind of scum I didn’t think existed — they get the jobs and
they know that we can’t throw them out once they're in, so they
make it clear that they don’t intend to work for their pay and never
did intend. They’re the kind of men who tike it— who like the way
things are now. Can you imagine that there are human beings who
hke it? Well, there are. . . . You know. I don’t think that 1 really
believe it — all that’s happening to us these days. It’s happening all

523

right, but I don't believe it. I keep thinking that insanity is a state
where a person can't tell what’s real. Well, what's real now is in-
sane — and if I accepted it as real, I’d have to lose my mind, wouldn’t
I? ... 1 go on working and I keep telling myself that this is Taggart
Transcontinental l keep waiting for her — to come back — for the
door to open at any moment and— oh God, I’m not supposed to say
that! . . . What? You knew it? You knew that she’s gone? . , . They’re
keeping it secret. But I guess everybody knows it, only nobody is
supposed to say it. They’re telling people that she’s away on a leave
of absence. She’s still listed as our Vice-President in Charge of Oper-
ation. 1 think Jim and I are the only ones who know that she has
resigned for good. Jim is scared to death that his friends in Washing-
ton will take it out on him. if it becomes known that she’s quit. It’s
supposed to be disastrous for public morale, if any prominent person
quits, and Jim doesn’t want them to know that he’s got a deserter
right in his own family. . . But that’s not all. Jim is scared that the

stockholders, the employees and whoever we do business with, will
lose the last of their confidence in Taggart Transcontinental if they
learn that she's gone. Confidence! You’d think that it wouldn’t mat-
ter now, since there’s nothing any ot them can do about it. And yet
Jim knows that we have to preserve some semblance of the greatness
that Taggart Transcontinental once stood for. And he knows that
the last of it went with her. . . . No. they don’t know' where she
is. . . . Yes, I do. but I won't tell them I'm the only one who
knows. . . . Oh, yes, they’ve been trying to find out. They've tried
to pump me in every way they could think of, but it’s no use. I won’t
tell anyone. . . You should see the trained seal that we now have

in her place — our new Operating Vice-President Oh sure, we have
one — that is. we have and we haven’t It’s like everything they do
today — it is and it ain’t, at the same time. His name is Clitton
Locey — he’s from Jim’s personal staff— a bright, progressive young
man of forty-seven and a friend of Jim’s. He’s only supposed to be
pinch-hitting for her, but he. sits in her office and we all know that
that’s the new Operating Vice-President. He gives the orders — that
is, he sees to it that he’s never caught actually giving an order. He
works very hard at making sure that no decision can ever be pinned
down on him, so that he won’t be blamed for anything. You see, hi*
purpose is not to operate a railroad, but to hold a job. He doesn’t
want to run trains — he wants to please Jim. He doesn’t give a damn
whether there’s a single train moving or not, so long as he can make
a good impression on Jim and on the boys in Washington. So far,
Mr. Clifton Locey has managed to frame up two men: a young third
assistant, for not relaying an order which Mr. Locey had never
given — and the freight manager, for issuing an order which Mr,
Locey did give, only the freight manager couldn’t prove if. Both men
were fired, officially, by ruling of the Unification Board! . . . When
things go well — which is never longer than half an hour-^-Mr. Locey
makes it a point to remind us that ‘these arc not the days of Miss
Taggart.’ At the first sign of trouble, he calls me into h& office and
asks me — casually, in the midst of the most irrelevant drivel — what
Miss Taggart used to do in such an emergency. I tell hini, whenever

524

1 can. 1 tell myself that it's Taggart Transcontinental, and . . . and
there’s thousands of lives in dozens of trains that hang on our deci-
sions. Between emergencies, Mr. Locey goes out of his way to be
rude to me— that's so I wouldn’t think that he needs me. He’s made
it a point to change everything she used to do, in every respect that
doesn’t matter, hut he’s damn cautious not to change anything that
matters. The only trouble is that he can t always tell which is
which. ... On his first day in her office, he told me that it wasn’t a
good idea to have a picture of Nat Taggart on the wall — ‘Nat Tag-
gart,’ he said, ‘belongs to a dark past, to the age of selfish greed, he
is not exactly a symbol of our modern, progressive policies, so it
could make a bad impression, people could identify me with him,’
‘No, they couldn’t,* l said — but I took the picture off his wall. . . .
What? . . . No. she doesn't know any of it. 1 haven’t communicated
with her. Not once. She told me not to. . . . Last week, 1 almost
quit. It was over Chick's Special. Mr. Chick Morrison of Washington,
whoever the hell he is, has gone on a speaking tour of the whole
country — to speak about the directive and build up the people’s mo-
rale, as things arc getting to be pretty wild everywhere. He de-
manded a special train, for himself and party— a sleeper, a parlor
car and a diner with barroom and lounge. The Unification Board
gave him permission to travel at a hundred miles an hour — by rea-
son, the ruling said, of this being a non-profit journey. Well, so it is.
It’s just a journey to talk people into continuing to break their backs
at making profits in order to support men who are superior by reason
of not making any. Well, our trouble came when Mr. Chick Morrison
demanded a Diesel engine for his train. We had none to give him.
livery Diesel we own is out on the road, pulling the Comet and the
transcontinental freights, and there wasn't a spare one anywhere on
the s>stem, except— well, that was an exception I wasn't going to
mention to Mr. Clifton Locey. Mr. Locey raised the roof, screaming
that come hell or high water we couldn’t refuse a demand of Mr.
Chick Morrison. 1 don't know what damn fool finally told him about
the extra Diesel that was kept at Winston, Colorado, at the mouth
of the tunnel. You know the way our Diesels break down nowadays,
they’re all breathing their last — so you can understand why that extra
Diesel had to be kept at the tunnel. I explained it to Mr. Locey. I
threatened him. I pleaded. 1 told him that she had made it our
strictest rule that Winston Station was never to be left without an
extra Diesel He told me to remember that he was not Miss Tag-
gart — as if I could ever forget it! — and that the rule was nonsense,
because nothing had happened all these years, so Winston could do
without a Diesel for a couple of months, and he wasn’t going to
worry about some theoretical disaster in the future when we were
up against the very real, practical, immediate disaster of getting Mr,
Chick Mormon angry at us. Well, Chick’s Special got the Diesel
The superintendent of the Colorado Division quit. Mr. Loccy gave
that job to a friend of his own. I wanted to quit. J had never wanted
lo so badl>. But I didn't. . . No, 1 haven’t heard from her. 1 haven’t
heard o word since she left. Why do you keep questioning me about
her? Forget it. She won’t be back. ... 1 don't know what it is that

525

Tm hoping for. Nothing, I guess. I just go day by day, and I try not
to look ahead. At first, I hoped that somebody would save us. I
thought maybe it would be Hank Rearden. But he gave in. I don’t
know what they did to him to make him sign, but I know that it
must have been something terrible. Everybody thinks so. Every-
body’s whispering about it, wondering what sort of pressure was used
on him. . . . No, nobody knows. He’s made no public statements and
he’s refused to see anyone. . . . But, listen. I’ll tell you something
else that everybody’s whispering about. Lean closer, will you?— 1
don’t want to speak too loudly. They say that Orren Boyle seems to
have known about that directive long ago, weeks or months in ad-
vance, because he had started, quietly and secretly, to reconstruct
his furnaces for the production of Rearden Metal, in one of his lesser
steel plants, an obscure little place way out on the coast of Maine.
He was ready to start pouring the Metal the moment Rcarden’s
extortion paper — I mean. Gift Certificate — was signed. But — listen —
the night before they were to start, Boyle’s men were heating the
furnaces in that place on the coast, when they heard a voice, they
didn’t know whether it came from a plane or a radio or some sort
of loudspeaker, but it was a man’s voice and it said that he would
give them ten minutes to get out of the place. They got out. They
started going and they kept on going — because the man’s voice had
said that he was Ragnar DanneskjOld. In the next half-hour, Boyle’s
mills were razed to the ground. Razed, wiped out, not a brick of
them left standing. They say it was done by long-range naval guns,
from somewhere way out on the Atlantic. Nobody saw DanneskjOld’s
ship. . . . That’s what people were whispering. The newspapers
haven’t printed a word about it. The boys in Washington say that
it’s only a rumor spread by panic-mongers. ... I don’t know whether
the story is true. 1 think it is. 1 hope it is. . . . You know, when 1
was fifteen years old, I used to wonder how any man could become
a criminal. 1 couldn’t understand what would make it possible.
Now — now I’m glad that Ragnar Danneskjold has blown up those
mills. May God bless him and never let them find him, whatever and
wherever he is! . . . Yes, that’s, what I’ve come to feel. Well, how-
much do they think people can take? . . . It’s not so bad lor me in
the daytime, because I can keep busy and not think, but it gets me
at night. I can’t sleep any more, I lie awake for hours. . . . Yes! — if
you want to know it — yes, it’s because I’m worried about her! I'm
scared to death for her. Woodstock is just a miserable little hole of
a place, miles away from anything, and the Taggart lodge is twenty
miles farther, twenty miles of a twisting trail in a godforsaken forest.
How do I know what might happen to her there, alone, and with
the kind of gangs that are roving all through the country the$e nights
just through such desolate parts of the country as the Berkshlres? . , .
I know I shouldn’t think about it. 1 know that she can take* care of
herself. Only 1 wish she’d drop me a line. I wish l could go there.
But she told me not to. I told her I’d wait. . . . You know, j’m glad
you’re here tonight. It helps me — talking to you and . . . ju|t seeing
you here. You won’t vanish, like all the others, will you . . .1 What?
Next week? . . . Oh, on your vacation. For how long? . . . How do

526

you rate a whole month’s vacation? ,,*I wish 1 could do that, too —
take a month off at my own expense. But they wouldn’t let me. . . .
Really? [ envy you. ... I wouldn’t have envied you a few years ago.
But now — now I’d like to get away. Now I envy you — if you’ve been
able to take a month off every summer lor twelve years. 1 '

* *

It was a dark road, but it led in a new direction. Rearden walked
from his mills, not toward his house, but toward the city of Philadel-
phia. it was a great distance to walk, but he had wanted to do it
tonight, as he had done it every evening of the past week. He felt
at peace in the empty darkness of the countryside, with nothing but
the black shapes of trees around him, with no motion but that of
his own body and of branches stirring in the wind, with no lights but
the slow sparks of the fireflies flickering through the hedges. The
two hours between mills and city were his span of rest.

He had moved out of his home to an apartment in Philadelphia.
He had given no explanation to his mother and Philip, he had said
nothing except that they could remain in the house if they wished
and that Miss Ives would take care of their bills. He had asked them
to tell Lillian, when she returned, that she was not to attempt to see
him. They had stared at him in terrified silence.

He had handed to his attorney a signed blank check and said,
’Get me a divorce. On any grounds and at any cost. I don't care
what means you use, how many of their judges you purchase or
whether you find it necessary to stage a frame-up of my wife. Do
whatever you wish. But there is to be no alimony and no property
settlement 11 The attorney had looked at him with the hint of a wise,
sad smile, as it this were an event he had expected to happen long
ago. He had answered, "'Okay, Hank. It can be done. But it will
take some time.” “Make it as fast as you am.”

No one had questioned him about his signature on the Gift Cer-
tificate. But he had noticed that the men at the mills looked at him
with a kind of searching curiosity, almost as if they expected to find
the scars of some physical torture on his body.

He fell nothing- -nothing but the sense of an even, restful twilight,
like a spread of slag over a molten metal, when it crusts and swallows
the last brilliant spurt of the white glow within. He felt nothing at
the thought of the looters who were now going to manufacture Rear-
den Metal. His desire to hold his right to it and proudly to be the
only one to sell it, had been his form of respect for his fellow men,
his belief that to trade with them was an act of honor. The belief,
the respect and the desire were gone. He did not care what men
made, what they sold, where they bought his Metal or whether any
of them would know that it had been his. The human shapes moving
past him in the streets of the city were physical objects without any
meaning. The countryside — with the darkness washing away all
traces of human activity, leaving only an untouched earth which he
had once been able to handle — was real.

He carried a gun in his pocket, as advised by the policemen of
the radio car that patrolled the roads; they had warned him that no
road was safe after dark, these days. He felt, with a touch of mirthless

527

amusement, that the gun had been needed at the mills, not in the
peaceful safety of loneliness and night; what could some starving
vagrant take from him, compared to what had been taken by men
who claimed to be his protectors?

He walked with an effortless speed, feeling relaxed by a form of
activity that was natural to him. This was his period of training for
solitude, he thought; he had to learn to live without any awareness
of people, the awareness that now paralyzed him with revulsion. He
had once built his fortune, starting out with empty hands; now he
had to rebuild his life, starting out with an empty spirit.

He would give himself a short span of time for the training, he
thought, and then he would claim the one incomparable value still
left to him, the one desire that had remained pure and whole: he
would go to Dagny. Two commandments had grown in his mind;
one was a duty, the other a passionate wish. The first was never to
let her learn the reason of his surrender to the looters; the second
was to say to her the words which he should have known at their first
meeting and should have said on the gallery of Ellis Wyatt’s house.

There was nothing but the strong summer starlight to guide him.
as he walked, but he could distinguish the highway and the remnant
of a stone fence ahead, at the comer of a country crossroad. The
fence had nothing to protect any longer, only a spread of weeds, a
willow tree bending over the road and, farther in the distance, the
ruin of a farmhouse with the starlight showing through its roof.

He walked, thinking that even this sight still retained the power
to be of value: it gave him the promise of a long stretch of space
undisturbed by human intrusion.

The man who stepped suddenly out into the road must have come
from behind the willow tree, but so swiftly that it seemed as if he
had sprung up from the middle of the highway. Rearden’s hand went
to the gun in his pocket, but stopped: he knew — by the proud posture
of the body standing in the open, by the straight line of the shoulders
against thef starlit sky — that the man was not a bandit. When he
heard the voice, he knew that the man was not a beggar.

“f should like to speak to you, Mr. Rearden.”

The voice had the firmness, the clarity and the special courtesy
peculiar to men who are accustomed to giving orders.

“Go ahead,” said Rearden, “provided you don’t intend to ask me
for help or money.”

The man’s garments were rough, but efficiently trim. He wore
dark trousers and a dark blue windbreakcr closed tight at his throat,
prolonging the lines of his long, slender figure. He wore a dark blue
cap, and all that could be seen of him in the night were his hands,
his face and a patch of gold-blond hair on his temple; The hands
held no weapon, only a package wrapped in burlap, the size of a
carton of cigarettes.

“No, Mr. Rearden,” he said, “I don’t intend to ask yo^ for money,
but to return it to you.”

“To return money?”

“Yes.”

“What money?”

528

“A small refund on a very large debt/*

“Owed by you?”

“No, not by me. It is only a token payment, but I want you to
iccept it as proof that if we live long enough, you and 1, every dollar
>f that debt will be returned to you.”

“What debt?”

“The money that was taken from you by force.”

He extended the package to Rearden, flipping the burlap open.
Bearden saw the starlight run like fire along a mirror-smooth surface,
-le knew, by its weight and texture, that what he held was a bar of
olid gold.

He looked from the bar to the man's face, but the face seemed
larder and less revealing than the surface of the metal.

“Who are you?” asked Rearden.

“The friend of the friendless.”

“Did you come here to give this to me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean that you had to stalk me at night, on a lonely road,
n order, not to rob me, but to hand me a bar of gold?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“When robbery is done in open daylight by sanction of the law,
is it is done today, then any act of honoi or restitution has to be
ndden underground.”

“What made you think that Vd accept a gift of this kind?”

“It is not a gift, Mr. Rearden. It is your own money. But 1 have
>ne favor to ask ol you. It is a request, not a condition, because
here can be no such thing as conditional property. The gold is yours,
>o you are free to use it as you please. But I risked my life to bring
t to you tonight, so 1 am asking, as a lavor, that you save it for the
inure or spend it on yourself. On nothing but your own comfort
tnd pleasure. Do not give it away and, above all, do not put it into
vour business.”

“Because 1 don’t want it to be of any benefit to anybody but you.
Otherwise, 1 will have broken an oath taken long ago — as I am
creaking every rule I had set for myself by speaking to you tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have been collecting this money for you for a long time. But I
Jid not intend to see you or tell you about it or give it to you until
much later.”

“Then why did you?”

“Because l couldn’t stand it any longer.”

“Stand what?”

“I thought that I had seen everything one could see and that there
was nothing I could not stand seeing. But when they took Rearden
Metal away from you, it was too much, even for me. I know that
you don’t need this gold at present. What you need is the justice
which it represents, and the knowledge that there are men who care
lor justice,.”

Struggling not to give in to an emotion which he felt rising through
his bewilderment, past all his doubts, Rearden tried to study the

529

man’s face, searching for some clue to help him understand. But the
face had no expression; it had not changed once while speaking; it
looked as if the man had lost the capacity to feel long ago, and what
remained of him were only features that seemed implacable and
dead. With a shudder of astonishment, Reardcn found himself think-
ing that it was not the face of a man, but of an avenging angel.

“Why did you care?" asked Rearden. "What do 1 mean to you?”

"Much more than you have reason to suspect. And l have a friend
to whom you mean much more than you will ever learn. He would
have given anything to stand by you today. But he can’t come to
you. So l came in his place."

"What friend?"

"I prefer not to name him."

"Did you say that you've spent a long time collecting this money
for me?"

"1 have collected much more than this." He pointed at the gold
"l am holding it in your name and 1 will turn it over to you when
the time comes. This is only a sample, as proof that it does exist.
And if you reach the day when you find yourself robbed of the last
of your fortune, I want you to remember that you have a large bank
account waiting for you."

"What account?"

"If you try to think of all the money that has been taken from
you by force, you will know that your account represents a consider-
able sum."

"How did you collect it? Where did this gold come from?"

"It was taken from those who robbed you."

"Taken by whom?"

"By me."

"Who are you?"

"Ragnar DanneskjOld."

Rearden looked at him for a long, still moment, then let the gold
fall out of )iis hands.

Danneskjdld's eyes did not follow it to the ground, but remained
fixed on Rearden with no change of expression. "Would you rather
I were a law-abiding citizen, Mr. Rearden? If so, which law should
I abide by? Directive 10-289?"

"Ragnar Danneskjokl . . said Rearden, as if he were seeing the
whole of the past decade, as if he were looking at the enormity of
a crime spread through ten years and held within two words.

“Look more carefully, Mr. Rearden. There are only two modes of
living left to us today: to be a looter who robs disarmed victims or
to be a victim who works for the benefit of his own despoilers. I did
not choose to be either." t

"You chose to live by means of force, like the rest o( them."

"Yes — openly. Honestly, if you will. I do not rob who arc
tied and gagged, I do not demand that my victims help ijhe, 1 do not
tell them that I am acting for their own good. I stak^ my life in
every encounter with men, and they have a chance to match their
guns and their brains against mine in fair battle. Fair? It’s I against
the organized strength, the guns, the planes, the battlelhips of five

530

continents. If it’s a moral judgment that you wish to pronounce, Mr.
Rearden, then who is the man of higher morality: I or Wesley
Mouch?”

“I have no answer to give you,” said Rearden, his voice low.

“Why should you be shocked, Mr. Rearden? I am merely comply-
ing with the system which my fellow men have established. If they
believe that force is the proper means to deal with one another, I
am giving them what they ask for. If they believe that the purpose
of my life is to serve them, let them try to enforce their creed. If
they believe that my mind is their property — let them come and
gel it.”

“But what sort of life have you chosen? To what purpose are you
giving your mind?”

“To the cause of my love.”

“Which is what?”

“Justice.”

“Served by being a pirate?”

“By working for the day when I won't have to be a pirate any
longer.”

“Which day is that?”

“The day when you’ll be free to make a profit on Rearden Metal.”

“Oh God!” said Rearden, laughing, his voice desperate. “Is that
\our ambition?”

DanneskjOld's face did not change. “It is.”

“Do you expect to live to sec that day?”

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Then what are you looking forward to, Mr. Rearden?”

“Nothing.”

“What are you working for?”

Rearden glanced at him. “Why do you ask that?”

“To make you understand why I’m not.”

“Don’t expect me ever to approve of a criminal ”

“I don’t expect it. But there are a few things 1 want to help you
to see.”

“Even if they're true, the things you said, why did you choose to
be a bandit? Why didn’t you simply step out, like — ” He stopped.

“Like Ellis Wyatt, Mr. Rearden? Like Andrew Stockton? Like
vour friend Ken Danagger?”

“Yes!”

“Would you approve of that?”

”1 — ” He stopped, shocked by his own words.

The shock that came next was to see Danneskjftld smile: it was
like seeing the first green of spring on the sculptured planes of an
ueherg. Rearden realized suddenly, for the first time, that Dannesk-
jold’s face was more than handsome, that it had the startling beauty
ef physical perfection — the hard, proud features, the scornful mouth

a Viking’s statue — yet he had not been aware of it, almost as if
the dead sternness of the face had forbidden the impertinence of an
appraisal. ‘But the smile was brilliantly alive.

i do approve of it, Mr. Rearden. But I’ve chosen a special mission

531

of my own. I'm after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many
centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's
minds, we will not have a decent world to live in.’*

“What man?"

“Robin Hood,"

Rearden looked at him blankly, not understanding,

“He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well,
I'm the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich- -or, to be
exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the
productive rich.'’

“What in blazes do you mean?”

“If you remember the stories you’ve read about me in the newspa-
pers. before they slopped printing them, you know that I have never
robbed a private ship and never taken any private property. Nor
have I e\er robbed a military vessel — because the purpose of a mili-
tary fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it.
which is the proper function of a government. But l have seized
every loot-earner that came within range of my guns, every govern-
ment relief ship, subsidy ship, loan slup, gift ship, every vessel with
a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid,
unearned benefit of others, 1 seized the boats that sailed under the
flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred
idol requiring human sacrifices- -that the need of some men is the
knife of a guillotine hanging over others — that all of us must live
with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy ol the
moment when that knife will descend upon us — and that the extent
of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will briny
our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to
pull the cord. This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as
an ideal of righteousness. It is said that he fought against the looting
rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that
is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remem-
bered, not as a champion of properly , but as a champion of need.
not as & delender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He
is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing
charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods
which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury ot
his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of ihe idea that
need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to
produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us. but
the unearned does He became a justification for every mediocrity
who. unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to
dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness
to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors.
It is this foulest of creatures — the double-pat asite who lives on the
sores of the poor and the blood of the rich — whom n|ien have come
to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us toja world where
the more a man produces, the closer he comes to th£ loss of all his
rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless
creature delivered as prey to any claimant — while m order to be
placed above rights, above principles, above morality^ placed where

532

anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man
has to do is to be in need Do you wonder why the world is collapsing
around us? That is what I am fighting Mr. Rearden. Until men learn
that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the
most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for
mankind to survive.”

Rearden listened, feeling numb. But under the numbness, like the
first thrust of a seed breaking through, he felt an emotion he could
not identify except that it seemed familiar and very distant, like
something experienced and renounced long ago.

“What I actually am, Mr, Rearden, is a policeman. It is a police-
man’s duty to protect men from criminals — criminals being those
who seize wealth by force. It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen
property and return it lo its owners. But when robbery becomes
the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not the
protection, but the plunder of property — then it is an outlaw who has
to become a policeman. I have been selling the cargoes I retrieved to
some special customers of mine in this country, who pay me in gold.
Also, I have been selling my cargoes to the smugglers and the black*
market traders of the People’s States of Europe. Do you know the
conditions of existence in those People’s States? Since production
and trade-— not violence- -were decreed to be crimes, the best men
of Europe had no choice but to become criminals The slave-drivers
of those States are kept in power by the handouts from their fellow
looters in countries not yet fully drained, such as this country', I do
nut let the handouts reach them. 1 sell the goods to Europe’s law-
breakeis; at the highest prices 1 can get. and l make them pay me
m gold. Gold is the objective value, the means of preserving one’s
wealth and one’s future. Nobody is permitted to have gold in Europe,
except the whip-wielding friends of humanity, who claim that they
spend it for the welfare of theii victims. That is the gold which my
smuggler-customers obtain to pay me. How? By the same method l
use to obtain the goods. And then I return the gold to those from
whom the goods were stolen — to you, Mr. Rearden, and to other
men like you.”

Rearden grasped the nature of the emotion he had forgotten. It
was the emotion he had felt when, at the age of fourteen, he had
looked at his first pay check — when, at the age of twenty-four, he
had been made superintendent of the ore mines — when, as the owner
of the mines, he had placed, in his own name, his first order for new
equipment from the best concern of the time. Twentieth Century
Motors— an emotion of solemn, joyous excitement, the sense of win-
ning his place in a world he respected and earning the iccognition
of men he admired. For almost two decades, that emotion had been
huned under a mountain of wreckage, as the years had added layer
upon gray layer of contempt, of indignation, of his struggle not to
look around him, not to see those he dealt with, not to expect any-
thing from men and to keep, as a private vision within the four walls
of his office, the sense of that world into which he had hoped to
rise. Vet there it was again, breaking through from under the wreck-
age, that feeling of quickened interest, of listening to the luminous

533

and knew that the austerity of the marble face was the form of a
disciplined capacity to feel too deeply. The even voice was continu-
ing dispassionately:

“I wanted you to know this. I wanted you to know it now, when
it must seem to you that you’re abandoned at the bottom of a pit
among subhuman creatures who are all that's left of mankind. I
wanted you to know, in your most hopeless hour, that the day of
deliverance is much closer than you think. And there was one special
reason why I had to speak to you and tell you my secret ahead of
the proper time. Have you heard of what happened to Orren Boyle's
steel mills on the coast of Maine?”

“Yes.” said Reardcn — and was shocked to hear that the word
came as a gasp out of the sudden jolt of eagerness within him. ”1
didn't know whether it was true.”

“It's true. 1 did it. Mr. Boyle is not going to manufacture Reatden
Metal on the coast of Maine. He is not going to manufacture it
anywhere. Neither is any other looting louse who thinks that a direc-
tive can give him a right to your brain. Whoever attempts to produce
that Metal, will find his furnaces blown up, his machinery blasted,
his shipments wrecked, his plant set on fire— so many things will
happen to any man who tries it, that people will sav there's a curse
on it, and there will soon be no worker in the country willing to
enter the plant of any new producer of Reardon Metal. If men like
Boyle think that force is all they need to rob their betters-— let them
see what happens when one of their betters chooses to resort to
force, I wanted you to know, Mr. Reardon, that none of them will
produce your Metal nor make a penny on tt,”

Because he felt an exultant desire to laugh— as he had laughed at
the news of Wyatt's fire, as he had laughed at the crash of d’Ancomu
Copper — ai?d knew that if he did, the thing he feared would hold
him, would not release him this tune, and he would never see his
mills again — Reardcn drew back and, lor a moment, kept his lips
dosed tight to utter no sound. When the moment was over, he said
quietly, his voice firm and dead, “Take that gold of yours and get
away from here. I won't accept the help of a criminal.”

Danneskjdld’s face showed no reaction. “I cannot force you to
accept the gold, Mr. Rearden. But I will not take it back. You may
leave it lying where it is, if you wish.”

“I don’t want your help and 1 don’t intend to protect you. If I
were within reach of a phone, 1 would call the police. I would and
I will, if you ever attempt to approach me again. I’ll do it— in sell-
protection.”

*T understand exactly what you mean.”

“You know — because I’ve listened to you, because you’ve seen
me eager to hear it that I haven't damned you as 1 should. I can't
damn you or anyone else. There are no standards lef$ for men to
live by, so I don't care to judge anything they do todaj^ or in what
manner they attempt to endure the unendurable. If thisfis your man-
ner, I will let you go to hell in your own way, but 1 wajht no part of
it. Neither as your inspiration nor as your accomplice. jDon’t expect
me ever to accept your bank account, if it does exist.: Spend it on

536

"As an advocate of reason,
egoism and capitalism,

I seek to reach the men of the
intellect — wherever such may

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lliliiitinllliiiiltfiililiililiiiilli

some extra armor plate for yourself — because I'm going to report
this to the police and give them every due I can to set them on
your trail.”

Danneskjold did not move or answer. A freight train was rolling
hy. somewhere in the distance and darkness; they could not see it
hut they heard the pounding beat of wheels filling the silence, and
it seemed close, as if a disembodied train, reducing to a long string
of sound, were going past them in the night.

"You wanted to help me in my most hopeless hour?’* said Rear-
den ‘*11 I am brought to where my only defender is a pirate, then
1 don’t care to be defended any JongeT. You speak some remnant
of a human language, so in the name of that, HI tel! you that 1 have
no hope left, but J have the knowledge that when the end comes. I
will have lived by my own standards, even while 1 was the only one
to whom they remained valid. I will have lived in the world in which
i started and I will go down with the last of it. I don't think you'll
want to understand me, but — ”

A beam of light hit them with the violence ol a physical blow.
The clangor of the train had swallowed the noise of the motor and
they had not heard the approach of the car that swept out of the
side road, from behind the farmhouse. They were not in the car’s
path, yet they heard the screech of brakes behind the two headlights,
pulling an invisible shape to a slop. It was Reardon who jumped
hack involuntarily and had time to marvel at his companion: the
swiftness of Danneskjbld s self-control was that he did not move.

It was a police car and it stopped beside them.

The driver leaned out. "Oh, it s you. Mr. Reardon!” he said, touch-
ing his lingers to his cap. “Good evening, sir.”

"Hello,” said Rearden, fighting to control the unnatural abruptness
of his voice

There were two patrolmen in the front seat of the car and their
faces had a tight look of purpose, not the look of their usual friendly
intention to stop for a chat.

“Mr. Rearden, did you walk from the mills by way of Edgewood
Road, past Blacksmith Cove?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Did you happen to see a man anywhere around these parts, a
stranger moving along in a hurry?”

“Where?”

“He’d be either on fool or in a battered wreck of a car that’s got
a million-dollar motor.”

“What man?”

“A tall man with blond hair,”

“Who is he?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, Mr. Rearden. Did you
see him?”

Rearden was not aware of his own questions, only of the aston-
ishing fact that he was able to force sounds past some beating barrier
inside his throat. He was looking straight at the policeman, but he
felt as if the focus of his eyes had switched to his side vision, and
what he saw most clearly was Danneskj&ld’s face watching him with

537

no expression* with no line's, no muscle's worth of feeling. He saw
D an ties kj Old’s arms hanging idly by his sides, the hands relaxed, with
no sign of intention to reach for a weapon, leaving the tall, straight
body defenseless and open — open as to a firing squad. He saw, in
the light, that the face looked younger than he had thought and that
the eyes were sky-blue. He felt that his one danger would be to
glance directly at DanneskjOld — and he kept his eyes on the police-
man, on the brass buttons of a blue uniform, but the object filling
his consciousness, more forcefully than a visual perception, was Dan-
neskjold’s body, the naked body under the clothes, the body that
would be wiped out of existence. He did not hear his own words,
because he kept hearing a single sentence in his mind, without con-
text except the feeling that it was the only thing that mattered to
him in the world: “If I should lose my life, to what better purpose
could I give it?”

“Did you see him, Mr. Rearden?”

“No,” said Rearden. “I didn’t.”

The policeman shrugged regretfully and closed his hands about the
steering wheel. “You didn’t sec any man that looked suspicious?”

“No.”

“Nor any strange car passing you on the road?”

“No.”

The policeman reached for the starter. “They got word that he
was seen ashore in these parts tonight, and they’ve thrown a dragnet
over five counties. We re not supposed to mention his name, not to
scare folks, but he’s a man whose head is worth three million dollars
in rewards from all over the world.”

He had pressed the starter and the motor was churning the air
with bright cracks of sound, when the second policeman leaned for-
ward. He had been looking at the blond hair under Danneskjold’s
cap.

“Who is that, Mr. Rearden?” he asked.

“My new bodyguard,” said Rearden.

“Oh . ' . ! A sensible precaution, Mr. Rearden, in times like these.”

“Good night, sir.”

The motor jerked forward. The red taillights of the car went
shrinking down the road. Danneskjbld watched it go, then glanced
pointedly at Rearden ’s right hand. Rearden realized that he had
stood facing the policemen with his hand clutching the gun in his
pocket and that he had been prepared to use it.

He opened his fingers and drew his hand out hastily, Danneskjbld
smiled. It was a smile of radiant amusement, the silent laughter of
a clear, young spirit greeting a moment it was glad to have lived.
And although the two did not resemble each other, the smile made
Rearden think of Francisco d’Anconia.

“You haven’t told a lie,” said Ragnar Danneskjold. “Your body-
guard — that’s what I am and what I’ll deserve to be, |n many more
ways than you can know at present. Thanks, Mr. Rearden, and so
long— we'll meet again much sooner than l had hope#.”

He was gone before Rearden could answer. He vanished beyond
the stone fence, as abruptly and soundlessly as he had come. When

53a

Reardon turned to look through the farm field, there was no trace
of him and no sign of movement anywhere in the darkness.

Rearden stood on the edge of an empty road in a spread of loneli-
ness vaster than it had seemed before. Then he saw, lying at his feet,
an object wrapped in burlap, with one comet exposed and glistening
m the moonlight, the color of the pirate's hair. He bent, picked it
up and walked on.

* *

Kip Chalmers swore as the train lurched and spilled his cocktail
over the table top. He slumped forward, his elbow in the puddle,
and said:

“God damn these railroads! What's the matter with their track?
You'd think with all the money they’ve got they'd disgorge a little,
so we wouldn't have to bump like farmers on a hay cart!"

His three companions did not take the trouble to answer. It was
late, and they remained in the lounge merely because an effort was
needed to retire to their compartments. The lights of the lounge
looked like feeble portholes in a tog of cigarette smoke dank w ith
the odor ot alcohol. It was a private car. which Chalmers had de-
manded and obtained for his journey; it was attached to the end of
the Comet and it swung like the tail of a nervous animal as the
Comet coiled through the curves of the mountains.

‘Tm going to campaign for the nationalization of the railroads."
said Kip C halmers, glaring defiantly at a small, gray man who looked
at him without interest. “That's going to be my platform plank. I've
got to have a platform plank. I don't like Jim Taggart. He looks
like a soft-boiled clam. To hell with the railroads! It's time we took
them over."

“Go to bed." said the man, “if you expect to look like anything
human at the big rally tomorrow."

“Do you think we’ll make it?"

“You’ve got to make it."

“I know l'\e got to. But I don’t think we’ll get there on time.
This goddamn snail of a super-special is hours late."

“You've got to be there, Kip." said the man ominously, in that
stubborn monotone of the unthinking which asserts an end without
concern for the means.

“God damn you, don't you suppose 1 know it?"

Kip Chalmers had curly blond hair and a shapeless mouth. He
came from a semi-wealthy, serra -distinguished family, but he sneered
at wealth and distinction in a manner which implied that only a
lop-rank aristocrat could permit himself such a degree of cynical
indifference. He had gtaduated from a college which specialized in
breeding that kind of aristocracy. The college had taught him that
the purpose of ideas is to fool those who are stupid enough to think.
He had made his way in Washington with the grace of a cat-burglar,
climbing from bureau to bureau as from ledge to ledge of a crum-
bling structure. He was ranked as semi -powerful, but his manner
made laymen mistake him for nothing less than Wesley Mouch.

For reasons of his own particular strategy. Kip Chalmers had de-
cided to enter popular politics and to run for election as Legislator

539

from California, though he knew nothing about that state except the
movie industry and the beach clubs. His campaign manager had done
the preliminary work, and Chalmers was now on his way to face his'
future constituents for the first time at an overpublicized rally in San
Francisco tomorrow night. The manager had wanted him to start a
day earlier, but Chalmers had stayed in Washington to attend a cock-
tail party and had taken the last train possible. He had shown no
concern about the rally until this evening, when he noticed that the
Comet was running six hours late.

His three companions did not mind his mood: they liked his liquor.
Lester Tuck, his campaign manager, was a small, aging man with a
face that looked as if it had once been punched in and had never
rebounded. He was an attorney who, some generations earlier, would
have represented shoplifters and people who stage accidents on the
premises of rich corporations; now he found that he could do better
by representing men like Kip Chalmers.

Laura Bradford was Chalmers’ current mistress: he liked her be-
cause his predecessor had been Wesley Mouch. She was a movie
actress who had forced her way from competent featured player to
incompetent star, not by means of sleeping with studio executives,
but by taking the long-distance short cut of sleeping with bureau-
crats. She talked economics, instead of glamour, for press interviews,
in the belligerently righteous style of a third-rate tabloid: her eco-
nomics consisted of the assertion that "we’ve got to help the poor."

Gilbert Keith -Worthing was Chalmers’ guest, for no reason that
either of them could discover. He was a British novelist of world
fame, who had been populai thirty years ago; since then, nobody
bothered to read what he wrote, but everybody accepted him as a
walking classic. He had been considered profound for uttering such
things as: "Freedom? Do let’s stop talking about freedom. Freedom
is impossible. Man can never be free of hunger, of cold, of disease,
of physical accidents. He can never be free of the tyranny of nature.
So why should he object to the tyranny of a political dictatorship?"
When all of Europe put into practice the ideas which he had
preached, he came to live in America. Through the years, his style
of writing and his body had grown flabby. At seventy, he was an
obese old man with retouched hair and a manner of scornful cynicism
retouched by quotations from the yogis about the futility of all
human endeavor. Kip Chalmers had invited him. because it seemed
to look distinguished. Gilbert Keith-Worthing had come along, be-
cause he had no particular place to go.

“God damn these railroad people!” said Kip Chalmers. "They’re
doing it on purpose. They want to ruin my campaign. 1 can’t miss
that rally! For Christ’s sake, Lester, do something!”

"I’ve tried,” said Lester Tuck. At the train’s last slop, he had
tried, by long-distance telephone, to find air transpoi’talion to com-
plete their journey; but there were no commercial flights scheduled
for the next two days.

"If they don’t get me there on time, I’ll have their $calps and their
railroad! Can’t we tell that damn conductor to hurry^”

“You’ve told him three times.”

540

‘Til get him fired. He’s given me nothing but a lot of alibis about
all their messy technical troubles. I expect transportation, not alibis.
They can’t treat me like one of their day-coach passengers. I expect
them to get me where I want to go when I want it. Don’t they know
that I’m on this train?”

“They know it by now,” said Laura Bradford. “Shut up, Kip. You
bore me.”

Chalmers refilled his glass. The car was rocking and the glassware
tinkled faintly on the shelves of the bar. The patches of starlit sky
in the windows kept swaying jerkily, and it seemed as if the stars
were tinkling against one another. They could see nothing beyond
the glass bay of the observation window at the end of the car, except
the small halos of red and green lanterns marking the rear of the
train, and a brief stretch of rail running away from them into the
darkness. A wall of rock was racing the train, and the stars dipped
occasionally into a sudden break that outlined, high above them, the
peaks of the mountains of Colorado.

“Mountains . . .” said Gilbert Keith-Worthing, with satisfaction.
“It is a spectacle of this kind that makes one feel the insignificance
of man. What is this presumptuous little bit of rail, which crude
materialists are so proud of building-compared to that eternal gran-
deur? No more than the basting thread of a seamstress on the hem
of the garment of nature. If a single one of Ihosc granite giants chose
to crumble, it would annihilate this train ”

“Why should it choose to crumble?” asked Laura Bradford, with-
out any particular interest.

“I think this damn train is going slower,” said Kip Chalmers.
“Those bastards are slowing down, in spite of what 1 told them!”

“Well . . . it's the mountains, you know . . said Lester Tuck.

‘Mountains be damned! Lester, what day is this? With ail those
damn changes of time, l can't tell which — ”

“It's May twenty-seventh,” sighed Lester Tuck.

“It’s May twenty-eighth,” said Gilbert Keith-Worthing, glancing
at his watch. “It is now twelve minutes past midnight.”

“Jesus!” cried Chalmers. “Then the rally is todavV'

“Yep,” said Lester Tuck.

“We won’t make it! We — ”

The train gave a sharper lurch, knocking the glass out of his hand.
The thin sound of its crash against the floor mixed with the screech
ot the wheel-flanges tearing against the rail of a sharp curve.

“1 say,” asked Gilbert Keith-Worthing nervously, “are your rail-
roads safe?”

“Hell, yes!” said Kip Chalmers “We’ve got so many rules, regula-
tions and controls that those bastards wouldn’t dare not to be
safe* . . , Lester, how far are we now? What’s the next stop?”

“There won't be any stop till Sail Lake City.”

“I mean, what’s the next station?”

Lester l uck produced a soiled map, which he had been consulting
every few minutes since nightfall. “Winston,” he said. “Winston,
(dorado.”

Kip Chalmers reached for another glass.

541

“Tinky Holloway said that Wesley said that if you don’t win this
election* you're through*” said Laura Bradford, She sat sprawled in.
her chair, looking past Chalmers, studying her own face in a mirror
on the wall of the lounge; she was bored and it amused her to needle
his impotent anger.

“Oh, be did, did he?”

“Uh-huh. Wesley doesn't want what’s-hjs-name — whoever’s run-
ning against you — to get into the Legislature. If you don’t win, Wes-
ley will be sore as hell. Tinky said — ”

“Damn that bastard! He’d better watch his own neck!”

“Oh, I don’t know. Wesley tikes him very much.” She added,
“Tinky Holloway wouldn’t allow some miserable train to make him
miss an important meeting. They wouldn’t dare to hold him up.”

Kip Chalmers sat staring at his glass. “I'm going to have the gov-
ernment sebe all the railroads,” he said, his voice low.

“Really,” said Gilbert Keith-Worthing, “1 don't see why you
haven't done it long ago. This is the only country on earth backward
enough to permit private ownership of railroads.”

“Well, we’re catching up with you,” said Kip Chalmers.

“Your country is so incredibly naive. It's such an anachronism
All that talk about liberty and human rights — I haven’t heard it since
the days of my great-grandfather. It’s nothing but a verbal luxury of the
rich. After all, it doesn’t make any difference to the poor whether their
livelihood is at the mercy of an industrialist or a bureaucrat.”

“The day of the industrialists is over. This is the day of — ”

The jolt felt as if the air within the car smashed them forward
while the floor stopped under their feet. Kip Chalmers was flung
down to the carpet. Gilbert Keith-Worthing was thrown across the
tabletop, the fights were blasted out. Glasses crashed off the shelves
the steel of the walls screamed as if about to rip open while a long,
distant thud went like a convulsion through the wheels of the train

When he raised his head, Chalmers saw that the car stood intact
and stilj; he heard the moans of his companions and the first shriek
of Laura Bradford’s hysterics. He crawled along the floor to the
doorway, wrenched it open, and tumbled down the steps. Far ahead,
on the side of a curve, he saw moving flashlights and a red glow ai
a spot where the engine had no place to be. He stumbled through
the darkness, bumping into half-clothed figures that waved the futile
little flares of matches. Somewhere along the line, he saw a man
with a flashlight and seized his arm. It was the conductor.

“What happened?” gasped Chalmers.

“Split rail,” the conductor answered impassively. “The engine
went off the track.”

“Off . . . ?”

“On its side.”

“Anybody . . . killed?”

“No. The engineer’s all right. The fireman is hurt.*’

“Split rail? What do you mean, split rail?”

The conductor’s face had an odd look; it was griift, accusing and
closed. “Rail wears out, Mr. Chalmers,” he answered with a strange
kind of emphasis. “Particularly on curves.”

542

“Didn't you know that it was worn out?”

vk We knew.”

“Well, why didn’t you have it replaced?”

“It was going to be replaced. But Mr. Locey cancelled that?’

“Who is Mr Loccy?”

“The man who is now our Operating Vice-President.”

Chalmers wondered why the conductor seemed to look at him as
if something about the catastrophe were his fault. “Well . . . well,
aren’t you going to put the engine back on the track?”

“That engine's never going to be put back on any track, from the
looks of it.'*

“But . . . it’s got to move us!”

“H can’t ”

Beyond the few moving flares and the dulled sounds of screams;
Chalmers sensed suddenly, not wanting to look at it, the black im-
mensity of the mountains, the silence of hundred* ol unmhabited
miles, and the precarious strip ol a ledge hanging between a wall of
rock and an abyss. He gripped the conductor's arm tighter.

‘But . but what are we going to do'*”

“The engineer's gone to call Winston."

“C all? How?"

“There’s a phone couple of miles down the track.”

“Will they get us out of here?”

“They will.”

“But . Then his mind made a connection with the past and
the future, and his voice rose to a scream for the flrst time: “How
long will we have to wait?"

“1 don’t know,” said the conductor. He threw Chalmers' hand olf
his arm, and walked away.

The night operator at Winston Station listened to the phone mes-
sage. dropped the receiver and raced up the stairs to shake the sta-
tion agent out of bed. The station agent was a husky, surly drifter
who had been assigned to the job ten days ago, by order of the new
division superintendent. He stumbled dazedly to his feet, but he was
knocked awake when the operator's words reached his brain.

“What?" he gasped. “Jesus! The Comet? , . . Well, don’t stand
there shaking! Cali Silver Springs!”

The night dispatcher of the Division Headquarters at Silver
Springs listened to the message, then telephoned Dave Mitch urn. the
new superintendent of the Colorado Division.

“The Comet?” gasped Mitchum, his hand pressing the telephone
kceiver to his ear, his feet hitting the floor and throwing him upright,
out of bed, “The engine done for? The Diesel ?”

“Yes, sir.*’

"Oh God! Oh, God Almighty! What are we going to do?" Then,
remembering his position, he added, “Well, send out the wrecking
train.”

“I have,”

“Cali the operator at Sherwood to hold all traffic.”

*i have.”

“What have you got on the sheet?”

543

‘"The Array Freight Special, westbound. But it’s not due for about
four hours. It’s running late.”

“I’ll be right down. . . . Wait, listen, get Bill, Sandy and Clarence
down by the time I get there. There’s going to be hell to pay!”

Dave Mitchum had always complained about injustice, because,
he said, he had always had bad luck. He explained it by speaking
darkly about the conspiracy of the big fellows, who would never give
him a chance, though he did not explain just whom he meant by
“the big fellows.” Seniority of service was his favorite topic of com-
plaint and sole standard of value; he had been in the railroad busi-
ness longer than many men who had advanced beyond him; this, he
said, was proof of the social system's injustice — though he never
explained just what he meant by “the social system.” He had worked
for many railroads, but had not stayed long with any one of them.
His employers had had no specific misdeeds to charge against him,
but had simply eased him out, because he said, “Nobody told me
to!” too often. He did not know that he owed his present job to a
deal between James Taggart and Wesley Mouch: when Taggart
traded to Mouch the secret of his sister’s private life, in exchange
for a raise in rates, Mouch made him throw in an extra favor, by
their customary rules of bargaining, which consisted of squeezing all
one could out of any given trade. The extra was a job for Dave
Mitchum, who was the brother-in-law of Claude Slagenhop, who was
the president of the Friends of Global Progress, who were regarded
by Mouch as a valuable influence on public opinion. James Taggart
pushed the responsibility of finding a job for Mitchum onto Clifton
Locey. Loccy pushed Mitchum into the first job that came up —
superintendent of the Colorado Division-— when the man holding it
quit without notice. The man quit when the extra Diesel engine of
Winston Station was given to Chick Morrison’s Special.

“What are we going to do?” cried Dave Mitchum, rushing, half-
dressed and groggy with sleep, into his office, where the chief dis-
patcher, the trainmaster and the road foreman of engines were waiting
for him.

The three men did not answer. They were middle-aged men with
years of railroad service behind them. A month ago, they would
have volunteered their advice in any emergency; but they were begin-
ning to learn that things had changed and that it was dangerous
to speak.

“What in hell are we going to do?”

“One thing is certain,” said Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher. “We
can’t send a train into the tunnel with a coal-burning engine.”

Dave Mitchum’s eyes grew sullen: he knew that this was the one
thought on all their minds; he wished Brent had not gamed it.

“Well, where do we get a Diesel?” he asked angrily.

“We don’t,” said the road foreman. \

“But we can’t keep the Comet waiting on a siding ^11 night!”

“Looks like we’ll have to,” said the trainmaster. “What’s t be use
of talking about it, Dave? You know that there is nb Diesel any-
where on the division.”

544

“But Christ Almighty, how do they expect us to move trains with-
out engines?”

“Miss Taggart didn’t,” said the road foreman. “Mr. Locey does.”

“Bill,” asked Mitchum, in the tone of pleading for a favor, “isn't
there anything transcontinental that’s due tonight, with any sort of
a Diesel?”

“The first one to come,” said Bill Brent implacably, “will be Num-
ber 236, the fast freight from San Francisco, which is due at Winston
at seven-eighteen am" He added, “That’s the Diesel closest to us
at this moment. I’ve checked.”

“What about the Army Special?”

“Better not think about it, Dave. That one has priority over every-
thing on the line, including the Comet, by order of the Army,
They’re running late as it is — journal boxes caught fire twice. They’re
carrying munitions for the West Coast arsenals. Better pray that
nothing stops them on your division. If you think we’ll catch hell for
holding the Comet, it’s nothing to what we’ll catch if we try to stop
that Special.”

They remained silent. The windows were open to the summer night
and they could hear the ringing of the telephone in the dispatcher’s
office downstairs. 'Hie signal lights winked over the deserted yards that
had once been a busy division point.

Mitchum looked toward the roundhouse; where the black silhou-
ettes of a few steam engines stood outlined m a dim light.

“The tunnel — ” he said and stopped.

“—is eight miles long,” said the trainmaster, with a harsh emphasis,

“I was only thinking,” snapped Mitchum.

“Better not think of it,” said Brent softly.

“I haven’t said anything!”

“What was that talk you had with Dick Horton before he quit?”
the road foreman asked t<x> innocently, as if the subject were irrele-
vant. “Wasn’t it something about the ventilation system of the tunnel
being on the bum? Didn't he say that the tunnel was hardly safe
nowadays even for Diesel engines?”

“Why do you bring that up?” snapped Mitchum. “I haven’t said
anything!” Dick Horton, the division chief engineer, had quit three
days after Mitchum’s arrival.

“I thought I’d just mention it,” the road foreman answered
innocently.

“Look, Dave,” said Bill Brent, knowing that Mitchum would stall
for another hour rather than formulate a decision, “you know that
there's only one thing to do: hold the Comet at Winston till morning,
wait for Number 236, have her Diesel take the Comet through the
tunnel, then let the Comet finish her run with the best coal-burner
we can give her on the other side.”

“But how late will that make her?”

Brent shrugged. “Twelve hours — eighteen hours — who knows?”

“Eighteen hours— for the Comet? Christ, that’s never happened
before!”

“None of what’s been happening to us has ever happened before,”

545

said Brent, with an astonishing sound of weariness in his brisk, com-
petent voice.

"’But they’ll blame us for it in New York! They’ll put all the blame
on us!”

Brent shrugged. A month ago, he would have considered such an
injustice inconceivable; today, he knew belter.

“I guess . . said Mitchum miserably, “I guess there’s nothing
else that we can do.”

“There isn't, Dave.”

“Oh God! Why did this have to happen to us?”

“Who is John Galt?”

It was half-past two when the Coirnt, pulled by an old switch
engine, jerked to a stop on a siding of Winston Station. Kip Chalmers
glanced out with incredulous anger at the few shanties on a desolate
mountainside and at the ancient hovel of a station.

“Now what? What in hell are they stopping here for?” he cried,
and rang for the conductor

With the return of motion and safety, his terror had turned into
rage. He felt almost as if he had been cheated bv having been made
to experience an unnecessary fear. His companions were still clinging
to the tables of the lounge; they felt too shaken to sleep.

“How long?” the conductor said impassively, in answer to his
question. “ Till morning, Mr. Chalmers.”

Chalmers stared at him, stupefied. “We're going to stand here
fill morning?”

“Yes, Mr. Chalmers.”

’Here?'"

“Yes.”

“But 1 have a rally in San Francisco in the evening!”

The conductor did not answer.

“Why? Why do we have to stand? Why in hell? What happened 7 ”

Slowly, patiently, with contemptuous politeness, the conductor
gave him .an exact account of the situation. But years ago, in gram-
mar school, in high school, in college. Kip Chalmers had been taught
that man does not and need not live by reason.

“Damn your tunnel!” he screamed. “Do you think I’m going to
let you hold me up because of some miserable tunnel? Do you want
to wreck vital national plans on account of a tunnel? Tell your engi-
neer that l must be in San Francisco by evening and that he's got
to get me there!”

“How?”

“That’s your job, not mine!”

“There is no way to do it.”

“Then find a way, God damn you!”

The conductor did not answer.

“Do you think I’ll let your miserable technological problems inter-
fere with crucial social issues? Do you know who J ajm? Tell that
engineer to start moving, if he values his job!”

“The engineer has his orders.”

“Orders be damned! / give the orders these days! Tel him to start
at once!”

546

“Perhaps you’d better speak to the station agent, Mr. Chalmers.

I have no authority to answer you as I’d like to,” said the conductor,
and walked out.

Chalmers leaped to his feet. “Say, Kip . . said Lester Tuck
uneasily, “maybe it’s true . . . maybe they can’t do it.”

“They can if they have to!” snapped Chalmers, marching reso-
lutely to the door.

Years ago, in college, he had been taught that the only effective
means to impel men to action was fear.

In the dilapidated office of Winston Station, he confronted a sleepy
man with slack, worn features, and a frightened young boy who sat
at the operator’s desk. They listened, in silent stupor, to a stream of
profanity such as they had never heard from any section gang.

“ — and it’s not my problem how you get the train through the
tunnel, that’s for you to figure out!” Chalmers concluded. “But if
you don’t get me an engine and don’t start that train, you can kiss
goodbye to your jobs, your work permits and this whole goddamn
railroad!”

Hie station agent had never heard of Kip Chalmers and did not
know the nature of his position. But he knew that this was the day
when unknown men in undefined positions held unlimited power —
the power of life or death.

“It’s not up to us, Mr. Chalmers,” he said pleadingly. “We don’t
issue the orders out here. The order came from Silver Springs. Sup-
pose you telephone Mr. Mitchum and — ”

“Who’s Mr. Mitchum?”

“He’s the division supeiintendent at Silver Springs. Suppose you
send him a message to—”

“I should bother with a division superintendent! Tli send a mes-
sage to Jim Taggart — that’s what Tm going to do!”

Before the station agent had time to recover, Chalmers whirled to
the boy, ordering, “You — take this down and send it at once!”

It was a message which, a month ago, the station agent would not
have accepted from any passenger; the rules forbade it; but he was
not certain about any rules any longer.

Mr. James Taggart, New York City, Am held up on the Comet at
Winston, Colorado, by the incompetence of your men, who refuse
to give me an engine. Have meeting in San Francisco in the evening
of top-level national importance. If you don’t move my train at once,
I'll let you guess the consequences.

Kip Chalmers.

After the boy had transmitted the words onto the wires that
stretched from pole to pole across a continent as guardians of the
Taggart track— after Kip Chalmers had returned to his car to wait
tor an answer — the station agent telephoned Dave Mitchum, who
was his friend, and read to him the text of the message. He heard
Mitchum groan in answer.

“I thought I’d tell you, Dave. I never heard of the guy before, but
maybe he’s somebody important.”

“I 'don’t know!” moaned Mitchum. "Kip Chalmers? You see his
name in the newspapers all the time, right in with all the top-level

547

boys. 1 don’t know what he is, but if he’s from Washington, we can’t
take any chances. Oh Christ, what are we going to do?”

We can’t take any chances — thought the Taggart operator in New
York, and transmitted the message by telephone to James Taggart’s
home. It was close to six a m. in New York, and James Taggart was
awakened out of the fitful sleep of a restless night. He listened to
the telephone, his face sagging. He felt the same fear as the station
agent of Winston, and for the same reason.

He called the home of Clifton Locey. All the rage which he could
not pour upon Kip Chalmers, was poured over the telephone wire
upon Clifton Locey. “Do something!” screamed Taggart. “I don't
care what you do, it’s your job, not mine, but see to it that that train
gets through! What in hell is going on? I never heard of the Comet
being held up! Is that how you run your department? It’s a fine
thing when important passengers have to start sending messages to
me\ At least, when my sister ran the place, I wasn’t awakened in the
middle of the night over every spike that broke in Iowa — Colorado, I
mean!”

“Tin so sorry. Jim," said Clifton Locey smoothly, in a tone that
balanced apology, reassurance and the right degree ot patronizing
confidence. “It’s just a misunderstanding. It’s somebody’s stupid mis-
take. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. I was, as a matter of fact, in
bed, but TH attend to it at once.”

Clifton Loccy was not in bed; he had just returned from a round
of night clubs, in the company of a young lady. He asked her to wait
and hurried to the offices of Taggart Transcontinental. None of the
night staff who saw him there could say why he chose to appear in
person, but neither could they say that it had been unnecessary. He
rushed in and out of several offices, was seen by many people and
gave an impression of great activity. The only physical result of it
was an order that went over the wires to Dave Mitchum, superinten-
dent of the Colorado Division:

“Give an engine to Mr. Chalmers at once. Send the Comet through
safely and without unnecessary delay If you are unable to perform
your duties, I shall hold you responsible before the Unification
Board. Clifton Locey.”

Then, calling his girl friend to join him, Clifton Locey drove to a
country roadhouse — to make certain that no one would be able to
find him in the next few hours.

The dispatcher at Silver Springs was baffled by the order that he
handed to Dave Milchum, but Dave Mitchum undeistood. He knew
that no railroad order would ever speak in such terms as giving an
engine to a passenger, he knew that the thing was a show piece, he
guessed what sort of show was being staged, and he felt $ cold sweat
at the realization of who was being framed as the goat the show.

“What’s the matter, Dave?” asked the trainmaster.

Mitchum did not answer. He seized the telephone, his hands shak-
ing as he begged for a connection to the Taggart operator m New
York. He looked like an animal in a trap.

He begged the New York operator to get him Mr. Clifton Locey’s
home. The operator tried. There was no answer. He begged the

548

operator to keep on trying and to try every number he could think
of, where Mr. Locey might be found. The operator promised and
Mitchum hung up, but knew that it was useless to wait or to speak
to anyone in Mr. Locey's department,

“What’s the matter, Dave?”

Mitchum handed him the order —and saw by the look on the train-
master’s face that the trap was as bad as he had suspected.

He called the Region Headquarters of Taggart Transcontinental
at Omaha, Nebraska, and begged to speak to the general manager
of the region. There was a brief silence on the wire, then the voice
of the Omaha operator told him that the general manager had re-
signed and vanished three days ago — “over a little trouble with Mr.
Locey*” the voice added.

He asked to speak to the assistant general manager in charge of
his particular district; but the assistant was out of town for the week
end and could not be reached.

“Get me somebody else!'' Mitchum screamed. “Anybody, of any
district! For Christ’s sake, get me somebody who’ll tel! me what
to do!”

The man who came on the wire was the assistant general manager
ol the Iowa-Minnesota District.

“What?” he interrupted at Mitchum’s first words. “At Winston,
Colorado? Why in hell arc you calling me ? . . . No, don't tell me
what happened, I don't want to know it! . , . No. 1 said! No! You’re
not going to frame me into having to explain afterwards why I did
or didn’t do anything about whatever it is. It's not my problem! . . .
Speak to some region executive, don’t pick on me, what do 1 have
to do with Colorado** ... Oh hell, 1 don’t know, get the chief engi-
neer, speak to him!”

I he chief engineer of the Central Region answered impatiently,
“Yes? What? What is it?” and Mitchum rushed desperately to ex-
plain. When the chief engineer heard that there was no Diesel, he
snapped, “Then hold the train, of course!” When he heard about
Mr. Chalmers, he said, his voice suddenly subdued. “Hm , . , Kip
Chalmers? Of Washington? . . . Well, I don’t know. That would be
a matter for Mr. Locey to decide.” When Mitchum said, “Mr. Locey
oidered me to arrange it, but—” the chief engineer snapped in great
relief, “Then do exactly as Mr. Locey says!” and hung up.

Dave Mitchum replaced the telephone receiver cautiously. He did
not scream any longer. Instead, he tiptoed to a chair, almost as if he
were sneaking. He sat looking at Mr. Locey’s order for a long time.

Then he snatched a glance about the room. The dispatcher was
busy at his telephone. The trainmaster and the road foreman were
there, but they pretended that they were not waiting. He wished Bill
Brent, the chief dispatcher, would go home; Bill Brent stood in a
corner, watching him.

Brent was a short, thin man with broad shoulders; he was forty,
hut looked younger; he had the pale face of an office worker and
the hard, lean features of a cowboy. He was the best dispatcher on
the system.

549

Mitchum rose abruptly and walked upstairs to his office, clutching
Locey *s order in his hand.

Dave Mitchuin was not good at understanding problems of engi-
neering and transportation, but he understood men like Cliiton
Locey. He understood the kind of game the New York executives
were playing and whaf they were now' doing to him. The order did
not tell him to give Mr. Chalmers a coal-burning engine— just “an
engine.” If the time came to answer questions, wouldn't Mr. Locey
gasp in shocked indignation that he had expected a division superin-
tendent to know that only a Diesel engine could be meant in that
order? llic order stated that he was to send the Comet through
"safely” — wasn’t a division superintendent expected to know what
was safe? — ‘ v and without unnecessary delay.” What was an unneces-
sary delay? If the possibility of a major disaster was involved,
wouldn't a delay of a week or a month bo considered necessary?

The New York executives did not care, thought Mitchum; they
did not care whether Mr. Chalmers reached his meeting on time, or
whether an unprecedented catastrophe struck their rails; they cared
only about making sure that they would not be blamed for either.
If he held the train, they would make him the scapegoat to appease
the anger of Mr. Chalmers: if he sent the tram through and it did
not reach the western portal of the tunnel, they would put the blame
on his incompetence; they would claim that he had acted against
their orders, in either case. What would he be able to prove? To
whom? One could prove nothing to a tribunal that had no staled
policy, no defined procedure, no rules of evidence, no binding princi-
ples —a tribunal, such as the Unification Board, that pronounced men
guilty or innocent as it saw fit. with no standard of guilt or innocence.

Dave Mitchum knew nothing about the philosoph> of law; but he
knew that when a court is not bound by any rules, it is not bound
by any facts, and then a hearing is not an issue of justice, but an
issue of men, and your fate depends not on what you have or have
not done/ but on whom you do or do not know He asked himself
what chance he would have at such a hearing against Mr. James
Taggart, Mr. Clifton Locey, Mr. Kip Chalmers and their powerful
friends,

Dave Mitchum had spent his life slipping around the necessity of
ever making a decision; he had done it by waiting to be told and
never being certain of anything. All that he now allowed into his
brain was a long, indignant whine against injustice. Fate, he thought,
had singled him out for an unfair amount of bad luck: he was being
framed by his superiors on the only good job. he had ever held. He
had never been taught to understand that the manner in which he
obtained this job, and the frame-up, were inextricably parts of a
single whole.

As he looked at Locey's order, he thought that he cduid hold the
Comet; attach Mr. Chalmers’ car to an engine and setfd it into the
tunnel, alone. But he shook his head before the thought was full)
formed; he knew that this would force Mr. Chalmers ;to recognize
the nature of the risk: Mr. Chalmers would refuse; he would continue
to demand a safe and non-existent engine. And more: this could

550

mean that he, Mitchum, would have to assume responsibility, admit
full knowledge of the danger, stand in the open and identify the
exact nature of the situation — the one act which the policy of his
superiors was based on evading, the one key to their game.

Dave Mitchum was not the man to rebel against his background
or to question the moral code of those in charge. The choice he
made was not to challenge, but to follow the policy of his superiors.
Bill Brent could have beaten him in any contest of technology, but
here was an endeavor at which he could beat Bill Brent without
effort. There had once been a society where men needed the particu-
lar talents of Bill Brent, if they wished to survive; what they needed
now was the talent of Dave Mitchum.

Dave Mitchum sat down at his secretary’s typewriter and, by
means of two fingers, carefully typed out an order to the trainmaster
and another to the road foreman. The first instructed the trainmaster
to summon a locomotive crew at once, tor a purpose described only
as “an emergency”; the second instructed the road foreman to “send
the best engine available to Winston, to stand by for emergency
assistance.”

He put carbon copies of the orders into his own pocket, then
opened the door, yelled for the night dispatcher to come up and
handed him the two orders for the two men downstairs. The night
dispatcher was a conscientious young boy who trusted his superiors
and knew that discipline was the first rule of the railroad business.
He was astonished that Mitchum should wish to send written orders
down one flight of stairs, but he asked no questions.

Mitchum waited nervously. After a while, he saw the figure of the
road foreman walking across the yards toward the roundhouse. He
fell relieved: the two men had not come up to confront him in per-
son; they had understood and they would play the game as he was
playing it.

The road foreman walked across the yards, looking down at the
ground. He was thinking of his wife, his two children and the house
which he had spent a lifetime to own. He knew what his superiors
were doing and he wondered whether he should refuse to obey them.
He had never been afraid of losing his job; with the confidence of a
competent man, he had known that if he quarreled with one em-
ployer, he would always be able to find another. Now, be was afraid;
he had no right to quit or to seek a job; if he defied an employer,
he would be delivered into the unanswerable power of a single
Board, and if the Board ruled against him, it would mean being
sentenced to the slow death of starvation: it would mean being
barred from any employment. He knew that the Board would rule
against him; he knew that the key to the dark, capricious mystery
of the Board’s contradictory decisions was the secret power of pull
What chance would he have against Mr. Chalmers? There had been
a time when the self-interest of his employers had demanded that
he exercise his utmost ability. Now, ability was not wanted any
longer. There had been a time when he had been requited to do his
best' and rewarded accordingly. Now, he could expect nothing but
punishment, if he tried to follow his conscience. There had been a

551

time when he had been expected to think. Now, they did not want
him to think, only to obey. They did not want him to have a con-
science any longer. Then why should he raise his voice? For whose
sake? He thought of the passengers — the three hundred passengers
aboard the Comet. He thought of his children. He had a son in high
school and a daughter, nineteen, of whom he was fiercely, painfully
proud, because she was recognized as the most beautiful girl in town.
He asked himself whether he could deliver his children to the fate
of the children of the unemployed, as he had seen them in the
blighted ateas, in the settlements around closed factories and along
the tracks of discontinued railroads. He saw, in astonished horror,
that the choice which he now had to make was between the lives of
his children and the lives of the passengers on the Comet. A conflict
of this kind had never been possible before. It was by protecting the
safety of the passengers that he had earned the security of his chil-
dren; he had served one by serving the other; there had been no
clash of interests, no call for victims Now, if he wanted to save the
passengers, he had to do it at the price of his children. He remem-
bered dimly the sermons he had heard about the beauty of self-
immolation, about the virtue of sacrificing to others that which was
one's dearest. He knew nothing about the philosophy of ethics: but
he knew suddenly — not in words, but in the form of a dark, angry,
savage pain — that if this was virtue, then he wanted no part of it.

He walked into the roundhouse and ordered a large, ancient coal-
burning locomotive to be made ready for the run to Winston.

The trainmaster reached for the telephone in the dispatcher’s of-
fice, to summon an engine crew, as ordered. But his hand stopped,
holding the receiver. It struck him suddenly that he was summoning
men to their- death, and that of the twenty lives listed on the sheet
before him, two would be ended by his choice. He felt a physical
sensation of cold, nothing more; he felt no concern, only a puzzled,
indifferent astonishment, ft had never been his job to call men out
to die: his job had been to call them out to earn their living. It was
strange, he thought: and it was strange that his hand had stopped;
what made it stop was like something he would have felt twenty
years ago — no, he thought, strange, only one month ago, not longer.

He was forty-eight years old. He had no family, no friends, no ties
to any living being in the world. Whatever capacity for devotion he
had possessed, the capacity which others scatter among many ran-
dom concerns, he had given it whole to the person of his young
brother — the brother, his junior by twenty -five years, whom he had
brought up, He had sent him through a technological college, and
he had known, as had all the teachers, that the boy had the mark
of genius on the forehead of his grim, young face. Witfi the same
single-tracked devotion as his brother’s, the boy had cartijd for noth-
ing but his studies, not for sports or parties or girls, qnly for the
vision of the things he was going to create as an inven|or. He had
graduated from college and had gone, on a salary unusual for his
age, into the research laboratory of a great electrical* concern in
Massachusetts.

This was now May 28, thought the trainmaster. It was on May 1

552

that Directive 10--289 had been issued. It was on the evening of May
1 that he had been informed that his brother had committed suicide.

The trainmaster had heard it said that the directive was necessary
to save the country. He could not know whether this was true or
not, he had no way ot knowing what was necessary to save a country.
But driven by some feeling which he could not express, he had
walked into the office of the editor of the local newspaper and de-
manded that they publish the story’ of his brother’s death. "‘People
have to know it,’* had been all he could give as his reason. He had
been unable to explain that the bruised connections of his mind had
formed the wordless conclusion that if this was done by the will of
the people, then the people had to know it; he could not believe
that they would do it, if they knew. The editor had refused; he had
stated that it would be bad lur the country’s morale.

The trainmaster knew nothing about political philosophy; but he
knew that that had been the moment when he lost all concern for
the life or death of any human being or of the country.

He thought, holding the telephone receiver, that maybe he should
warn the men whom he was about to call. They trusted him; it would
never occur to them that he could knowingly send them to their
death. But he shook his head: this was only an old thought, last
year’s thought, a remnant of the time when he had trusted them,
loo It did not matter now. His brain worked slowly, as if he were
dragging his thoughts through a vacuum where no emotion re-
sponded to spur them on; he thought that there would be trouble if
he warned anyone, there would be some sort of fight and it was he
who had to make some great effort to start it. He had forgotten
what it was that one started this sort of fight for. Truth? Justice?
Brother-love? He did not want to make an eftort. He was very tired.
If he warned all the men on his list, he thought, there would be no
one to run that engine, so he would save two lives and also three
hundred Jives aboard the Comet. But nothing responded to the fig-
ures in his mind: “lives" was just a word, it had no meaning.

He raised the telephone receiver to his ear, he called two numbers,
he summoned an engineer and a fireman to report for duty at once.

Engine Number 306 had left for Winston, when Dave Mitchum
came downstairs. “Get a track motor car ready for me," he ordered,
"Pm going to run up to Fairmount." Fairmount was a small station,
twenty miles east on the line. The men nodded, asking no questions.
Bill Brent was not among them. Mitchum walked into Brent’s office.
Brent was there, sitting silently at his desk; he seemed to be waiting,

Tm going to Fairmount,” satd Mitchum; his voice was aggres-
sively too casual, as if implying that no answer was necessary. “They
had a Diesel there couple of weeks ago . . . you know, emergency
repairs or something, . . . I’m going down to see if we could use it."

He paused, but Brent said nothing. ’

“The way things stack up,’* said Mitchum, not looking at him, “we
can’t hold that train till morning. We’ve got to take a chance, one
way or another. Now l think maybe this Diesel will do it, but that’s
the last one we can try for. So if you don’t hear from me in half an

553

hour, sign the order and send the Comet through with Number 306
to pull her.”

Whatever Brent had thought, he could not believe it when he
heard it. He did not answer at once; then he said, very quietly, “No.”

“Wha*t do you mean, no?”

“I won't do it.”

“What do you mean, you won’t? It’s an order!”

“I won’t do it.” Brent’s voice had the firmness of certainty un-
clouded by any emotion.

“Are you refusing to obey an order?”

“I am.”

“But you have no right to refuse! And I’m not going to argue
about it, either. It’s what I’ve decided, it’s my responsibility and I’m
not asking for your opinion. Your job is to take my orders.”

“Will you give me that order in writing?”

“Why, God damn you, are you hinting that you don’t trust me?
Are you . . . ?”

“Why do you have to go to Fairmount. Dave? Why can’t you
telephone them about the Diesel, if you think that they have one?”

“You’re not going to tell me how to do my job! You’re not going
to sit there and question me! You’re going to keep your trap shut
and do as you’re told or I’ll give you a chance to talk — to the Unifi-
cation Board!”

It was hard to decipher emotions on Brent’s cowboy face, but
Mitchum saw something that resembled a look of incredulous horror;
only it was horror at some sight of his own, not at the words, and
it had no quality of fear, not the kind of fear Mitchum had hoped for.

Brent knew that tomorrow morning the issue would be his word
against Mitchum’s; Mitchum would deny having given the order; Mil-
chum would show written proof that Engine Number 306 had been
sent to Winston only “to stand by;” and would produce witnesses
that he had gone to Fairmount in search of a Diesel; Mitchum would
claim that the fatal order had been issued by and on the sole respon-
sibility of Bill Brent, the chief dispatcher. It would not be much of
a case, not a case that could bear close study, but it would be enough
for the Unification Board, whose policy was consistent only in not
permitting anything to be studied closely. Brent knew that he could
play the same game and pass the frame — up on to another victim,
he knew that he had the brains to work it out — except that he would
rather be dead than do it.

It was not the sight of Mitchum that made him sit still in horror.
It was the realization that there was no one whom he could call to
expose this thing and stop it — no superior anywhere ,on the line,
from Colorado to Omaha to New York. They were in? on it, all of
them, they were doing the same, they had given Mitchum the-4ead
and the method. It was Dave Mitchum who now belonged on this
railroad and he, Bill Brent, who did not.

As Bill Brent had learned to see, by a single gJattce at a few
numbers on a sheet of paper, the entire trackage of a] division— so
he was now able to see the whole of his own life and the full price
of the decision he was making. He had not fallen in (ove until he

554

was past his youth; he had been thirty-six when he had found the
woman he wanted. He had been engaged to her for the last four
years; he had had to wait, because he had a mother to support and
a widowed sister with three children. He had never been afraid of
burdens; because he had known his ability to carry them, and lie
had never assumed an obligation unless he was certain that he could
fulfill it. He had waited, he had saved his money, and now he had
reached the time when he felt himself free to be happy. He was to
be married in a few weeks, this coming June. He thought of it, as
he sat at his desk, looking at Dave Mitchum, but the thought aroused
no hesitation, only regret and a distant sadness — distant, because he
knew that he could not let it be part of this moment.

Bill Brent knew nothing about epistemology; but he knew that
man must live by his own rational perception of reality, that he
cannot act against it or escape it or find a substitute for it — and that
there is no other way for him to live.

He rose to his feet. “It’s true that so long as 1 hold this job,

I cannot refuse to obey you.’’ he said. “But I can. if I quit. So
I’m quitting/’

“You’re whatV'

“I’m quitting, as of this moment.”

“But you have no right to quit, you goddamn bastard! Don’t you
know that? Don't you know that I’ll have you thrown in jail for it?”

“If you want to send the sheriff for me in the morning. I'll be at
home. I won't try' to escape. There's no place to go,"

Dave Mitchum was six-foot-two and had the build of a bruiser,
but he stood shaking with fury and terror over the delicate figure of
Bill Brent. “You can't quit! There’s a law against it! I've got a law!
You can’t walk out on me! 1 won’t let you out! I won’t let you leave
this building tonight!”

Brent walked to the door. Will you repeat that order you gave
me, in front of the others? No? Then I will.”

As he pulled the door open. Mitchum’s list shot out, smashed into
his face and knocked him down.

The trainmaster and the road foreman stood in the open doorway.

“He quit! ’ screamed Mitchum. “The yellow bastard quit at a time
like this! He’s a law-breaker and a coward’”

In the slow effort of rising from the floor, through the haze of
blood running into his eyes, Bill Brent looked up at the two men.
He saw that they understood, but lie saw the closed faces of men
who did not want to understand, did not want to interfere and hated
him for putting them on the spot in the name of justice. He said
nothing, rose to his feet and walked out of the building.

Mitchum avoided looking at the others. “Hey, you.” he called,
jerking his head at, the night dispatcher across the room. “Come
here. You’ve got to take over at once,”

.With the door closed, he repeated to the boy the story of the
Diesel at Fairmount, as he had given it to Brent, and the order to
send the Comet through with Engine Number 306, if the boy did
not hear from him in half an hour. The boy was in no condition to
think, to speak or to understand anything: he kept seeing the blood

555

on the face of Bill Brent, who had been his idol, “Yes, sir/' he
answered numbly.

Dave Mitchum departed for Fairmount, announcing to every yard-
man, switchman and wiper in sight, as he boarded the track motor
car, that he was going in search of a Diesel for the Comet.

The night dispatcher sat at his desk, watching the dock and the
telephone, praying that the telephone would ring and let him hear
from Mr. Mitchum. But the half-hour went by in silence, and when
there were only three minutes left, the boy felt a terror he could not
explain, except that he did not want to send that order.

He turned to the trainmaster and the road foreman, asking hesi-
tantly, “Mr. Mitchum gave me an order before he left, but 1 wonder
whether I ought to send it, because 1 ... 1 don’t think it's right. He
said — ”

The trainmaster turned away, he felt no pity: the boy was about
the same age as his brother had been.

The road foreman snapped, “Do just as Mr, Mitchum told you.
You're not supposed to think," and walked out of the room.

The responsibility that James Taggart and Clifton Locey had
evaded now rested on the shoulders of a trembling, bewildered boy.
He hesitated, then he buttressed his courage with the thought that
one did not doubt the good faith and the competence of railroad
executives. He did not know that his vision of a railroad and its
executives was that of a century ago.

With the conscientious precision of a railroad man, iit the moment
when the hand of the clock ended the half-hour, he signed his name
to the order instructing the Comet to proceed with Engine Number
306, and transmitted the order to Winston Station.

Tlie station agent at Winston shuddered when he looked at the
order, but he was not the man to defy authority He told himsell
that the tunnel was not, perhaps, as dangerous as he thought. He
told himself that the best policy, these days, was not to think.

When he handed their copies of the order to the conductor and
the engineer of the Cornet, the conductor glanced slowly about the
room, from face to face, folded the slip of paper, put it into his
pocket and walked out without a word.

The engineer stood looking at the paper for a moment, then threw
it down and said, “I’m not going to do it. And it it’s come to where
this railroad hands out orders like this one, I’m not going to work
for it, either. Just list me as having quit.”

“But you can’t quit!" cried the station agent, “They'll arrest you
for it!”

“If they find me,” said the engineer, and walked out of the station
into the vast darkness of the mountain night. ■

The engineer from Silver Springs, who had brought! in Number
306, was sitting in a corner of the room. He chuckled and said,
“He’s yellow.”

The station agent turned to him. “Will you do it, Joe? Will you
take the Comet?”

Joe Scott was drunk. There had been a time when a railroad man,
reporting for duty with any sign of intoxication, would have been

556

regarded as a doctor arriving for work with sores of smallpox: on his
face. But Joe Scott was a privileged person. Three months ago, he
had been fired for an infraction of safety rules, which had caused a
major wreck; two weeks ago, he had been reinstated in his job by
order of the Unification Board. He was a friend of Fred Kinnan; he
protected Kinnan’s interests in his union, not against the employers,
but against the membership.

“Sure,” said Joe Scott. *T11 take the Comet. I’ll get her through,
if 1 go fast enough.”

The fireman of Number 306 had remained in the cab of his engine.
He looked up uneasily, when they came to switch his engine to the
head end of the Comet; he looked up at the red and green lights of
the tunnel, hanging in the distance above twenty miles of curves.
But he was a placid, amicable fellow, who made a good fireman with
no hope of ever rising to engineer; his husky muscles were his only
asset. He felt certain that his superiors knew what they were doing,
so he did not venture any questions.

The conductor stood by the rear end of the Comet, fie looked at
the lights of the tunnel, then at the long chain of the Comet’s win-
dows. A few windows were lighted, but most of them showed only
the feeble blue glow of night lamps edging the lowered blinds. He
thought that he should rouse the passengers and warn them. There
had been a time when he had placed the safety of the passengers
above his own, not by reason of love for his lellow men, but because
that responsibility was part of his job, which he accepted and felt
pride in fulfilling. Now, he felt a contemptuous indilference and no
desire to save them. They had asked for and accepted Directive
10--289, he thought, they went on living and daily turning away in
evasion from the kind of verdicts that the Unification Board was
passing on defenseless victims — why shouldn’t he now turn away
from them? If he saved their lives, not one of them would come
forward to defend him when the Unification Board would convict
him for disobeying orders, for creating a panic, for delaying Mr.
Chalmers, He had no desire to be a martyr for the sake of allowing
people safely to indulge in iheir own irresponsible evil.

When the moment came, he raised his lantern and signaled the
engineer to start,

“See?” said Kip Chalmers triumphantly to Lester Luck, as the
wheels under their feet shuddered forward. "Fear is the only practi-
cal means to deal with people,”

The conductor stepped onto the vestibule of the last car. No one
saw him as he went down the steps of the other side, slipped off the
Uain and vanished into the darkness of the mountains.

A switchman stood ready to throw the switch that would send the
Comet from the siding onto the main track. He looked at the Comet
as it came slowly toward him. It was only a blazing white globe with
a beam stretching high above his head, and a jerky thunder trembling
through the rail under his feet. He knew that the switch should not
he thrown. He thought of the night, ten years ago, when he had
risked his life in a flood to save a train from a washout. But he knew
Ihat times had changed. In the moment when he threw the switch

557

and saw the headlight jerk sidewise, he knew that he would now
hate his job for the rest of his life.

The Comet uncoiled from the siding into a thin, straight line, and
went on. into the mountains, with the beam of the headlight like an
extended arm pointing the way, and the lighted glass curve of the
observation lounge ending it off.

Some of the passengers aboard the Comet were awake. As the
train started its coiling ascent; they saw the small duster of Winston’s
lights at the bottom of the darkness beyond their windows, then the
same darkness, but with red and green lights by the hole of a tunnel
on the upper edge of the windowpanes. The lights of Winston kept
growing smaller, each time they appeared; the black hole of the
tunnel kept growing larger. A black veil went streaking past the
windows at times, dimming the lights: it was the heavy smoke trom
the coal-burning engine.

As the tunnel came closer, they saw, at the edge of the sky far to
the south, in a void of space and rock, a spot ot living fire twisting
in the wind. They did not know what it was and did not care to learn.

It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there
were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet
were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1 , was a professor of sociology
who taught that individual ability is of no consequence, that individ-
ual effort is futile, that an individual conscience is a useless luxury,
that there is no individual mind or character or achievement, that
everything is achieved collectively, and that it’s masses that count,
not men.

The man in Roomette 7, Car No. 2, was a journalist who wrote
that it is proper and moral to use compulsion ‘Tor a good cause,”
who believed that he had the right to unleash physical force upon
others — to wreck lives, throttle ambitions, strangle desires, violate
convictions, to imprison, to despoil, to murder — for the sake of what-
ever he chose to consider as his own idea of ”a good cause,” which
did not even have to be an idea, since he had never defined what
he regarded as the good, but bad merely stated that he went by “a
feeling” — a feeling unrestrained by any knowledge, since he consid-
ered emotion superior to knowledge and relied solely on his own
“good intentions” and on the power of a gun.

The woman in Roomette 10, Car No. 3, was an elderly school
teacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless
children into miserable cowards, by teaching them that the will of
the majority is the only standard of good and evil, that a majority
may do anything it pleases, that they must not assert their own per-
sonalities, but must do as others were doing.

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 4, was a newspaper pub-
lisher who believed that men are evil by nature and unfit for free-
dom, that their basic interests, if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob
and to murder one another — and, therefore, men must pc ruled by
means of lies, robbery and murder, which must be made t^ie exclusive
privilege of the rulers, for the purpose of forcing men to work, teach-

558

ing them to be moral and keeping them within the bounds of order
and justice.

The man in Bedroom H, Car No. 5, was a businessman who had
acquired his business, an ore mine, with the help of a government
loan, under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.

The man in Drawing Room A, Car No. 6, was a financial who
had made a fortune by buying “frozen'’ railroad bonds and getting
his friends in Washington to “de free/e” them.

The man in Seat 5, C ar No. 7, was a worker who believed that he
had “a right” to a job, whether his employer wanted him oi not.

The woman in Roomette 6, Oar No. 8, was a lecturer who believed
that, as a consumer, she had “a right” to transportation, whether the
railroad people wished to provide it or not.

The man in Roomette 2, Car No. 9, was a professor of economics
who advocated the abolition of private property, explaining that in-
telligence plays no part in industrial production, that man’s mind is
conditioned by material tools, that anybody can run a factory or a
railroad and it's only a matter of seizing the machinery

The woman in Bedroom D, Car No 10, was a mother who had
put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking
them in. protecting them from dralts and jolts: a mother whose hus-
band held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended
by saying, “I don’t care, it’s only the rich that they hurt. After all,

1 must think of my children.”

The man in Roomette 3. Car No. II, was a sniveling little neurotic
who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he
inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen
were scoundrels.

The woman in Roomette 9, Car No. 12, was a housewife who
believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew
nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.

The man in Bedroom F, Car No. 13, was a lawyer who had said,
“Me? I’ll find a way to gel along under any political system.”

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 14. was a professor of philosophy
who taught that there is no mind— how do you know that the tunnel
is dangerous?* —no reality- -how can you prove that the tunnel ex-
ists?— no logic — why do you claim that trains cannot move without
motive power? — no principles — why should you be bound by the law
of cause -and- effect ? — no rights — why shouldn't you attach men to
their j<d>s by force? — no morality —what *$ moral about running a rail-
road? — no absolutes — what difference does it make to you whether
you live or die , anyway? He taught that we know nothing — why
oppose the orders of your superiors?— that we can never be certain
of anything — how do you know you're right? — that we must act on
the expediency of the moment — you don't want to risk your job ,
do you?

The man in Drawing Room B, Car No. 15, was an heir who had
inherited his fortune, and who had kept repeating, “Why should
Rearden be the only one permitted to manufacture Rearden Metal?*’

Tlie man in Bedroom A, Car No. 16 f was a humanitarian who had
said, “The men of ability? 1 do not care what or if they are made to

559

suffer. They must be penalized in order to support the incompetent.
Frankly, I do not care whether this is just or not. I take pride in not
caring to grant any justice to the able, where mercy to the needy
is concerned.”

These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the
train who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the train
went into the tunnel, the flame of Wyatt’s Torch was the last thing
they saw on earth.

Chapter VIII BY OUR LOVE

The sun touched the tree tops on the slope of the hill, and they
looked a bluish-silver, catching the color of the sky. Dagny stood at
the door of the cabin, with the first sunrays on her forehead and
miles of forest spread under her feet. The leaves went down from
silver to green to the smoky blue of the shadows on the road below.
The light trickled down through the branches and shot upward in
sudden spurts when it hit a clump of ferns that became a fountain
of green rays. It gave her pleasure to watch the motion of the light
over a stillness where nothing else could move.

She had marked the date, as she did each morning, on the sheet
of paper she had tacked to the wall of her room. The progression
of the dates on that paper was the only movement in the stillness of
her days, like the record kept by a prisoner on a desert island. This
morning’s date was May 28.

She had intended the dates to lead to a purpose, but she could
not say whether she had reached it or not. She had come here with
three assignments given, as orders, to herself: rest — learn to live with-
out the railroad — get the pain out of the way. Get it out of the way,
were the words she used. She felt as if she were tied to some
wounded stranger who could be stricken at any moment by an attack
that would drown her in his screams. She felt no pity for the stranger,
only a contemptuous impatience; she had to fight him and destroy
him, then her way would be clear to decide what she wished to do;
but the stranger was not easy to fight.

The assignment to rest had been easier. She found that she liked
the solitude; she awakened in the morning with a feeling of confident
benevolence, the sense that she could venture forth and be willing
to deal with whatever she found. In the city, she had lived in chronic
tension to withstand the shock of anger, indignation, disgust, con-
tempt. The only danger to threaten her here was the simple pain of
some physical accident; it seemed innocent and easy by comparison.

The cabin was far from any traveled road; it had remained as her
father bad left it. She cooked her meals on a wood-burning stove
and gathered the wood on the hillsides. She cleared the brush from
under her walls, she reshingled the roof, she repainted the |door and
the frames of the windows. Rains, weeds and brush had fallowed
the steps of what had once been a terraced path rising up the hill
from the road to the cabin. She rebuilt it, clearing the tei^aces, re-
laying the stones, bracing the banks of soft earth with wall? of boul-

560

ders. It gave her pleasure to devise complex systems of levers and
pulleys out of old scraps of iron and rope, then to move weights of
rock that were much beyond her physical power. She planted a few
seeds of nasturtiums and morning glories, to see one spreading slowly
over the ground and the other climbing up the tree trunks, to see
them grow, to see progression and movement.

The work gave her the calm needed; she had not noticed how she
began it or why; she had started without conscious intention, but she
saw it growing under her hands, pulling her forward, giving her a
healing sense of peace. Then she understood that what she needed
was the motion to a purpose, no matter how small or in what form*
the sense of an activity going step by step to some chosen end across
a span of time. The work of cooking a meal was like a dosed rircle,
completed and gone, leading nowhere. But the work of building a
path was a living sum, so that no day was left to die behind her, but
each day contained all those that preceded it, each day acquired its
immortality on every succeeding tomorrow. A circle, she thought, is
the movement proper to physical nature, they say that there’s noth-
ing but circular motion in the inanimate universe around us, but the
straight line is the badge of man, the straight line of a geometrical
abstraction that makes roads, rails and bridges, the straight line that
cuts the curving aimlessness of nature by a purposeful motion from
a start to an end. The cooking of meals, she thought, is like the
feeding of coal to an engine for the sake of a great run, but what
would be the imbecile torture of coaling an engine that had no run
to make? It is not proper for man’s life to be a dreie, she thought,
or a string of circles dropping off like zeros behind him— man’s life
must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each
leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey down
the track of a railroad, from station to station to — oh, stop ill

Stop it — she told herself in quiet severity, when the scream of the
wounded stranger was choked off — don’t think of that, don’t look
too far, you like building this path, build it, don’t look beyond the
loot of the hill.

She had driven a few times to the store in Woodstock, twenty
miles away, to buy supplies and food. Woodstock was a small huddle
of dying structures, built generations ago for some reason and hope
long since forgotten. There was no railroad to feed it, no electric
power, nothing but a county highway growing emptier year by year.

The only store was a wooden hovel, with spider-eaten corners and
a rotted patch in the middle of the floor, eaten by the rains that
came through the leaking roof. The storekeeper was a fat, pallid
woman who moved with effort, but seemed indifferent to her own
discomfort. The stock of food consisted of dusty cans with faded
labels, some grain, and a few vegetables rotting in ancient bins out-
side the door. ‘'Why don’t you move those vegetables out of the
sun?” Dagny asked once. The woman looked at her blankly, as if
unable to understand the possibility of such a question. ‘•'They’ve
always been there,” she answered indifferently.

Driving back to the cabin, Dagny looked up at a mountain stream
that fell with ferocious force down a sheer granite wall* its spray

561

hanging like a mist of rainbows in the sun. She thought that one
could build a hydroelectric plant, just large enough to supply the
power for her cabin and for the town of Woodstock — Woodstock
could be made to be productive — those wild apple trees she saw in
such unusual numbers among the dense growth on the hillsides, were
the remnants of orchards — suppose one were to reclaim them, then
build a small spur to the nearest railroad — oh, stop it!

"No kerosene today," the storekeeper told her on her next trip
to Woodstock. "It rained Thursday night, and when it rains, the
trucks can’t get through Fairfield gorge, the road’s flooded, and the
kerosene truck won’t be back this way till next month." “If you
know that the road gets flooded every time it rams, why don't you
people repair it?" The woman answered, "The road’s always been
that way."

Driving back, Dagny stopped on the crest of a hill and looked
down at the miles of countryside below. She looked at Fairfield gorge
where the county road, twisting through marshy soil below the level
of a river, got trapped m a crack between two hills. It would be
simple to by-pass those hills, she thought, to build a road on the
other side of the river — the people of Woodstock had nothing to do,
she could teach them — cut a road straight to the southwest, save
mites, connect with the state highway at the freight depot of- -oh,
stop it!

She put her kerosene lamp aside and sat in her cabin after dark
by the light of a candle, listening to the music of a small portable
radio. She hunted for symphony concerts and twisted the dial rapidly
past whenever she caught the raucous syllables of a news broadcast;
she did not want any news from the city.

Don’t think of Taggart Transcontinental — she had told herself on
her first night in the cabin — don't think of it until you’re able to
hear the words as if they were "Atlantic Southern" or "Associated
Steel.” But the weeks passed and no scar would grow over the
wound.

It seemed to her as if she were fighting the unpredictable cruelty
of her own mind. She would lie in bed, drifting off to sleep — then
find herself suddenly thinking that the conveyor belt was worn at
the coaling station at Willow Bend, Indiana, she had seen it from
the window of her car on her last trip, she must tell them to replace
it or they — and then she would be sitting up in bed, crying. Stop
it! — and stopping it, but remaining awake for the rest of that night

She would sit at the door of the cabin at sunset and watch the
motion of the leaves growing still in the twilight — then she would
see the sparks of the fireflies rising from the grass, flashing on and
off in every darkening comer, flashing slowly, as if holding one mo-
ment’s warning — they were like the lights of signals winking at night
over the track of a — Stop it! ;

It was the times when she could not stop it that she dreaded, the
times when, unable to stand up — as in physical pain, with no limit
to divide it from the pain of her mind — she would fall dotyn on the
floor of the cabin or on the earth of the woods and sit still; with her
face pressed to a chair or a rock, and fight not to let herself scream

562

aloud, while they were suddenly as close to her and as real as the
body of a lover: the two lines of rail going off to a single point in
the distance — the front of an engine cutting space apart by means
of the letters TT — the sound of the wheels clicking in accented
rhythm under the floor of her car — the statue of Nat Taggart in the
concourse of the Terminal. Fighting not to know them, not to feel
them, her body rigid but for the grinding motion of her face against
her arm, she would draw whatever power over her consciousness
still remained to her into the soundless, toneless repetition of the
words: Get it over with.

There were long stretches of calm, when she was able to face
her problem with the dispassionate clarity of weighing a problem in
engineering. But she could find no answer. She knew that her desper-
ate longing for the railroad would vanish, were she to convince her-
self that it was impossible or improper. But the longing came from
the certainty that the truth and the right were hers — that the enemy
was the irrational and the unreal — that she could not set herself
another goal or summon the love to achieve it, while her rightful
achievement had been lost, not to some superior power, but to a
loathsome evil that conquered by means of impotence.

She could renounce the railroad, she thought; she could find con-
tentment here, in this forest; but she would build the path, then
reach (he road below, then rebuild the road — and then she would
reach the storekeeper of Woodstock and that would be the end, and
the empty white face staring at the universe in stagnant apathy would
be the limit placed on her effort. Why? — she heard herself screaming
aloud. There was no answer.

Then stay here until you answer it, she thought. You have no
place to go, you can’t move, you can t start grading a right-of-way
until . . until you know enough to choose a terminal.

There were long, silent evenings when the emotion that made her
sit still and look at the unattainable distance beyond the fading light
to the south, was loneliness for Hank Reardon. She wanted the sight
of his unyielding face, the confident face looking at her with the hint
of a smile. But she knew that she could not see him until her battle
was won. His smile had to be deserved, it was intended for an adver-
sary who traded her strength against his, not for a pain-beaten wretch
who would seek relief in that smile and thus destroy its meaning.
He could help*her to live; he could not help her to decide for what
purpose she wished to go on living.

She had felt a faint touch of anxiety since the morning when she
marked “May 15" on her calendar. She had forced herself to listen
to news broadcasts, once in a while; she had heard no mention of
his name. Her fear for him was her last link to the city; it kept
drawing her eyes to the horizon at the south and down to the road
at the foot of the hill. She found herself waiting for him to come.
She found herself listening for the sound of a motor. But the only
sound to give her a futile start of hope at times, was the sudden
crackle of some large bird’s wings hurtling through the branches into
the sky:

There was another link to the past, that still remained as an un-

563

solved question: Quentin Daniels and the motor that he was trying
to rebuild. By June 1, she would owe him his monthly check. Should
she tell him that she had quit, that she would never need that motor
and neither would the world? Should she tell him to stop and to let
the remnant of the motor vanish in rust on some such junk pile as
the one where she had found it? She could not force herself to do
it. It seemed harder than leaving the railroad. That motor, she
thought, was not a link to the past: it was her last link to the future.
To kill it seemed like an act, not of murder, but of suicide: her order
to stop it would be her signature under the certainty that there was
no terminal for her to seek ahead.

But it is not true — she thought, as she stood at the door of her
cabin, on this morning of May 28 — it is not true that there is no
place in the future for a superlative achievement of man’s mind; it
can never be true. No matter what her problem, this would always
remain to her — this immovable conviction that evil was unnatural
and temporary. She felt it more clearly than ever this morning: the
certainty that the ugliness of the men in the city and the ugliness of
her suffering were transient accidents — while the smiling sense of
hope within her at the sight of a sun-flooded forest, the sense of an
unlimited promise, was the permanent and the real.

She stood at the door, smoking a cigarette. In the room behind
her, the sounds of a symphony of her grandfather’s time were coming
from the radio She barely listened, she was conscious only of the
flow of chords that seemed to play an underscoring harmony for the
flow of the smoke curving slowly from her cigarette, for the curving
motion of her arm moving the cigarette to her lips once in a while.
She dosed her eyes and stood still, feeling the rays of the sun on
her body. This was the achievement, she thought — to enjoy this mo-
ment, to let no memory of pain blunt her capacity to feel as she felt
right now; so long as she could preserve this feeling, she would have
the fuel to go on.

She was barely aware of a faint noise that came through the music,
like the scratching of an old record. The first thing to reach her
consciousness was the sudden jerk of her own hand flinging the ciga-
rette aside. It came in the same instant as the realization that the
noise was growing louder and that it was the sound of a motor. Then
she knew that she had not admitted to herself how much she had
wanted to hear that sound, how desperately she had Waited for Hank
Rearden. She heard her own chuckle — it was humbly, cautiously low,
as if not to disturb the drone of revolving metal which was now the
unmistakable sound of a car rising up the mountain road.

She could not see the road — the small stretch under the arch of
branches at the foot of the hill was her only view of it-^- but she
watched the car’s ascenl by the growing, imperious strajn of the
motor against the grades and the screech of the tires on cfirvcs.

The car stopped under the arch of branches. She did not Recognize
it — it was not the black Hammond, but a long, gray convertible. She
saw the driver step out: it was a man whose presence here "could not
be possible. It was Francisco d’Anconia.

The shock she felt was not disappointment, it was more like the

564

sensation that disappointment would now be irrelevant. It was eager-
ness and an odd, solemn stillness, the sudden certainty that she was
facing the approach of something unknown and of the gravest
importance.

The swiftness of Francisco’s movements was carrying him toward
the hill while he was raising his head to glance up. He saw her above,
at the door of the cabin, and stopped. She could not distinguish the
expression on his face. He stood still for a long moment, his face
raised to her. Then he started up the hill.

She felt — almost as if she had expected it — that this was a scene
from their childhood. He was coming toward her, not running, but
moving upward with a kind of triumphant, confident eagerness. No,
she thought, this was not their childhood — it was the future as she
would have seen it then, in the days when she waited for him as for
her release from prison. It was a moment’s view of a morning they
would have reached, if her vision of life had been fulfilled, if they
had both gone the way she had then been so certain of going. Held
motionless by wonder, she stood looking at him. taking this moment,
not in the name of the present, but as a salute to their past.

When he was close enough and she could distinguish his face, she
saw the look of that luminous gaiety which transcends the solemn
by proclaiming the great innocence of a man who has earned the
right to be light-hearted. He was smiling and whistling some piece
of music that seemed to flow' like the long, smooth, rising flight of
his steps. The melody seemed distantly familiar to her, she felt that
it belonged with this moment, yet she felt also that there was some-
thing odd about it, something important to grasp, only she could not
think of it now.

“Hi. Slug!”

“Hi, Frisco’”

She knew — by the way he kicked at her, by an instant's drop of
his eyelids dosing his eyes, by the brief pull of his head striving to
lean back and tesist, by the faint, half-smiling, half-helpless relax-
ation of his lips, by the sudden harshness of his arms as he seized
her — that it was involuntary, that he had not intended it, and that it
was irresistibly right for both of them.

The desperate violence of the way he held her, the hurting pres-
sure of his mouth on hers, the exultant surrender of his body to the
touch of hers, were not the form of a moment’s pleasure — she knew
that no physical hunger could bring a man to this — she knew that it
was the statement she had never heard from him, the greatest confes-
sion of love a man could make. No matter what he had done to
wreck his life, this was still the Francisco d’Anconia in whose bed
she had been so proud of belonging — no matter what betrayals she
had met from the world, her vision of life had been true and some
indestructible part of it had remained within him — and in answer to
it, her body responded to his, her arms and mouth held him, confess-
ing her desire, confessing an acknowledgment she had always given
him and always would.

Then .the rest of his years came back to her, with a stab of the
pain of knowing that the greater his person, the more terrible his

565

guilt in destroying it. She pulled herself away from him, she shook
her head, she said, in answer to both of them, “No.”

He stood looking at her, disarmed and smiling. “Not yet. You have
a great deal to forgive me, first. But I can tell you everything now.”

She had never heard that low, breathless quality of helplessness
in his voice. He was fighting to regain control, there was almost a
touch of apology in his smile, the apology of a child pleading for
indulgence, but there was also an adult’s amusement, the laughing
declaration that he did not have to hide his struggle, .since it was
happiness that he was wrestling with, not pain.

She backed away from him; she felt as if emotion had flung her
ahead of her own consciousness, and questions were now catching
up with her, groping toward the form of words.

“Dagny. that torture you’ve been going through, here, for the last
month . . . answer me as honestly as you can ... do you think you
could have borne it twelve >ears ago?”

‘No.” she answered; he smiled. “Why do you ask that?”

“To redeem twelve years of my life, which l won’t have to regret.”

“What do you mean? And” -her questions had caught up with
her — “and what do you know about my torture here?”

“Dagny, aren’t you beginning to see that I would know everything
about it?”

“How did you . . . Francisco! What were you whistling when you
were coming up the hill ?”

“Why, was 1? I don’t know.”

“It was the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley, wasn’t it?”

“Oh . . . !” He looked startled, then smiled in amusement at
himself, then answered gravely, “I'll tell you that later,”

“How did you find out where I was*>”

“I'll tell you that, too.”

“You forced it out of Eddie.”

“I haven’t seen Eddie for over a year.”

“He was the only one who knew it.”

“It wasn’t Eddie who told me.”

“I didn’t want anybody to find me ”

He glanced slowly about him, she saw his eyes stop on the path
she had built, on the planted flowers, on the fresh-shingled roof. He
chuckled, as if he understood and as if it hurt him. “You shouldn’t
have been left here for a month,” he said, “(iod, you shouldn’t have!
It’s my first failure, at the one time when l didn’t want to fail. But
I didn’t think you were ready to quit. Had I known it. 1 would have
watched you dav and night.”

“Really? What for?”

“To spare you” — he pointed at her work— “all this.’

“Francisco.” she said, her voice low. “if you’re concerned about
my torture, don’t you know that I don’t want to hear |ou speak of
i U because — ” She stopped; she had never complained** to him, not
in ail those years; her voice flat, she said only, “—that 1 don’t want
to hear it?”

“Because I’m the one man who has no right to speak 6f it? Dagny,

566

if you think that I don’t know how much I’ve hurt you, I’ll tell you
about the years when I * , . But it’s over. Oh, darling, it’s overt”

“Is it?”

“Forgive me, I mustn’t say that. Not until you say it.” He was
trying to control his voice, but the look of happiness was beyond his
power to control

“Are you happy because I’ve lost everything 1 lived for? All right,
I’ll say it, if this is what you’ve come to hear; you were the first
thing I lost — docs it amuse you now to see that I’ve lost the rest?”

He glanced straight at her, his eyes drawn narrow by such an
intensity of earnestness that the glance was almost a threat, and she
knew that whatever the years had meant to him — “amusement” was
the one word she had no right to utter.

“Do you really think that?” he asked.

She whispered, “No . .

“Dagny, we can never lose the things we live for. We may have
to change their form at times, if we’ve made an error, but the pur-
pose remains the same and the forms are ours to make.”

“Thai is what I’ve been telling myself foi a month. But there’s no
way left open toward any purpose whatever.”

He did not answer. He sat down on a boulder by the door of the
cabin, watching her as if he did not want to miss a single shadow of
reaction on her face. “What do you think now of the men who quit
and vanished?” he asked.

She shrugged, with a faint smile of helpless sadness, and sat down
on the ground beside him. “You know,” she said. “ I used to think
that there was some destroyer who came after them and made them
quit. But 1 guess there wasn’t. There have been times, this past
month, when I’ve almost wished he would come for me, too. But
nobody came.”

“No?”

“No. I used to think, that he gave them some inconceivable reason
to make them betray everything they loved. But that wasn’t neces-
sary. I know how they felt. I can’t blame them any longer. What I
don’t know is how they learned to exist afterward — if any of them
still exist.”

“Do you feel that you’ve betrayed Taggart Transcontinental?”

“No. I ... I feel that I would have betrayed it by remaining
at work.”

“You would have.”

“If 1 had agreed to serve the looters, it’s . . . it’s Nat Taggart
that I would have delivered to them. 1 couldn’t. I couldn’t let his
achievement, and mine, end up with the looters as our final goal,”

“No, you couldn’t. Do you call this indifference? Do you think
that you love the railroad less than you did a month ago?”

“I think that I would give my life for just one more year on the
railroad . . . But I can’t go back to it.”

‘ “Then you know what they felt, all the men who quit, and what
it was that they loved when they gave up.”

“Francisco,” she asked, hot looking at him, her head bent, “why
did you ask me whether L could have given it up twelve years ago?”

567

"‘Don’t you know what night I am thinking of, just as you are?' 1

‘"Yes ...” she whispered.

“That was the night I gave up d’Anconia Copper.'’

Slowly, with a long effort, she moved her head to glance up at
him. His face had the expression she had seen then, on that next
morning, twelve years ago: the look of a smile, though he was not
smiling, the quiet look of victory over pain, the look of a man’s pride
in the price he paid and in that which made it worth paying.

“But you didn't give it up.” she said. “You didn't quit. You’re
still the President of d’Anconia Copper, only it means nothing to
you now.”

“It means as much to me now as it did that night.”

"Then how can you let it go to pieces 7 ”

“Dagny, you're more fortunate than I. Taggart Transcontinental
is a delicate piece of precision machinery. It will not last long without
you. It cannot be run by slave labor. They will mercifully destroy it
for you and you won't have to see it serving the looters. But copper
mining is a simpler job. D’Anconia Copper could have lasted for
generations of looters and slaves Crudely, miserably, ineptly — but it
could have lasted and helped them to last. 1 had to destroy it myself,”

“You — what?”

“I am destroying d’Anconia Copper, consciously, deliberately, by
plan and by my own hand. I have to plan it as carefully and work
as hard as if l were producing a fortune — in order not to let them
notice it and stop me, in order not to let them seize the mines until
it is too late. All the effort and energy I had hoped to spend on
d’Anconia Copper, I’m spending them, only . . . only it’s not to make
it grow. I shall destroy every last bit of it and every last penny of
my fortune and every ounce of copper that could feed the looters.
1 shall not leave it as I found it — 1 shall leave it as Sebastian d’An-
conia found it — then let them try to exist without him or me!”

“Francisco!” she screamed. “How could you make yourself do it?”

“By thtf grace of the same love as yours,” he answered quietly,
“my love for d’Anconia Copper, for the spirit of which it was the
shape. Was — and, some day, will be again.”

She sat still, trying to grasp all the implications of what she now
grasped only as the numbness of shock. In the silence, the music of
the radio symphony went on. and the rhythm of the chords reached
her like the slow, solemn pounding of steps, while she struggled to
see at once the whole progression of twelve years: the tortured boy
who called for help on her breasts — the man who sat on the floor
of a drawing room, playing marbles and laughing at the destruction
of great industries — the man who cried, “My love, I c^n’t!” while
refusing to help her — the man who drank a toast, in the dim booth
of a barroom, to the years which vSebasti^n d'Anconia^had had to
wait. ...

“Francisco ... of all the guesses I tried to make abo|n you ... I
never thought of it ... I never thought that you were ^ne of those
men who had quit . . .”

“I was one of the first of them.”

“I thought that they always vanished ...”

568

“Well, hadn't I? Wasn’t it the worst of what I did to you — that I
left you looking at a cheap playboy who was not the Francisco
d’Anconia you had known?”

“Yes . . she whispered, “only the worst was that 1 couldn't
believe it ... 1 never did ... It was Francisco d’Anconia that l kept
seeing every time 1 saw you. . . .”

“I know. And l know what it did to you. 1 tried to help you
understand, but it was too soon to tell you. Dagny, if I had told
you — that night or the day when you came to damn me for the San
Sebastian Mines — that 1 was not an aimless loafer, that 1 was out to
speed up the destruction of everything we had held sacred together,
the destruction of d’Anconia Copper, of Taggart Transcontinental,
ot Wyatt Oil, of Rearden Steel— would you have found it easier
to take?”

“Harder,” she whispered. “I’m not sure I can take it. even now.
Neither your kind of renunciation nor my own . . . But, Francisco" —
she threw her head back suddenly to look up at him — “if this was
your secret, then of all the hell you had to take. 1 was — ”

_Oli yes, my darling, yes, you were the worst of it!” It was a
dtfsperate cry, its sound of laughter and of release confessing all the
agony he wanted to sweep away. He seized her hand, he pressed his
mouth to it. then his face, not to let her see the reflection of what
his years had been like. “If it's any kind of atonement, which it
isn’t . . . whatever 1 made you suffer, that’s how I paid for it ... by
knowing what 1 was doing to you and having to do it . . . and watting,
waiting to . . . But it’s over.”

He laised his head, smiling, he looked down at her and she saw
a look of protective tenderness come into his face, which told her
of the despair he saw in hers.

“Dagny, don’t think of that. 1 won t claim any suffering of mine
as my excuse. Whatever my reason. I knew what 1 was doing and I’ve
hurt you terribly I’ll need years to make up for it. Forget what” — she
knew that he meant: what his embrace had confessed — “what 1
haven’t said. Of all the things I have to tell you. that is the one I’ll
sav last.” But his eyes, his smile, the grasp of his lingers on her wrist
were saying it against his will. “You’ve borne too much, and there’s
a great deal that you have to learn to understand in order to lose
every scar of the torture you never should have had to bear. AH
that matters now is that you’re free to recover. We’re free, both of
us. we're free of the looters, we're out of their reach.”

She said, her voice quietly desolate, “That’s what 1 came here
for- -to try lo understand. But I can't. It seems monstrously wrong
to surrender the world to the looters, and monstrously wrong to live
under their rule. I can neither give up nor go back. I can neither
exist without work nor work as a serf. I had always thought that any
sort of battle was proper, anything, except renunciation. I’m not sure
we’re right to quit, you and I, when we should have fought them. But
there is no way to fight. It's surrender, if we leave— and surrender, if
we remain. 1 don’t know what is right any longer.”

“Check your premises, Dagny. Contradictions don’t exist.”

“But I can't find any answer. I can’t condemn you for whal you’re

569

doing, yet it’s horror that I feel — admiration and horror, at the same
time, You, the heir of the d’Anconias, who could have surpassed all
his ancestors of the miraculous hand that produced, you're turning
your matchless ability to the job of destruction. And 1— I’m playing
with cobblestones and shingling a roof, while a transcontinental rail*
road system is collapsing in the hands ot congenital ward heelers.
Yet you and I were the kind who determine the fate of the world.
If this is what we Jet it come to. then it must have been our own
guilt. But I can't see the nature of our error. ”

“Yes, Dagny, it was our own guilt."

"Because we didn’t work hard enough?"

"Because we worked too hard — and charged too little."

"What do you mean?"

"We never demanded the one payment that the world owed us —
and we let our best reward go to the worst of men. The error was
made centuries ago, it was made by Sebastian d’Anconia, by Nat
Taggart, by every man who fed the world and received no thanks in
return. You don't know what is right any longer? Dagny, this is not
a battle over material goods. It's a moral crisis, the greatest the world
has ever faced and the last. Our age is the climax ol centuries of
evil. We must put an end to it, once and for all. or perish— we, the
men of the mind. It was our own guilt. We produced the wealth of
the world— but we let our enemies write its moral code."

"But we never accepted their code. We lived by our own
standards."

"Yes — and paid ransoms for it! Ransoms in matter and in spirit —
in money, which our enemies received, but did not deserve, and in
honor, which we deserved, but did not receive. Ihai was our guilt —
that we were willing to pay. We kept mankind alive, yet we allowed
men to despise us and to worship our destroyers. We allowed them
to worship incompetence and brutality, the recipients and the dis
pensers of the unearned. By accepting punishment, not for any sms,
but for out virtues, we betrayed our code and made theirs possible.
Dagny, theirs is the morality of kidnappers. They use your love ol
virtue as a hostage. They know that you’ll bear anything in order to
work and produce, because you know that achievement is man's
highest moral purpose, that he can’t exist without it, and your love
of virtue is your love of life. They count on you to assume any
burden. They count on you to feel that no effort is too great in the
service of your love. Dagny, your enemies are destroying you by
means of your own power. Your generosity and your endurance are
their only tools. Your unrequited rectitude is the only hold they have
upon you. They know it. You don’t. The day when you’ll discover
it is the only thing they dread. You must learn to understand them.
You won’t be free of them, until you do. But when y^u do, you’ll
reach such a stage of rightful anger that you’ll blast ivery rail of
Taggart Transcontinental, rather than let it serve themf’

"But to leave it to them!" she moaned. "To abandon it . . . To
abandon Taggart Transcontinental . . . when it’s , . . it’l almost like
a living person . . «

"It was. It isn’t any longer. Leave it to them. It won't do them

570

any good. Let it go. We don’t need it. We can rebuild it. They can’t.
We'll survive without it. They won’t.”

■‘But nr, brought down to renouncing and giving up!”

“Dagny, we who’ve been called ‘materialists’ by the killers ot the
human spirit, we re the only ones who know how little value or
meaning there is in material objects as such, because we'ie the ones
who create their value and meaning. We can afford to give them up,
(or a short while, in older to redeem something much more precious.
We aie the soul, of which railroads, copper mines, steel mills and
oil wells are the body- -and they are living entities that beat day and
night, like our hearts, in the sacred function of supporting human
life, but only so long as they remain our body, only so long as they
remain the expression, the reward and the pioperty of achievement.
Without us. they are corpses and their sole product is poison, not
wealth or food, the poison of disintegration that turns men into
hordes of scavengers. Oagny, learn to understand the nature of your
own power and you’ll understand the paradox you now see around
you. You do not have to depend on any material possessions, they
depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of
production. Wherever you are, you will always be able to produce.
But the looters— by their own stated theory — are in desperate, per-
manent, congenital need and at the blind mercy of matter. Why don't
\ou take them at their word? 1 hey need railroads, factories, mines,
motors, which they cannot make or run. Of what use will your rail-
road be to them without you? Who held it together** Who kept it
alive? Who saved it. time and time again? Was it your brother
James? Who fed him? Who fed the looters? Who produced their
weapons? Who gave them the means to enslave you? The impossible
spectacle of shabby little incompetents holding control over the prod-
ucts of genius — who made it possible? Who supported your enemies,
who forged your chains, who destroyed your achievement?”

The motion that threw her upright was like a silent cry. He shot
to hts feet with the stored abruptness of a spring uncoiling, his voice
driving on in merciless triumph:

“You’re beginning to see. aren’t you? Dagny! Leave them the
carcass of that railroad, leave them all the rusted rails and rotted
ties and gutted engines — but don't leave them your mind! Don’t
leave them your mind’ The fate of the world rests on that decision!”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the panic-pregnant voice of a radio
announcer, breaking off the chords of the symphony, “we interrupt
this broadcast to bring you a special news bulletin. The greatest
disaster in railroad history occurred in the early hours of the morning
on the main line of Taggart Transcontinental, at Winston. Colorado,
demolishing the famous Taggart Tunnel!”

Her scream sounded like the screams that had rung out in the one
last moment in the darkness of the tunnel. Its sound remained with
him through the rest of the broadcast — as they both ran to the radio
m the cabin and stood, in equal terror, her eyes staring at the radio,
hi,s eyes watching her face.

“The details of the story were obtained from Luke Beal, fireman
of the Taggart luxury main liner, the Comet, who was found uncon-

571

scious at the western portal of the tunnel this morning, and who
appears to be the sole survivor of the catastrophe. Through some
astounding infraction of safety rules— in circumstances not yet fully
established — the Comet, westbound for San Francisco, was sent into
the tunnel with a coal-burning steam locomotive. The Taggart run-
nel, an eight-mile bore, cut through the summit of the Rocky Moun-
tains and regarded as an engineering achievement not to be equaled
in our time, was built by the grandson of Nathaniel Taggart, in the
great age of the clean, smokeless Diesel-electric engine The tunnel's
ventilation system was not designed to provide for the heavy smoke
and fumes of coal-burning locomotives — and it was known to every
railroad employee in the district that to send a train into the tunnel
with such a locomotive would mean death by suffocation for every-
one aboard. The Comet, none the less, was so ordered to proceed.
According to Fireman Beal, the effects of the fumes began to be felt
when the train was about three miles inside the tunnel. Engineer
Joseph Scott threw the throttle wide open, in a desperate attempt
to gam speed, but the old, worn engine was inadequate for the weight
of the long train and the rising grade of the track. Struggling through
the thickening fumes, engineer and fireman had barely managed to
force the leaking steam boilers up to a speed of forty miles per
hour — when some passenger, prompted undoubtedly by the panic of
choking, pulled the emergency brake cord. The sudden jolt of the
stop apparently broke the engine's airhose, for the train could not
be started again. There were screams coming from the cars. Passen-
gers were breaking windows. Engineer Scott struggled frantically to
make the engine start, but collapsed at the throttle, overcome by the
fumes. Fireman Beal leaped from the engine and ran. He was within
sight of the western portal, when he heard the blast of the explosion,
which is the last thing he remembers. The rest of the story was
gathered from railroad employees at Winston Station. It appears that
an Army Freight Special, westbound, carrying a heavy load of explo-
sives, had* been given no warning about the presence of the Comet
on the track just ahead. Both trains had encountered delays and
were running off their schedules. It appears that the Freight Special
had been ordered to proceed regardless of signals, because the tun-
nel's signal .system was out of ordei . It is said that in spite of speed
regulations and in view of the frequent breakdowns of the ventilating
system, it was the tacit custom of all engineers to go full speed while
in the tunnel. It appears, as far as can be established at present, that
the Comet was stalled just beyond the point where the tunnel makes
a sharp curve. It is believed that everyone aboard was dead by thai
time. It is doubted that the engineer of the Freight Special, turning
a curve at eighty miles an hour, would have been at$e to see, in
time, the observation window of the Comet’s last caf, which was
brightly lighted when it left Winston Station. What is known is that
the Freight Special crashed into the rear of the Comet, 'fhe explosion
of the Special’s cargo broke windows in a farmhouse fi^e miles away
and brought down such a weight of rock upon the tunnel that rescue
parties have not yet been able to cofnc within three titles of where
either train had been. It is not expected that any survivors will be

572

found — and it is not believed that the Taggart Tunnel can ever be
rebuilt.”

She stood still. She looked as if she were seeing, not the room
around her, but the scene in Colorado. Her sudden movement had
the abruptness of a convulsion. With the single-tracked rationality
of a somnambulist, she whirled to find her handbag, as if it were
the only object in existence, she seized it, she whirled to the door
and ran.

“Dagny!” he screamed. “Don’t go back!”

The scream had no more power to reach her than if he were calling
to her across the miles between him and the mountains of Colorado.

He ran after her, he caught her, seizing her by both elbows, and
he cried, “Don’t go back! Dagny! In the name of anything sacred
to you, don’t go back!”

She looked as if she did not know who he was. In a contest of
physical strength, he could have broken the bones of her arms with-
out effort. But with the force of a living creature fighting for life,
she lore herself loose so violently that she threw him off balance for
a moment. When he regained his footing, she was running down the
hill — running as he had run at the sound of the alarm siren in Rear-
den’s mills — running to her car on the road below.

* *

His letter of resignation lay on the desk before him — and James
Taggart sat staring at it. hunched by hatred. He felt as if his enemy
were this piece of paper, not die words on it, but the sheet and the
ink that had given the words a material finality. He had always re-
garded thought and words as inconclusive, but a material shape was
that which he had spent his life escaping: a commitment.

He had not decided to resign -not really, he thought; he had dic-
tated the letter for a motive which he identified to himself only as
‘just in case.” The letter, he felt, was a torm of protection: but he
had not signed it yet, and that was his protection against the protec-
tion. The hatred was directed at whatever had brought him to feel
that he would not be able to continue extending this process much
longer.

He had received word of the catastrophe at eight o'clock this
morning; by noon, he had arrived at his office. An instinct that came
from reasons which he knew, but spent his whole effort on not know-
ing, had told him that he had to be there, this time.

The men who had been his marked cards — in a game he knew
how to play -were gone. Clifton Looey was barricaded behind the
statement of a doctor who had announced that Mr. Locey was suffer-
ing from a heait condition which made it impossible to disturb him
at present. One of Taggart’s executive assistants was said to have
left for Boston last night, and the other was said to have been called
unexpectedly to an unnamed hospital, to the bedside of a father
nobody had ever suspected him of having. There was no answer :U
the home of the chief engineer. The vice-president in charge of pub-
lic relations could not be found.

Driving through the streets to his office, Taggart had seen the
black letters of the headlines. Walking down the corridors of Taggart

573

Transcontinental . he had heard the voice of a speaker pouring from
a radio in someone’s office, the % kind of voice one expects to hear
on unlighted street comers: it was screaming demands for the nation-
alization of the railroads.

He had walked through the corridors, his steps noisy, in order to
be seen, and hasty, in order not to be stopped for questions. He had
locked the door of his office, ordering his secretary not to admit any
person or phone call and to tell all comers that Mr, Taggart was busy.

Then he sat at his desk, alone with blank terror. He felt as if he
were trapped in a subterranean vault and the lock could never be
broken again — and as if he were held on display in the sight of the
whole city below, hoping that the lock would hold out for eternity.
He had to be here, in this office, it was required of him, he had to
sit idly and wait — wait for the unknown to descend upon him and
to determine his actions — and the terror was both of who would
come for him and of the fact that nobody came, nobody to tell him
what to do.

The ringing of the telephones in the outer office sounded like
screams for help. He looked at the door with a sensation of malevo-
lent triumph at the thought of all those voices being defeated by the
innocuous figure of his secretary, a young man expert at nothing but
the art of evasion, which he practiced with the gray, rubber limpness
of the amoral. The voices, thought Taggart, were coining from Colo-
rado, from every center of the Taggart system, from every office of
the building around him. He was sale so long as he did not have to
hear them.

His emotions had dogged into a still, solid, opaque ball within
him. which the thought of the men who operated the Taggart system
could not pierce: those men were merely enemies to be outwitted.
The sharper bites of fear came from the thought of the men on the
Board of Directors; but his letter of resignation was his fire escape,
which would leave them stuck with the lire. The sharpest tear came
from the thought of the men in Washington. If they called, he would
have to answer; his rubber secretary would know whose voices super-
seded his orders. But Washington did not call.

The fear went through him in spasms, once in a while, leaving his
mouth dry. He did not know what he dreaded. He knew that it was
not the threat of the radio speaker. What he had experienced at the
sound of the snarling voice had been more like a terror which he
felt because he was expected to feel it, a duty-teiror, something that
went with his position, like well-tailored suits and luncheon speeches.
But under it, he had fell a sneaking little hope, swift and lurtive like
the course of a cockroach: it that threat took form, it would solve
everything, save him from decision, save him from signing the
letter ... he would not be President of Taggart Transcontinental
any longer, but neither would anyone else . . . neitherf would any-
one else. . . .

He sat, looking down at his desk, keeping his eyes apd his mind
out of focus. It was as if he were immersed in a pool of fcjg, struggling
not to let it reach the finality of any form. That which exists possesses
identity; he could keep it out of existence by refusing t^ identify it.

574

He did not examine the events in Colorado, he did not attempt
to grasp their cause* he did not consider their consequences. He did
not think The clogged ball of emotion was like a physical weight in
his chest, filling his consciousness, releasing hint from the responsibil-
ity of thought. The ball was hatred™ hatred as his only answer, ha-
tred as the sole reality, hatred without object, cause, beginning or
end, hatred as his claim against the universe, as a justification, as a
right, as an absolute.

The screaming of the telephones went on through the silence. He
knew that those pleas for help were not addressed to him, but to an
entity whose shape he had stolen. It was this shape that the screams
were now tearing away from him: he felt as if the ringing ceased to
be sounds and became a succession of slashes hitting his skull. The
object of the hatred began to take form, as if summoned by the bells.
The solid ball exploded within him and flung him blindly into action.

Rushing out of the room, in defiance of all the faces around him,
he went running down the halls to the Operating Department and
into the anteroom of the Operating Vice-President's office.

The door to the office was open, he saw the sky in the great
windows beyond an empty desk. Then he saw the staff in the anteroom
around turn, and the blond head of Eddie Willers in the glass cubby-
hole. He walked purposefully straight toward Eddie Willers. he flung
the glass door open and, from the threshold, in the sight and hearing
of the room, he screamed:

“Where is she?”

Eddie Willers rose slowly to his feet and stood looking at Taggart
with an odd kind of dutiful curiosity, as if this were one more phe-
nomenon to observe among all the unprecedented things he had
observed. He did not answer.

“Where is she?”

‘T cannot tell you.”

“Listen, you stubborn little punk, this is no time for ceremony! If
you’re trying to make me believe that you don't know where she is,
I don’t believe you! You know it and you’re going to tell me, or I’ll
report you to the Unification Board! I’ll sweai to them that you
know it — then try and prove that you don’t!”

There was a faint tone of astonishment in Eddie’s voice as he
answered, “I’ve never attempted to imply that I don’t know where
she is, Jim. I know it. But 1 won’t tell you.”

Taggart's scream rose to the shrill, impotent sound that confesses
a miscalculation: “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

“Why, yes, of course.”

“Will you repeat it” — he waved at (he room — “for these wit-
nesses?”

Eddie raised his voice a little, more in precision and clarity than
in volume: “I know where she is. But I will not tell you.”

“You’re confessing that you're an accomplice who’s aiding and
abetting a deserter?”

“If that’s what you wish to call it.”

“But it’s a crime! It's a crime against the nation. Don’t you
know that?”

575

“No,”

“It’s against the law!”

“Yes.”

“This is a national emergency! You have no right to any private
secrets! You’re withholding vital information! I’m the President of
this railroad! I’m ordering you to tell me! You can’t refuse to obey
an order! It's a penitentiary offense! Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you refuse?”

“1 do.”

Years of training had made Taggart able to watch any audience
around him, without appearing to do so. He saw the tight, closed
faces of the staff, faces that were not his allies. All had a look of
despair, except the face of Eddie Willers. The “feudal serf’ of Tag-
gart Transcontinental was the only one who seemed untouched by
the disaster. He looked at Taggart with the lifelessly conscientious
glance of a scholar confronted by a held of knowledge he had never
wanted to study.

“Do you realize that you're a traitor?” yelled Taggart.

Eddie asked quietly, “To whom?”

“To the people! It’s treason to shield a deserter’ It’s economic
treason! Your duty to feed the people comes first, above anything
else whatever! Every public authority has said so! Don't you know
it? Don't you know what they’ll do to you?”

“Don’t you see that I don't give a damn about that?”

“Oh, you don’t? I’ll quote that to the Unification Board! 1 have
all these witnesses to prove that you said — ”

“Don’t bother about witnesses, Jim Don’t put them on the spot.
I'll write down everything I said. I'll sign it, and you can take it U>
the Board.”

The sudden explosion of Taggart's voice sounded as il he had been
slapped: “Who are you to stand against the government? Who are
you, you miserable little office rat, to judge national policies and
hold opinions of your own? Do you think the country has lime to
bother about your opinions, your wishes or your precious little con
science? You’re going to learn a lesson — all of you 1 -- all ol you
spoiled, self-indulgent, undisciplined tittle two-bit clerks, who strut
as if that crap about your rights was serious! You’re going to learn
that these are not the days of Nat Taggart!”

Eddie said nothing. For an instant, they stood looking at each
other across the desk. Taggart’s lace was distorted by terror. Eddie's
remained sternly serene. James Taggart believed the existence of an
Eddie Willers too well; Eddie Willers could not believe the existence
of a James Taggart.

“Do you think the nation will bother about your wishes or hers?”
screamed Taggart. “It’s her duty to come back! It’s her daty to work!
What do we care whether she wants to work or not? W^ need her 1 ”

“Do you, Jim?”

An impulse pertaining to self-preservation made Tagjgart back a
step away from the sound of that particular tone, a very quiet tone,
in the voice of Eddie Willers. But Eddie made no move to follow.

576

He remained standing behind his desk, in a manner suggesting the
civilized tradition of a business office.

“You won’t find her,” he said. “She won’t be back. I’m glad she
won’t. You can starve, you can clt>se the railroad, you can throw me
in jail, you can have me shot — what does it matter? I won’t tell you
where she is. If l see the whole country crashing, I won’t tell you.
You won’t find her. You — ”

They whirled at the sound of the entrance door flung open. They
saw Dagny standing on the threshold.

She wore a wrinkled cotton dress, and her hair was disheveled by
hours of driving. She stopped for the duration of a glance around
her, as if to recapture the place, but there was no recognition of
persons in her eyes, the glance merely swept through the room, as
if making a swift inventory of physical objects. Her face was not the
lace they remembered; it had aged, not by means of lines, but by
means of a still, naked look stripped of any quality save nithlessness.

Yet their first response, ahead of shock or wonder, was a single
emotion that went through the room like a gasp of relief. It was in
all their faces but one; Eddie Willers, who alone had been calm a
moment ago, collapsed with his face down on his desk; he made no
sound, but the movements of his shoulders were sobs.

Her face gave no sign of acknowledgment to anyone, no greeting,
as if her presence here were inevitable and no words were necessary.
She went straight to the door of her office; passing the desk of her
secretary, she said, her voice like the sound ot a business machine,
neither rude nor gentle, “Ask Eddie to come in.”

James Taggart was the first one to move, as if dreading to let her
out of his sight. He rushed in after her, he cried. “I couldn t help
it!” and then, life returning to him. his own, his normal kind of life,
he screamed. “It was your fault! You did it! You’re to blame for it!
Because you left!”

He wondered whether his scream had been an illusion inside his
own ears. Her face remained blank; yet she had turned to him; she
looked as if sounds had reached her. but not words, not the commu-
nication of a mind. What he felt for a moment was his closest ap-
proach to a sense of his own non-existence.

Then he saw the faintest change in her face, merely the indication
of perceiving a human presence, but she was looking past him and
he turned and saw that Eddie Willers had entered the office.

There were traces of tears in Eddie's eyes, but he made no attempt
to hide them, he stood straight, as if the tears or any embarrassment
or any apology for them were as irrelevant to him as to her

She said, “Get Ryan on the telephone, tell him Pm here, then let
me speak to him.” Ryan had been the general manager of the rail-
road’s Central Region.

Eddie gave her a warning by not answering at once, then said, his
voice as even as hers, “Ryan’s gone, Dagny. He quit last week.”

They did not notice Taggart, as they did not notice the furniture
around them. She had not granted him even the recognition of order-
ing him out of her office. Like a paralytic, uncertain of his muscles’
obedience, he gathered his strength and slipped out. But he was

577

certain of the first thing he had to do: he hurried to his office to
destroy his letter of resignation.

She did not notice his exit; she was looking at Eddie. “Is Knowland
here?’' she asked.

“No. He’s gone,”

“Andrews?”

“Gone.”

“McGuire?”

“Gone.”

He went on quietly to recite the list of those he knew she would
ask for, those most needed in this hour, who had resigned and van-
ished within the past month. She listened without astonishment or
emotion* as one listens to the casually list of a battle where all are
doomed and it makes no difference whose names fall first.

When he finished, she made no comment, but asked, “What has
been done since this morning?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Dagny, any office boy could have issued orders here since this
morning and everybody would have obeyed him. But even the office
boys know that whoever makes the first move today will be held
responsible for the future, the present and the past — when the buck-
passing begins. He would not save the system, he would merely lose
his job by the time he saved one division. Nothing has been done,
ft’s stopped still. Whatever is moving, is moving on anyone's blind
guess — out on the line where they don’t know whether they’re to
move or to stop. Some trains are held at stations, others are going
on, waiting to be stopped before they reach Colorado. It's whatevei
the local dispatchers decide. The Terminal manager downstaiis has
cancelled all transcontinental traffic for today, including tonight’s
Comet. I don’t know what the manager in San Francisco is doing.
Only the^wrecking crews are working. At the tunnel. They haven't
come anywhere near the wreck as yet. I don’t think they will.”

“Phone the Terminal manager downstairs and tell him to put all
transcontinental trains back on the schedule at once, including to-
night's Comet. Then come back here.”

When he came back, she was bending ovei the maps she had
spread on a table, and she spoke while he made rapid notes:

“Route all westbound trains south from Kirby, Nebraska, down
the spur track to Hastings, down the track of the Kansas Western
to Laurel, Kansas, then to the track of the Atlantic Southern at
Jasper, Oklahoma. West on the Atlantic Southern to Flagstaff, Ari-
zona, north on the track of the Flagstaff- Homedalc to Elgin. Utah,
north to Midland, northwest on the track of the Wasatch Railway
to Salt Lake City. The Wasatch Railway is an abandoned narrow-
gauge. Buy it. Have the gauge spread to standard. If thp owners are
afraid, since sales are illegal, pay them twice the njoneyland proceed
with the work. There is no rail between Laurel, Kansai and Jasper,
Oklahoma — three miles, no rail between Elgin and Midland, Utah —
five and a half miles. Have the rail laid. Have constriction crews
start at once — recruit every local man available, pay twice the legal

578

wages, three times, anything they ask -put three shifts on— and have
the job done overnight For rail, tear up the sidings at Winston,
Colorado, at Silver Springs, Colorado, at Ixeds, Utah, at Benson,
Nevada. If any local stooges of the Unification Board come to stop
the work — give authority to our local men, the ones you trust, to
bribe thein. Don’t pul that through the Accounting Department,
chaige it to me. I'll pay it. If they find some case where it doesn’t
work, have them tell the stooge that Directive 10-289 does not pro-
vide for local injunctions, that an injunction has to be brought against
our headquarters and that they have to sue me , if they wish to
stop us.”

“Is that true?”

“How do I know? How can anybody know? But by the time they
untangle it and decide whatever it is they please to decide- -our track
will be built.”

“1 see.”

‘Til go over the lists and give you the names of our local men to
pul in charge — if they’re still there. By the time tonight’s Comet
reaches Kirby, Nebraska, the track will be ready ft will add about
thirty-six hours to the transcontinental schedule — but there will be a
transcontinental schedule. Then have them get for me out of the
files the old maps of our road as it was before Nat Taggart’s grandson
built the tunnel.”

“The . . . what?” He did not raise his voice, but the catch of his
breath was the break of emotion he had wanted to avoid.

Her face did not change, but ’a faint note in her voice acknowl-
edged him, a note of gentleness, not reproof: “The old maps of the
days before the tunnel. We’re going back, Eddie. Let’s hope wc can.
No, we won’t rebuild the tunnel. There's no way to do it now. But
(he old grade that crossed the Rockies is still there. It can be re-
claimed. Only it will be hard to get the rail for it and the men to
do it. Particularly the men.”

He knew, as he had known from the first, that she had seen his
tears and that she had not walked past in indifference, even though
her clear, toneless voice and unmoving face gave him no sign of
feeling. There was some quality in her manner, which he sensed but
could not translate. Yet the feeling it gave him, translated, was as if
she were saying to him: I know, 1 understand, I would feel compas-
sion and gratitude, if we were alive and free to feel, but we’re not,
are we, Eddie?— we’re on a dead planet, like the moon, where we
must move, but dare not stop for a breath of feeling or we’ll discover
that there is no air to breathe.

“We have today and tomorrow to get things started,” she said.
“I’ll leave for Colorado tomorrow night,”

‘if you want to fly. I’ll have to rent a plane for you somewhere.
Yours is still in the shops, they can’t get the parts for it.”

“No, I’ll go by rail. I have to see the line. Iil take tomorrow’s
Comet.”

it was two hours later, in a brief pause between long-distance
phone calls, that she asked him suddenly the first question which did

579

not pertain to the railroad; “What have they done to Hank
Rearden?”

Eddie caught himself in the small evasion of looking away, forced
his glance back to meet hers, and answered, “He gave in. He signed
their Gift Certificate, at the last moment.”

“Oh.” The sound conveyed no shock or censure, it was merely a
vocal punctuation mark, denoting the acceptance of a fact. “Have
you heard from Quentin Daniels?”

“No.”

“He sent no letter or message for me?”

“No.”

He guessed the thing she leared and it reminded him of a matter
he had not reported. “Dagny, there’s another problem that's been
growing all over the system since you lett. Since May first. It's the
frozen trains.”

“The what?”

“We’ve had trains abandoned on the line, on some passing track,
in the middle of nowhere, usually at night™ with the entire crew
gone. They just leave the train and vanish. There’s never any warning
given or any special reason, it's more like an epidemic, it hits the
men suddenly and they go. It’s been happening on other railroads,
too. Nobody can explain it. But I think that everybody understands.
It's the directive that’s doing it. It’s our men's form of protest. They
try to go on and then they suddenly reach a moment when they
can't take it any longer. What can we do about it?” He shrugged.
“Oh well, who is John Galt?”

She nodded thoughtfully; she did not look astonished.

The telephone rang and the voice of her secretary said, “Mr. Wes-
ley Mouch calling from Washington, Miss Taggart.”

Her lips stiffened a little, as at the unexpected touch of an insect.
“It must be for my brother,” she said.

“No, Miss Taggart. For you.”

“Ail right. Put him on.”

“Miss Taggart,” said the voice of Wesley Mouch m the tone of a
cocktail-partv host, “I was so glad to hear you’ve regained your
health that I wanted to welcome you back in person. I know that
your health required a long rest and I appreciate the patriotism that
made you cut your leave of absence short in this terrible emergency.
I wanted to assure you that you can count on our co-operation in
any step you now find it necessary to take. Our fullest co-operation,
assistance and support. If there are any . . . special exceptions you
might require, please feel certain that they can be grafted.”

She let him speak, even though he had made several small pauses
inviting an answer. When his pause became long enoiigh, she said,
U I would be much obliged if you would let me si>eak to Mr,
Weatherby.”

“Why, of course, Miss Taggart, any time you wish l . . why . .
that is ... do you mean, nowT ’

“Yes. Right now.”

He understood. But he said, “Yes, Miss Taggart.”

580

When Mr. Weatherby’s voice came on the wire, it sounded cau-
tious: “Yes, Miss Taggart? Of what service can I be to you?”

“You can tell your boss that if he doesn’t want me to quit again,
as he knows I did, he is never to call me or speak to me. Anything
your gang has to tell me, let them send you to tel! it. I’ll speak to
you, but not to him. You may tell him that my reason is what he
did to Hank Rearden when he was on Rearden’s payroll. If every-
body else has forgotten it, I haven't.”

“It is my duty to assist the nation’s railroads at any time. Miss
Taggart.” Mr. Weatherby sounded as if he were trying to avoid the
commitment of having heard what he had heard; but a sudden note
of interest crept into his voice as he asked slowly, thoughtfully, with
guarded shrewdness, “Ami to understand. Miss Taggart, that it is
your wish to deal exclusively with me in all official matters? May 1
take this as your policy?”

She gave a brief, harsh chuckle. “Go ahead.” she said. “You may
list me as your exclusive properly, use me as a special item of pull,
and trade me all over Washington, But 1 don’t know what good that
will do you, because I'm not going to play the game, I’m not going
to trade favors. I’m simply going to start breaking your laws right
now — and you can arrest me when you feel that you can afford to,”

“I believe that you have an old-fashioned idea about law\ Miss
Taggart. Why speak of rigid, unbreakable laws? Our modem law's
ate elastic and open to interpretation according to . . circum-
stances.”

“'I hen start being elastic right now, because I'm not and neither
are railroad catastrophes.”

She hung up, and said to Tddie. in the tone of an estimate passed
on physical objects. “They’ll leave us alone for a while.”

She did not seem to notice the changes in her office: the absence
ol Nat Taggart's portrait, the new glass coftee table where Mr. Locey
had spread, for the benefit ol visitors, a display ol the loudest human-
itarian magazines with titles of articles headlined on their covers.

She heard * with the attentive look of a machine equipped to re-
cord, not to react— Hddie's account of what one month had done to
the railroad. She heard his report on what he guessed about the
causes of the catastrophe. She faced, with the same look of detach-
ment, a succession ot men who went in and out of her office with
overhurried steps and hands fumbling in superfluous gestures. He
thought that she had become impervious to anything. But suddenly —
while pacing the office, dictating to him a list of track-laying materi-
als and whole to obtain them illegally -she stopped and looked down
at the magazines on the coffee table. Their headlines said: “The
New Social Conscience,” “Our Duty to the Underprivileged," “Need
versus Greed.” With a single movement of her arm. the abrupt,
explosive movement of sheer physical brutality, such as he had never
seen from her before, she swept the magazines off the table and
went on, her voice reciting a list of figures without a break, as if
theie were no connection between her mind and the violence of
her body.

581

Late in the afternoon, finding a moment alone in her office, she
telephoned Hank Rearden.

She gave her name to his secretary — and she heard, in the way he
said it, the haste with which he had seized the receiver: “Dagny?”

“Hello, Hank. I’m back.”

“Where?”

“In my office.”

She heard the things he did not say, in the moment’s silence on
the wire, then he said, “I suppose I'd better start bribing people at
once to get the ore to start pouring rail for you.”

“Yes. As much of it as you can. It doesn’t have to be Rearden
Metal. It can be — ” The break in her voice was almost too brief to
notice, but what it held was the thought: Rearden Metal rail for
going back to the time before heavy steeP — perhaps back to the
lime of wooden rails with strips of iron? it can be steel, any weight,
anything you can give me.”

“All right. Dagny, do you know that I’ve surrendered Rearden
Metal to them? Tve signed the Gift Certificate.”

“Yes. I know.”

“Tve given in.”

“Who am 1 to blame you? Haven’t I?” He did not answer, and
she said, “Hank. I don’t think they care whether there’s a train or
a blast furnace left on earth. Wc do. They’re holding us by our love
of it, and w'e’ll go on paying so long as there’s still one chance
left to keep one single wheel alive and moving in token of human
intelligence. We’ll go on holding it afloat, like our drowning child,
and when the flood swallows it, we’ll go down with the last wheel
and the last syllogism. 1 know what we’re paying, but — price is no
object any longer.”

“I know.”

“Don’t be afraid for me, flank. I’ll be all right by tomorrow
morning.”

“I’ll never be afraid for you. darling. I’ll see you tonight.”

Chapter IX THE FACE WITHOUT PAIN OR FEAR OR GUILT

The silence of her apartment and the motionless perfection of objects
that had remained just as she had left them a month before, struck
her with a sense of relief and desolation together, when she entered
her living room. The silence gave her an illusion of privacy and
ownership; the sight of the objects reminded her that they were pre-
serving a moment she could not recapture, as she could not undo
the events that had happened since.

There was still a remnant of daylight beyond the windows. She
had left the office earlier than she intended, unable to iummon the
effort for any task that could be postponed till morning. This was
new to her — and it was new that she should now feel minre at home
in her apartment than in her office.

She took a shower, and stood for long, blank minutes, letting the
water run over her body, but stepped out hastily when she realized

582

that what she wanted to wash off was not the dust of the drive from
the country, but the feel of the office.

She dressed, lighted a cigarette and walked into the living room,
to stand at the window, looking at the city, as she had stood looking
at the countryside at the start of this day.

She had said she would give her life for one more year on the
railroad. She was back; but this was not the joy of working: it was
only the clear, cold peace of a decision reached — and the stillness of
unadmitted pain.

Clouds had wrapped the sky and had descended as fog to wrap
the streets below, as if the sky were engulfing the city. She could
see the whole of Manhattan Island, a long, triangular shape cutting
into an invisible ocean. It looked like the prow of a sinking ship: a
few tall buildings still rose above it, like funnels, but the rest was
disappearing under gray-blue coils, going down slowly into vapor and
space. This was how they had gone — she thought — Atlantis, the city
that sank into the ocean, and all the other kingdoms that vanished,
leaving the same legend in all the languages of men, and the same
longing.

She felt — as she had felt it one spring night, slumped across her
desk in the crumbling olfice of the John Galt Line, by a window
lacing a dark alley— the sense and vision of her own world, which
she would never reach. . . You — she thought— whoever you are,

v\hom 1 have always loved and never found, you whom I expected
to see al the end ot the rails beyond the horizon, you whose presence
I had always felt in the streets ot the city and whose world 1 had
wanted to build, it is my love for you that had kept me moving, my
love and my hope to reach you and my wish to be worthy of you
on the day when l would stand before you face to face. Now l know
that I shall never find you— that it is not to be reached or lived —
but what is left of my life is still yours, and I wall go on in your
name, even though it is a name I’ll never learn, I will go on serving
you, even though I'm never to win. I will go on, to be worthy of
you on the day when I would have met you. even though I won't. * . .
She had never accepted hopelessness, but she stood at the window
and, addressed to the shape of a fogbound city, it was her self-
dedication to unrequited love.

The doorbell rang.

She turned with indifferent astonishment to open the door — but
she knew that she should have expected him, when she saw that it
was Francisco d'Anconia. She fell no shock and no rebellion, only
the cheerless serenity of her assurance — and she raised her head to
face him, with a slow, deliberate movement, as if telling him that
she had chosen her stand and that she stood in the open.

His face was grave and calm; the look of happiness was gone, but
the amusement of the playboy had not returned. He looked as if all
masks were down, he looked direct, tightly disciplined, intent upon
a purpose, he looked like a man able to know the earnestness of
actioh, as she had once expected him to look — he had never seemed
so attractive as he did in this moment- -and she noted, in astonish-

583

meat, her sudden feeling that he was not a man who had deserted
her, but a man whom she had deserted,

“Dagny, are you able to talk about it now?”

“Yes — if you wish. Come in.”

He glanced briefly at her living room, her home which he had
never entered, then his eyes came back to her. He was watching her
attentively. He seemed to know that the quiet simplicity of her man-
ner was the worst of all signs for his purpose, that it was like a
spread of ashes where no flicker of pain could be revived, that even
pain would have been a form of fire.

“Sit down, Francisco.”

She remained standing before him, as if consciously letting him
see that she had nothing to hide, not even the weariness of her
posture, the price she had paid for this day and her carelessness
of price.

“I don’t think 1 can stop you now,” he said, “if you’ve made your
choice. But if there’s one chance left to stop you. it’s a chance I
have to take.”

She shook her head slowly. “There isn’t. And — what for, Fran-
cisco? You’ve given up. What difference docs it make to you whether
I perish with the railroad or away from it?”

“I haven’t given up the future.”

“What future?”

“The day when the looters will perish, but we won’t.”

“It Taggart Transcontinental is to perish with the looters, then so
am 1.”

He did not take his eyes otf her face and he did not answer.

She added dispassionately, “I thought I could live without it. i
can’t. Ill never try it again. Francisco, do you remember? — wc both
believed, when we started, that the only sin on earth was to do things
badly. 1 still believe it.” The first note of life shuddered in her voice.
“I can’t stand by and watch what they did at that tunnel I can’t
accept wjiat they're all accepting— Francisco, it’s the thing we
thought so monstrous, you and 1! —the belief that disasters are one’s
natural fate, to be borne, not fought. I can’t accept submission, 1
can’t accept helplessness. 1 can’t accept renunciation. So long as
there’s a railroad left to run. I’ll run it.”

“In order to maintain the looters’ world?”

“In order to maintain the last strip of mine ”

“Dagny,” he said slowly, “l know why one loves one’s w'ork. I
know what it means to you, the job of running trains. But you would
not run them if they were empty. Dagnv, what is it you see when
you think of a moving train?”

She glanced at the city. “ I'he life of a man of ability who might
have perished in that catastrophe, but will escape the neft one. which
HI prevent — a man who has an intransigent mind and;an unlimited
ambition, and is in love with his own life ... the kindjof man who
is what we were when we started, you and 1, You gave him up.
I can’t.”

He dosed his eyes for an instant, and the tightening movement of
his mouth was a smile, a smile substituting for a moan of understand-

584

ing, amusement and pain- He asked, his voice gravely gentle, “Do
you think that you can still serve him — that kind of man—by running
the railroad?”

“Yes.”

“All right, Dagny. I won’t try to stop you. So long as you still
think that, nothing can stop you, or should. You will stop on the
day when you’ll discover that your work has been placed in the
service, not of that man's life, but of his destruction.”

“Francisco!” It was a cry of astonishment and despair. “You do
understand it, you know what I mean by that kind of man, you see
him, too!”

“Oh yes,” he said simply, casually, looking at some point in space
within the room, almost as if he were seeing a real person. He added,
“Why should you be astonished? You said that we were of his kind
once, you and I. We still arc. But one of us has betrayed him.”

“Yes,” she said sternly, “one of us has. We cannot serve him
by i enunciation.”

“We cannot serve him by making terms with his destroyers.”

“I'm not making terms with them. They need me They know it.
It's my terms that i'll make them accept.”

“By playing a game in which they gain benefits in exchange for
harming you?”

“If 1 can keep Taggart transcontinental m existence, it's the only
benefit 1 want. What do 1 care ii they make me pay ransoms? Let
them have what they want. I'll have the railroad,”

He smiled. “Do you think so? Do you think that theii need of
»ou is your protection 7 Do you think that you can give them what
they want? No, you won’t quit until you see. o! your own sight and
judgment, what it is that they really want. You know, Dagny, we
were taught that some things belong to God and others to Caesar.
Perhaps their God would permit it. But the man vou say we’re serv-
ing -he docs not permit it He permits no divided allegiance, no war
between your mind and your body, no gulf between your values and
Win actions, no tributes to Caesar He permits no Caesars.”

“For twelve years.” she said sottly. *T would have thought it incon-
ceivable that there might come a day when I would have to beg your
lorgiveness on my knees Now 1 think it's possible. It I come to see
Hi it vou're right. I will. But not until then.”

“You will. But not on your knees.”

He was looking at her. as if he were seeing her body as she stood
before him, even Chough his eyes were directed at her face, and his
i 1 lance told her what form of atonement and surrender he was seeing
m the future. She saw the effort he made to look away, his hope
that she had not seen his glance or understood it, his silent struggle,
betrayed by the tension of a lew muscles under the skin of his face —
trie face she knew so well.

“Until then. Dagny, remember that we're enemies, l didn't want
h> tell you this, but you’re the first person who almost stepped into
heaven and came back to earth. You’ve glimpsed too much, so you
have to know this clearly. It's you that I’m fighting, not your brother
lames or Wesley Mouch. It's you that 1 have to deleat. 1 am out to

585

end all the things that are most precious to you right now. While
you'll struggle to save Taggart Transcontinental. I will be working
to destroy it. Don't ever ask me for help or money. You know my
reasons. Now you may hate me— as. from your stand, you should."

She raised her head a little, there was no perceptible change in
her posture, it was no more than her awareness of her own body
and of its meaning to him, but for the length of one sentence she
stood as a woman, the suggestion of defiance coming only from the
faintly stressed spacing of her words: “And what will it do to you?"

He looked at her, in full understanding, but neither admitting nor
denying the confession she wanted to tear from him. "That is no
one's concern but mine," he answered.

It was she who weakened, but realized, while saying it, that this
was still more cruel: "I don't hate you. I’ve tried to. lor years, but
1 never will, no matter what we do, either one of us."

“I know it," he said, his voice low, so that she did not hear the
pain, but felt it within herself as it by direct reflection from him.

“Francisco!" she cried, in desperate defense of him against herselt.
“How can you do what you're doing?"

“By the grace of my love"— for you, said his eyes— “for the man,"
said his voice, “who did not perish in your catastrophe and who will
never perish."

She stood silently still lor a moment, as if in respectful acknow-
ledgment.

“I wish I could spare you what you’re going to go through." he
said, the gentleness of his voice saying: It’s not me that you should
pity. “But 1 can't. Every one of us has to travel that road by his
own steps. But it’s the same road "

“Where does it lead?"

He smiled, as if softly closing a door on the questions that he
would not answer. “To Atlantis," he said,

“What?" she asked, startled.

“Don’Uyou remember? — the lost city that only the spirits ot heroes
can enter."

The connection that struck her suddenly had been struggling in
her mind since morning, like a dim anxiety she had had no time to
identify. She had known it, but she had thought only ot his own fate
and his personal decision, she had thought of him as acting alone.
Now she remembered a wider danger and sensed the vast, undefined
shape of the enemy she was facing.

“You’re one of them," she said slowly, “aren’t you?"

“Of whom?”

“Was it you in Ken Danagger’s office?"

He smiled. “No," But she noted that he did not ask what she
meant.

“Is there — you would know it— is there actually a destroyer loose
in the world?"

“Of course."

“Who is it?"

“You."

586

She shrugged; her face was growing hard. “The men who’ve quit,
are they still alive or dead?”

“They're dead— as far as you’re concerned. But there’s to he a
Second Renaissance in the world. HI wait for it.”

“No!” The sudden violence of her voice was m personal answer
to him, to one of the two things he had wanted her to hear in his
words. “No, don’t wait for me!”

“I’ll always wait tor you, no matter what we do, either one of us.”

The sound they heard was the turning of a key in the lock of the
entrance door. The door opened and Hank Rearden came in.

He stopped briefly on the threshold, then walked slowly into the
living room, his hand slipping the key into his pocket.

She knew that he had seen Francisco’s face before he had seen
hers. He glanced at her, but his eyes came back to Francisco, as if
this were the only face he was now able to see.

It was at Francisco’s face that she was afraid to look. The effort
she made to pull her glance along the curve of a few steps telt as if
she were pulling a weight beyond her power. Francisco had risen to
his feet, as if in the unhurried, automatic manner of a d’Anconia
trained to the code of courtesy. There was nothing that Rearden
could see in his taco. But what she saw in it was worse than she
had feared.

“What are you doing here?” asked Rearden, in the tone one
would use to address a menial caught in a drawing rwm

“I see that I ha\e no right to ask you the same question,” said
ft an cisco. She knew what effort was rcquiied to achieve the clear,
toneless quality of his voice. His eyes kept returning to Rearden’s
light hand, as it he weie still seeing the key between his fingers.

“Then answer it.” said Rearden.

“Hank, any questions you wish to ask should be asked of me,”
she said.

Rearden did not seem to see or hear her. “Answer it” he
repeated

“There is only one answer which you would have the right to
demand,” said Francisco, “so 1 will answer you that that is not the
reason of my presence here.”

“There is only one reason for your presence in the house of any
woman,” said Rearden. “And I mean, any woman — as far as you're
concerned Do you think that 1 believe it now, that confession of
youis or anything you ever said to me?”

“I have given you grounds not to trust me, but none to include
Miss Taggart.”

“Don't tell me that you have no chance here, never had and never
will. 1 know it. But that 1 should find you here on the (irst — ”

“Hank, if you wish to accuse me — ” she began, but Rearden
whirled to her.

“Ciod, no, Dagny, I don’t! But you shouldn’t be seen speaking to
him. You shouldn't deal with him in any way. You don’t know him.
I dp.” He turned to Francisco. “What are you after? Are you hoping
to include her among your kind of conquests or — ”

587

“No!” It was an involuntary cry and it sounded futile, with its
passionate sincerity offered — to be rejected — as its only proof.

‘'No? Then are you here on a matter of business? Are you setting
a trap, as you did for me? What sort of double-cross are you prepar-
ing for her?”

“My purpose . . . was not ... a matter of business.”

“Then what was it?”

“If you still care to believe me, l can tell you only that it involved
no . . , betrayal of any kind.”

“Do you think that you may still discuss betrayal, in my presence?”

“I will answer you some day. 1 cannot answer you now.”

“You don’t like to be reminded of it, do you? You've stayed away
from me since, haven’t you? You didn’t expect to see me here? You
didn’t want to face me?” But he knew that Francisco was lacing him
as no one else did these days — he saw the eyes held straight to meet
his, the features composed, without emotion, without defense or ap-
peal, set to endure whatever was coming — he saw the open, unpro-
tected look of courage — this was the face of the man he had loved,
the man who had set him free of guilt — and he found himself lighting
against the knowledge that this lace still held him, above all else,
above his month of impatience for the sight of Dagny. ‘‘Why don’t
you defend yourself, if you have nothing to hide? Why are you here?
Why were you stunned to see me enter?”

“Hank, stop it!” Dagny’s voice was a cry, and she drew back,
knowing that violence was the most dangerous element to introduce
into this moment

Both men turned to her “Please let me be the one to answer,”
Francisco said quietly.

“I told you that 1 hoped I'd never see him again.” said Rcardcn.
“I'm sorry if it has to be here. It doesn't concern you. but there's
something he must be paid for.”

“If that is . . . your purpose,” Francisco said with effort, “haven't
you . . . achieved it already 9 ”

“What's the matter?” Reardon's face was tro/en. Ins lips barely
moving, but his voice had the sound of a chuckle. “Is this your way
of asking for mercy?”

The instant of silence was Francisco's strain to a greater el fort.
“Yes . . if you wish.” he answered

“Did you gram it when you held my future in your hands?”

“You are justified in anything you wish to think of me. Bui since
it doesn't concern Miss Taggart . . would you now permit me to
leave?”

“No! Do you want to evade it, like all those other cowards’* Do
you want to escape?”

“I will come anywhere you require any time you wish, feut [ would
rather it were not in Miss Taggart’s presence.”

“Why not? 1 want it to be in her presence, since thi^ is the one
place you had no right to come. I have nothing left to protect from
you, you’ve taken more than the looters can ever take, you’ve destroyed
everything you've touched, but here is one thing you’re not going to

588

touch.” He knew that the rigid absence of emotion in Francisco’s
face was the strongest evidence of emotion, the evidence of some
abnormal effort at control — he knew that this was torture and that
he, Rearden, was driven blindly by a feeling which resembled a tor-
turer’s enjoyment except that he was now unable to tell whether he
was torturing Francisco or himself. “You’re worse than the looters,
because you betray with full understanding of that which you’re be-
traying. 1 don’t know what form of corruption is your motive — but
1 want you to learn that there are things beyond your reach, beyond
your aspiration or your malice.”

“You have nothing ... to fear from me , . , now.”

“J want you to learn that you are not to think of her, not to look
at her, not to approach her. Of all men, it’s you who Ye not to appear
in her presence.” He knew that lie was driven by a desperate anger
at his own leeling for this man, that the feeling still lived, that it was
this tceling which he had to outrage and destroy. “Whatever your
motive, it’s from any contact with you that she has to be protected.”

if 1 gave you my word — ” He stopped.

Rearden chuckled, “i know what they mean, your words, your
convictions, your friendship and your oath by the only woman you
ever — ” He stopped. They all knew what this meant, in the same
instant that Rearden knew it.

He made a step toward Francisco: he asked, pointing at Dagny,
Ins voice low and strangely unlike his own voice, as if it neither came
tiom nor were addressed to a living person, “Is this the woman
>ou love?”

Francisco closed his eyes.

“Don't ask him that!” The cry was Dagny’s.

is this the woman you love?”

Francisco answered, looking at her, “Yes.”

Rearden ’s hand rose, swept down and slapped Francisco’s face.

The scream came from Dagny When she could see again— after
an instant that felt as if the blow had struck her own cheek — Francis-
co’s hands were the first thing she saw. llic heir oi the d’Anconias
stood thrown back against a table, clasping the edge behind him, not
to support himself, but to stop his own hands. She saw the rigid
stillness of his body, a body that was pulled too straight but seemed
broken, with the slight, unnatural angles of his waistline and shoul-
ders, with his arms held stiff but slanted back — he stood as if the
effort not to move were turning the force of his violence against
himself, as if the motion he resisted were running through his mus-
cles as a tearing pain. She saw his convulsed Fingers struggling to
gmw fast to the table’s edge, she wondered which would break first,
the wood of the table or the bones of the man, and she knew that
Rearden's life hung in the balance.

When her eyes moved up to Francisco’s face, she saw no sign of
struggle, only the skin of his temples pulled tight and the planes of
his cheeks drawn inward, seeming faintly more hollow than usual. It
made his face look naked, pure and young. She felt terror because
she was seeing in his eyes the tears which were not there. His eyes
were brilliant and dry. He was looking at Rearden, but it was not

589

Rear den that he was seeing. He looked as if he were facing another
presence in the room and as if his glance were saying: If this is whal
you demand of me. then even this is yours, yours to accept and mine
to endure, there is no more than this in me to offer you, hut let me
be proud to know that 1 can offer so much. She saw — with a single
artery beating under the skin of his throat, with a froth of pink in
the corner of his mouth — the look of an enraptured dedication which
was almost a smile, and she knew that she was witnessing Francisco
d’Anconia’s greatest achievement.

When she felt herself shaking and heard her own voice, it seemed
to meet the last echo of her scream in the air of the room— and she
realized how biief a moment had passed between. Her voice had the
savage sound of rising to deliver a blow and it was crying to Rearden:

" — to protect me from haul Long before you ever — ”

"Don’t!"' Francisco’s head jerked to her, the brief snap of his voice
held all of his unreleased violence, and she knew it was an order
that had to be obeyed.

Motionless but for the slow curve of his head, Francisco turned to
Rearden. She saw his hands leave the edge of the table and hang
relaxed by his sides. It was Rearden that he was now seeing, and
there was nothing in Francisco’s face except the exhaustion of effort,
but Rearden knew suddenly how much this man had loved him.

“Within the extent of your knowledge,” Francisco said quietly,
"you are right.”

Neither expecting nor permitting an answer, he turned to leave.
He bowed to Dagny, inclining his head in a manner that appeared
as a simple gesture of leaving-taking to Rearden, as a gesture of
acceptance to her. Then he left.

Rearden stood looking after him, knowing — without context and
with absolute certainty — that he would give his life for the powet
not to have committed the action he had committed.

When he turned to Dagny, his face looked drained, open and
faintly attentive, as if he were not questioning her about the words
she had cut off, but were waiting for them to come.

A shudder of pity ran through her body and ended in the move-
ment of shaking her head: she did not know for which of the two
men the pity was intended, but it made her unable to speak and she
shook her head over and over again, as if trying desperately to ne-
gate some vast, impersonal suffering that had made them all its
victims.

"If there’s something that must be said, say it.” His voice was
toneless.

The sound she made was half-chuckle, half-moan — it was not a
desire for vengeance, but a desperate sense of justice that drove the
cutting bitterness of her voice, as she cried, consciously throwing the
words at his face, "You wanted to know the name 0f that other
man? The man I slept with? The man who had me Jfirst? It was
Francisco d’Anconia!”

She saw the force of the blow by seeing his face swept blank. She
knew that if justice was her purpose, she had achieved it — because
this slap was worse than the one he had dealt.

590

She felt suddenly calm, knowing lhat her words had had to he
said for the sake of all three of them. The despair of a helpless
victim left her, she was not a victim any longer, she was one of the
contestants, willing to bear the responsibility of action. She stood
facing him, waiting for any answer he would choose to give her,
feeling almost as if it were her turn to be subjected to violence.

She did not know what form of torture he was enduring, or what
he saw being wrecked within him and kept himself the only one to
see There was no sign of pain to give her any warning; he looked
as if he were just a man who stood still in the middle of a room,
making his consciousness absorb a fact that it refused to absorb.
Then she noticed that he did not change his posture, that even his
hands hung by his sides with the lingers half-bent as they had been
lor a long time, it seemed to her that she could feel the heavy numb-
ness at the blood stopping in his fingers — and this was the only clue
to his suffering she was able to find, but it told her that that which
he felt lelt him no power to teel anything else, not even the existence
ol his own body. She waited, her pity vanishing and becoming
i espect.

Then she saw his eyes move slowly from her face down the length
of her body, and she knew the soil of torture he was now choosing
to experience, because it was a glance of a nature he could not hide
Irom her. She knew that he was seeing her as she had been at seven-
teen, he was seeing her with the rival he hated, he was seeing them
together as they would be now, a sight he could neither endure nor
icsist. She saw the protection of control dropping from his face, hut
lie did not care whether he let her see his face alive and naked,
because there now was nothing to icad in it except an unrevealing
violence, some part of which resembled hatred.

He seized her shoulders, and she felt prepared to accept that he
would now kill her or beat her into unconsciousness, and m the
moment when she felt certain that he had thought of it, she felt her
body thrown against him and his mouth falling on hers, more brutally
than the act ot a beating would have permitted.

She tound herself, in terror, twisting her body to resist, and. in
exultation, twisting her arms around him, holding him. letting her
lips bring blood to his, knowing that she had never wanted him as
she did in this moment.

When he threw her down on the couch, she knew, to the rhythm
of the heat of his body, that it was the act of his victory over his
rival and of his surrender to him, the act of ownership brought to
unendurable violence by the thought of the man whom it was defy-
ing. the act of transforming his hatred for the pleasure that man had
known into the intensity of his own pleasure, his conquest of that
man by means of her body — she felt Francisco’s presence through
Kearden's mind, she felt as if she were surrendering to both men,
to that which she had worshipped in both of them, that which they
held in common, that essence of character which had made of her
love for each an act of loyalty to both. She knew also that this was
his rebellion against the world around them, against its worship of
degradation, against the long torment of his wasted days and lightless

591

struggle — this was what he wished to assert and, alone with her in
the half-dark ness high in space above a city of ruins, to hold as the
last of his property.

Afterwards, they lay still, his face on her shoulder. The reflection
of a distant electric sign kept beating in faint flashes on the ceiling
above her head.

He reached for her hand and slipped her fingers under his face to
let his mouth rest against her palm for a moment, so gently that she
felt his motive more than his touch.

After a while, she got up, she reached for a cigarette, lighted it,
then held it out to him with a slight, questioning lift of her hand; he
nodded, still sitting half-stretched on the couch; she placed the ciga-
rette between his lips and lighted another for herself. She felt a great
sense of peace between them, and the intimacy of the unimportant
gestures underscored the importance of the things they were not
saying to each other. Everything was said, she thought — but knew
that it waited to be acknowledged.

She saw his eyes move to the entrance door once in a while and
remain on it for long moments, as if he were still seeing the man
who had left.

He said quietly, “He could have beaten me by letting me have
the truth, any time he wished. Why didn’t he?'*

She shrugged, spreading her hands in a gesture of helpless sadness,
because they both knew the answer. She asked, “He did mean a
great deal to you. didn’t he?”

“He does.”

The two dots of fire at the tips of their cigarettes had moved
slowly to the tips of their fingers, with the small glow of an occasional
flare and the soft crumbling of ashes as sole movement in the silence,
when the doorbell rang. They knew that it was not the man they
wished but could not hope to see return, and she frowned with sud-
den anger as she went to open the door. It look her a moment to
remember that the innocuously courteous figure she saw bowing to
her with a standard smile of welcome was the assistant manager of
the apartment house.

“Good evening. Miss Taggart. We're so glad to see you back. I
just came on duty and heard that you had returned and wanted to
greet you in person.”

“Thank you.” She stood at the door, not moving to admit him.

“I have a letter that came for you about a week ago. Miss Tag-
gart,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “It looked as if it might be
important, but being marked personal,’ it was obviously not in-
tended to be sent to your office and, besides, they did not know
yom address, either — so not knowing where to forward it, I kept it
in our safe and I thought I’d deliver it to you in persori.”

The envelope he handed to her was marked: Registered — Air
Mail — Special Delivery — Personal. The return address sfcid: Quentin
Daniels, Utah Institute of Technology, Afton, Utah.

“Ob . . . Thank you.”

The assistant manager noted that her voice went dropping toward
a whisper, the polite disguise for a gasp, he noted th$t she stood

592

looking down at the sender’s name much longer than was necessary,
so he repeated his good wishes and departed.

She was tearing the envelope open as she walked toward Rearden,
and she stopped in the middle of the room to read the letter. It was
typewritten on thin paper — he could see the black rectangles of the
paragraphs through the transparent sheets — and he could see her
face as she read them.

He expected it, by the time he saw her come to the end: she
leaped to the telephone, he heard the violent whirl of the dial and
her voice saying with trembling urgency, “Long-distance, please . . .
Operator, get me the Utah Institute of Technology at Afton, Utah!”

He asked, approaching. “What is it?”

She extended the letter, not looking at him, her eyes fixed on the
telephone, as if she could force it to answer.

The letter said:

Dear Miss Taggart:

1 have fought it out for three weeks, 1 did not want to
do it, l know how this will hit you and 1 know every argu-
ment you could offer me. because 1 have used them all
against myself -but this is to tell you that 1 am quitting.

I cannot work under the terms of Directive 10-289- -
though not for the reasons its perpetrators intended. 1
know that their abolition of all scientific research does not
mean a damn to you or me, and that you would want me
to continue. But 1 have to quit, because 1 do not wish to
succeed any longer.

1 do not wish to work in a world that regards me as a
slave. I do not wash to be ot any value to people. If 1
succeeded in rebuilding the motor, I would not let you
place it in their service. 1 would not take it upon my con-
science that anything produced by my mind should be used
to bring them comfort.

I know that if we succeed, they will be only too eager
to expropriate the motor. And for the sake of that pros-
pect, w'e have to accept the position of criminals, you and
I, and live under the threat of being arrested at any mo-
ment at their whim. And this is the thing that 1 cannot
take, even were I able to take all the rest: that in order
to give them an inestimable benefit, we should be made
martyrs to the men who, but for us, could not have con-
ceived of it. 1 might have forgiven the rest, but when l
think of this, I say: May they be damned, 1 will see them
all die of starvation, myself included, rather than torgive
them for this or permit it*

To tell you the full truth, 1 want to succeed, to solve the
secret of the motor, as much as ever. So l shall continue to
work on it for my own sole pleasure and for as long as I
last. But if 1 solve it, it will remain my private secret. 1 will
.not release it for any commercial use. Therefore. 1 cannot
take your money any longer. Commercialism is supposed
593

to be despicable, so all those people should truly approve
of my decision, and I — I’m tired of helping those who de-
spise me.

I don't know how long I will last or what 1 will do in
the future. For the moment, I intend to remain in my job
at this Institute. But if any of its trustees or receivers
should remind me that l am now legally forbidden to cease
being a janitor, I will quit.

You had given me my greatest chance and if I am now
giving you a painful blow, perhaps I should ask you to
forgive me. I think that you love your work — as much as
I loved mine, so you will know that my decision was not
easy to make, but that 1 had to make it.

It is a strange feeling — writing this letter. I do not intend
to die, but I am giving up the world and this feels like the
letter of a suicide. So 1 want to say that of all the people
I have known, you are the only person 1 regret leaving
behind.

Sincerely yours,
Quentin Daniels

When he looked up from the letter, he heard her saying, as he
had heard her through the words of the typewritten lines, her voice
rising closer to despair each time:

“Keep ringing. Operator! . . . Please keep ringing! '

“What can you tell him?” he asked. “There are no arguments
to offer.”

“I won’t have a chance to tell him! He's gone by now. It was a
week ago. I’m sure he’s gone. They’ve got him.”

“Who got him?”

“Yes. Operator, I’ll hold the line, keep trying!”

“What would you tell him if he answered?”

“I'd be'g him to go on taking my money, with no strings attached,
no conditions, just so he’ll have the means to continue! I ll promise
him that if we’re still in a looters’ world when and if he succeeds. I
won't ask him to give me the motor or even to tell me its secret
But if, by that time, we’re free—” She stopped.

“If we're free . .

“AH I want from him now is that he doesn't give up and vanish,
like . . like all those others. I don’t want to let them get him If
it’s not too late — oh God, 1 don’t want them to get him! . . . Yes.
Operator, keep ringing!”

“What good will it do us, even if he continues to work?”

“That’s all I'll beg him to do— just to continue. Maybfc we’ll never
get a chance to use the motor in the future. But I wj&nt to know
that somewhere in the world there’s still a great brain work on a
great attempt — and that we still have a chance at a future. ... If
that motor is abandoned again , then there’s nothing but Starnesvillc
ahead of us.”

“Yes. I know,”

594

She held the receiver pressed to her ear, her arm stiff with the
effort not to tremble. She waited, and he heard, in the silence, the
futile clicking of the unanswered call.

“He’s gone,” she said “They got him. A week is much longer
than they need. I don’t know how they learn when the time is right,
but this” -she pointed at the letter — “this was their time and they
wouldn't have missed it.”

“Who?”

The destroyer’s agents.”

“Are you beginning to think that they really exist?”

“Yes.”

“Arc you serious?”

i am. I’ve met one of them.”

“Who?”

“I'll tell you later. 1 don’t know who their leader is, but I’m going
lo find out, one of these days. I’m going to lind out. I’ll be damned
if I let them — ”

She broke off on a gasp; he saw the change in her face the moment
before he heard the click of a distant receiver being lifted and the
sound of a man’s voice saying, across the wire. “Hello?”

“Daniels! Is that you? You’re alive? You’re still there 7 ”

“Why, yes. Is this you. Miss Taggart? What’s the matter 7 ”

“I .1 thought you were gone.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I just heard the phone ringing. I was out in the
back lot, gathering carrots.”

“Carrots?” She was laughing with hysterical relief.

“I have my own vegetable patch out there. Used to be the Insti-
tute's parking lot. Are you calling from New York, Miss Taggart?”

“Yes. I just received your letter. Just now. I ... I had been away.”

“Oh.” There was a pause, then he said quietly, “There's really
nothing more to be said about it. Miss Taggart.”

“Tell me, arc you going away?”

“No.”

“You're not planning to go?”

“No. Where?”

“Do you intend to remain at the Institute?”

“Yes.”

Tor how long? Indefinitely?”

“Yes — as far as 1 know.”

“Has anyone approached you?”

“About what?”

“About leaving.”

“No. Who?”

“Listen, Daniels, I won’t try to discuss your letter over the phone.
But I must speak to you. Tm coming to see you. I'll get there as
fast as 1 can.”

“1 don’t want you to do that. Miss Taggart. I don’t want you to
go to such an effort, when it’s useless.”

“(Jive me a chance, won’t you? You don't have to promise to
change your mind, you don’t have to commit yourself to anything—
only to give me a hearing. If 1 want to come, it’s my risk. I’m taking

595

it. There are things I want to say to you. Pm asking you only for
the chance to say them.”

“You know that I will always give you that chance. Miss Taggart.”

“I’m leaving for Utah at once. Tonight. But there’s one thing I
want you to promise me. Will you promise to wait for me? Will you
promise to be there when I arrive?”

“Why ... of course. Miss Taggart. Unless I die or something
happens outside my power — but I don’t expect it to happen.”

“Unless you die, you will wait for me no matter what happens?”

“Of course.”

“Do you give me your word that you’ll wait?”

“Yes, Miss Taggart.”

“Thank you. Good night.”

“Good night. Miss Taggart.”

She pressed the receiver down and picked it up again in the same
sweep of her hand and rapidly dialed a number.

“Eddie? . . . Have them hold the Comet for me. . . . Yes, tonight’s
Comet. Give orders to have my car attached, then come here, to my
place, at once.” She glanced at her watch. “It's eight-twelve. 1 have
an hour to make it. I don’t think I’ll hold them up too long. I’ll talk
to you while 1 pack.”

She hung up and turned to Rearden.

“Tonight?” he said.

“I have to.”

“I guess so. Don't you have to go to Colorado, anyway 0 ”

“Yes. I intended to leave tomorrow night. But 1 think Eddie can
manage to take care of my office, and I’d belter start now'. It takes
three days” — she remembered — “it will now take five days to reach
Utah. 1 have to go by train, there are people 1 have to see on the
line — this can’t he delayed, either.”

“How long will you stay in Colorado?”

“Hard to tell.”

“Wire fine when you get there, will you? If it looks as if it’s going
to be long. I’ll join you there.”

This was the only expression he could give to the words he had
desperately wished to say to her, had waited for, had come here to
say. and now wished to pronounce more than ever, but knew that it
must not be said tonight.

She knew, by a faint, solemn stress in the tone of his voice, that
this was his acceptance of her confession, his surrender, his forgive-
ness. She asked, “Can you leave the mills?”

“It will take me a few days to arrange, but I can.”

He knew what her words were admitting, acknowledging and for-
giving him, when she said, “Hank, why don’t you meet me in Colo-
rado in a week? If you fly your plane, we’ll both get Jhere at the
same time. And then we’ll come back together.”

“All right . . . dearest.”

* * t

She dictated a list of instructions, while pacing her bclroom, gath-
ering her clothes, hastily packing a suitcase. Rearden had left; Eddie
Willers sat at her dressing table, making notes. He seemed to work

5 %

in his usual manner of unquestioning efficiency, as if he were not
aware of the perfume bottles and powder boxes, as if the dressing
table were a desk and the room were only an office.

■Til phone you from Chicago, Omaha, Flagstaff and Afton,” she
said, tossing underwear into the suitcase. “If you need me in be-
tween, call any operator along the line, with orders to flag the train/*

"The Comet?” he asked mildly.

“Hell, yes! — the Comet.”

*Okay.”

"Don’t hesitate to call, if you have to.”

"Okay. But 1 don't think I’ll have to.”

"We’ll manage. Well work by long-distance phone, just as we did
when we — ” She stopped.

" -when we were building the John Galt Line?” he asked quietly.
They glanced at each other, but said nothing else.

■ What's the latest report on the construction crews?” she asked.

"Everything’s under way. I got word, just after you left the office,
that the grading gangs have started — out of Laurel. Kansas, and out
ot Jaspci, Oklahoma. The rail is on its way to them from Silver
Springs. It will be all right. The hardest thing to hnd was--”

“Hie men?”

"Yes. The men to put m charge. We had trouble out West, over
the Elgin to Midland stretch. All the men we were counting on are
gone I couldn’t find anyone able to assume responsibility, neither
on our line nor elsewhere. I even tried to get Dan Conway, but — ”
Dan Conway she asked, stopping.

"Yes. 1 did. 1 tried. Do you remember how he used to have rail
laid at the rate of live miles a day, right in that part of the country?
Oh. 1 know he’d have reason to hate our guts, but what does it
matter now 7 l found him— -he's living on a ranch out in Arizona. I
plumed him myself and I begged him to save us. Just to lake charge,
lor one night, of building five and a half miles of track. Five and a
half miles, Dagny, that we're stuck with — and he's the greatest rail-
road builder living! I told him that 1 was asking him to do it as a
gesture of charity to us, if he would. You know, I think he under-
stood me. He wasn’t angry. He sounded sad. But he wouldn’t do it.
Me said one must not try to bring people back out of the gTave. . . .
He wished me luck. I think he meant it. . . . You know, 1 don’t think
he's ont of those that the destroyer knocked out. I think he just
broke by himself.”

"Yes. I know he did.”

Eddie saw the expression on her face and pulled himself up hastily,
"Oh, we finally found a man to put in charge at Elgin,” he said,
forcing his voice to sound confident. “Don't worry, the track will be
built long before you get there.”

She glanced at him with the faint suggestion of a smile, thinking
ot how often she had said these words to him and of the desperate
bravery with which he was now trying to tell her: Don’t worry. He
caught her glance, he understood and the answering hint of his smile
had a touch of embarrassed apology.

He turned back to his note pad, feeling anger at himself, sensing

597

that he had broken his own unstated commandment: Don’t make it
harder for her. He should not have told her about Dan Conway, he
thought; he should not have said anything to remind them both of
the despair they would feel, if they felt. He wondered what was the
matter with him: he thought it inexcusable that he should find his
discipline slipping just because this w as a room, not an office.

She went on speaking— -and he listened, looking down at his pad,
making a brief notation once in a while. He did not permit himself
to look at her again

She threw the door of her closet open, jerked a suit off a hanger
and folded it rapidly, while her voice went on with unhuuied pteci-
sion. He did not look up. he was aware of her only by means ot
sound: the sound of the swill movements and of the measured voice.
He knew what was wrong with him, he thought; he did not want her
to leave, he did not want to lose her again, after so brief a moment
of reunion. But to indulge any personal loneliness, at a time when
he knew how desperately the railroad needed her in Colorado, was
an act of disloyalty he had never committed before — and he felt a
vague, desolate sense of guilt.

‘'Send out orders that the Comet is to stop at every division
point, 7 ’ she said, “and that all division superintendents are to prepare
tor me a report on — ”

He glanced up— then his glance stopped and he did not hear the
rest of the words. He saw a man’s dressing gown hanging on the
back of the open closet door, a dark blue gown with the white initials
HR on its breast pocket.

He remembered where he had seen that gown before, he lernem
bered the man facing him across a breakfast table in the Wayne -
Falkland Hotel, he remembered that man corning, unannounced, to
her office late on a Thanksgiving night —and the realization that he
should have known it, came to him as two subterianean jolts of a
single earthquake: it came with a feeling that screamed “No!” so
savage!/ that the scream, not the sight, brought down every girder
within him. ft was not the shock of the discovery, but the more
terrible shock of what it made him discover about himself.

He hung on to a single thought: that he must not let her see what
he had noticed or what it had done to him. He fell a sensation of
embarrassment magnified to the point of physical torture; it was the
dread of violating her privacy twice; by learning her secret* and by
revealing his own. He bent lower over the note pad and concentrated
on an immediate purpose: to stop his pencil from shaking.

*\ . . fifty miles of mountain trackage to build, and we can count
on nothing but whatever material we own.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said, his voice barely audible, “1 didn’t
hear what you said.”

“I said I want a report from ail superintendents on* every foot of
rail and every piece of equipment available on their divisions.”

“Okay,”

”1 will confer with each of them in turn. Have thefn meet me in
my car aboard the Comet.”

“Okay,”

598

“Send word out — unofficially — that the engineers are to make up
time for the stops by going seventy, eighty, a hundred miles an hour,
anything they wish as and when they need to, and that 1 will . . .
Eddie?”

“Yes, Okay.’’

“Eddie, what’s the matter?”

He had to look up, to face her and, desperately, to lie for the first
lime in his life, *Tm . - . I’m afraid of the trouble we’ll gel into with
the law,” he said,

“Forget it. Don’t you see that there isn’t any law lelt? Anything
goes now, for whoever can get away with it — and, for the moment,
it s we who’re setting the terms.”

When she was ready, he earned her suitcase to a taxicab, then
down the plalfoim of the T aggart Terminal to her office car. the last
at the end of the Comet He stood on the platform, saw the train
jerk forward and watched the red markers on the back of her car
slipping slowly away from him into the long darkness of the exit
Uinnel. When they were gone, he felt what one leels at the loss of
a dream one had not known till alter it was lost.

There were tew people on the platform around him and they
seemed to move with self-conscious strain, as if a sense of disaster
dung to the rails and to the girders above their heads. He thought
mditferentlY that utter a century of safety, men were once more
regaiding the departure of a tram as an event involving a gamble
with death.

He remembered that he had had no dinner, and he felt no desire
to cat. but the underground cafeteria ot the Taggart Terminal was
more truly his home than the empty cube of space he now thought
of as his apartment— so he walked to the cafeteria, because he had
no other place to go.

The cafeteria was almost deserted — but the first thing he saw, as
he entered, was a thin column of smoke rising from the cigarette of
the worker, who sat alone at a table in a dark corner

Not noticing what he put on his tray. Eddie earned it to the work-
er's table, said, “Hello,” sat down and said nothing else. He looked
at the silverware spread before him, wondered about its purpose,
lemembered the use of a fork and attempted to perform the motions
of eating, but found that it was beyond his power. After a while, he
looked up and saw that the worker’s eyes were studying him
attentively.

“No,” said Eddie, “no, there’s nothing the matter with me. . . ,
Oh yes, a lot has happened, but what difference does it make
now? . . . Yes, she’s back. . . What else do you want me to say
about it? . . . How did you know she’s back? Oh well, 1 suppose the
*holc company knew it within the first ten minutes. . . . No, i don’t
know whether I’m glad that she’s back, . . . Sure, she’ll save the
ipilroad— for another year or month. . . , What do you want me to
say? . . . No, she didn’t. She didn’t tell me what she’s counting on,
She didn’t tell me what she thought or felt. . . . Well, how do you
suppose she’d fed? It’s hell for her — all right, for me, tool Only my
kind of hell is my own fault. . . . No. Nothing, I can’t talk about it —

599

talk? — 1 mustn’t even think about it. I’ve got to stop it, stop thinking
of her and — of her, I mean.”

He remained silent and he wondered why the worker’s eyes — the
eyes that always seemed to see everything within him — made him
feel uneasy tonight. He glanced down at the table, and he noticed
the butts of many cigarettes among the remnants of food on the
worker’s plate.

“Are you in trouble, too?” asked Eddie “Oh, just that you’ve sat
here for a long time tonight, haven’t you? . . . For me? Whv should
you have wanted to wait for me? . . . You know. ] never thought
you eared whether you saw me or not, me or anybody, you seemed
so complete in yourself, and that's why 1 liked to talk to you, because
1 felt that you always understood, but nothing could hurt you — you
looked as if nothing had ever hurt you — and it made me feel free,
as it ... as it there were no pain in the world. . . . Do you know
what’s strange about your face? You look as if you've never known
pain or fear or guilt. . . . I’m sorry I’m so late tonight. 1 had to see
her off — she has just left, on the Comet. . . . Yes, tonight, just
now. . . . Yes, she’s gone. . . . Yes. it was a sudden decision — within
the past hour. She intended to leave tomorrow night, but something
unexpected happened and she had to go at once. . . . Yes, she's
going to Colorado — afterwards. . . To Utah — first. . . . Because she
got a letter from Quentin Daniels that he’s quitting — and the one
thing she won’t give up, couldn’t stand to give up. is the motor. You
remember, the motor I told you about, the remnant that she
found. . . . Daniels? He’s a physicist who’s been working lor the past
year, at the Utah Institute of Technology, trying to solve the secret
of the motor and to rebuild it. . . Why do you look at me like
that? . . , No, 1 haven’t told you about him before, because it was a
secret. It was a private, secret project of her own — and of what
interest would it have been to you. anyway? ... 1 guess I can talk
about it now, because he’s quit. . . Yes, he told her his reasons
Ffe said that he won’t give anything produced by his mind to a world
that regards him as a slave. FIc said that he won’t be made a martyr
to people in exchange for giving them an inestimable benefit. . . .
What — what are you laughing at? . . . Stop it, will you 7 Why do you
laugh like that? . . . The whole secret? What do you mean, the whole
secret? He hasn’t found the whole secret of the motor, if that’s what
you meant, but he seemed to be doing well, he had a good chance.
Now it’s lost. She’s rushing to him, she wants to plead, to hold him,
to make him go on — but l think it’s useless. Once they stop, they
don’t come back again. Not one of them has. . . . No. I don’t care,
not any more, we’ve taken so many losses that I’m getting used to
it . . , Oh no! It’s not Daniels that I can’t take, il’s~*no, drop it.
Don’t question me about it. The whole world is going to*pieces, she’s
still fighting to save it, and I — I sit here damning her f<^r something
I had no right to know. . . . No! She’s done nothing tot be damned,
nothing — and, besides, it doesn’t concern the railroad. . i . Don’t pay
any attention to me, it’s not true, it’s not her that Fm damning,
it*s myself. . . . Listen, I’ve always known that you loved Taggart
Transcontinental as I loved it, that it meant something special to

600

you, something personal, and that was why you liked to hear me
talk about it. But this — the thing I learned today— this has nothing
to do with the railroad. It would be of no importance to you. Forget
it. . . . It’s something that I didn’t know about her, that's all . . . J
grew up with her. 1 thought 1 knew her. 1 didn't, ... I don’t know
what it was that I expected, I suppose 1 just thought that she had
no private life of any kind. To me, she was not a person and not . . .
not a woman. She was the railroad. And I didn’t think that anyone
would ever have the audacity to look at her in any other way. . . .
Well, it serves me right. Forget it. . . . Forget it, I said! Why do you
question me like this'* It’s only her private life. What can it matter
to you? . . . Drop it. for God's sake! Don’t you see that I can't talk
about it? . . . Nothing happened, nothing's wrong with me, I just —
oh. why am I lying? 1 can't lie to you, you always seem to see
everything, it's worse than trying to lie to myself! ... I have lied to
myself. I didn’t know what I felt for her. The railroad? f’m a rotten
hypocrite. If the railroad was all she meant to me, it wouldn’t have
hit me like this. I wouldn't have telt that 1 wanted to kill him! . . .
What’s the matter with you tonight? Why do you look at me like
that? . . . Oh. what’s the matter with all of us? Why is there nothing
but misery left for anyone? Why do we suffer so much? We weren’t
meant to, I always thought that we were to be happy, all of us, as
our natural fate. What are we doing? What have we lost** A year
ago. I wouldn’t have damned her for finding something she wanted.
But 1 know that they’re doomed, both of them, and so am l. and so
is everybody, and she was all 1 had left. . . It was so great, to be
alive, it was such a wonderful chance. I didn’t know that I loved it
and that that was our love, hers and mine and yours- -but the world
i> perishing and we cannot stop it. Why are we destroying ourselves?
Who will tell us the truth? Who will save Oh. who is John

Galt?! . . . No, it’s no use. It doesn’t matter now Why should l feel
anything? We won’t last much longer Why should I care what she
does? Why should I care that she's sleeping with Hank Reardeit? , . .
Oh Ciod! —what’s the matter with you? Don’t go! Where are you
going?’’

Chapter X THE SIGN OF THE DOLLAR

She sat at the window of the train, her head thrown back, not mov-
ing, wishing she would never have to move again.

The telegraph poles went racing past the window, but the train
seemed lost in a void, between a brown stretch of prairie and a solid
spread of rusty, graying clouds. The twilight was draining the sky
without the wound of a sunset; it looked more like the fading of an
anemic body in the process of exhausting its last drops of blood and
Jight. The train was going west, as if it, too. were pulled to follow
the sinking rays and quietly to vanish from the earth. She sat still,
feeling no desire to resist it.

She wished she would not hear the sound of the wheels. They
knocked in an even rhythm, every fourth knock accented — and it

601

seemed to her that through the rapid, running clatter of some futile
stampede to escape, the beat of the accented knocks was like the
steps of an enemy moving toward some inexorable purpose.

She had never experienced it before, this sense of apprehension
at the sight of a prairie, this feeling that the rail was only a fragile
thread stretched across an enormous emptiness, like a worn nerve
ready to break. She had never expected that she, who had felt as if
she were the motive power aboard a train, would now sit wishing,
like a child or a savage, that this train would move, that it would
not stop, that it would get her there on time — wishing it, not like an
act of will, but like a plea to a dark unknown.

She thought of what a difference one month had made. She had
seen it in the laces of the men at the stations. The track workers,
the switchmen, the yardmen, who had always greeted her, anywhere
along the line, their cheerful grins boasting that they knew who she
was — had now looked at her stonily, turning away, their faces wary
and closed. She had wanted to cry to them in apology. “It’s not I
who’vc done it to you!” — then had remembered that she had ac-
cepted it and that they now had the right to hate her. that she was
both a slave and a driver of slaves, and so was every human being
in the country', and hatred was the only thing that men could now
feel for one another.

She had found reassurance, for two days, m the sight of the cities
moving past her window -the factories, (he bridges, the electric
signs, the billboards pressing down upon the roofs of homes — the
crowded, grimy, active, living conflux of the industrial East.

But the cities had been left behind. The train was now diving into
the prairies oi Nebraska, the rattle of its couplers sounding as if it
were shivering with cold: She saw lonely shapes that had been farm-
houses in the vacant stretches that had been fields. But the great
burst of energy, in the East, generations ago, had splattered bright
trickles to^run through the emptiness; some were gone, but some
still lived. She was startled when the lights of a small town swept
across her car and. vanishing, left it daiker than it had been before.
She would not move to turn on the light. She sat still, watching the
rare towns, Whenever an electric beam went flashing briefly at hei
face, it was like a moment’s greeting

She saw them as they went by, written on the walls of modest
structures, over sooted roofs, down slender smokestacks, on the
curves of tanks: Reynolds Harvesters — Macey Cement— Quinlan &
Jones Pressed Alfalfa — Home of the Crawford Mattress — Benjamin
Wylie Grain and Feed — words raised like flags to the empty darkness
of the sky. the motionless forms of movement, of effort, of courage,
of hope, the monuments to how much had been achieved on the
edge of nature’s void by men who had once been free achieve —
she saw the homes built in scattered privacy, the smaB shops, the
wide streets with electric lighting, like a few luminous strokes criss-
crossed on the black sheet of the wastelands — she saw the ghosts
between, the remnants of towns, the skeletons of factories with crum-
bling smokestacks, the corpses of shops with broken panes, the slant-
ing poles with shreds of wire— she saw a sudden blaze, the rare sight

602

of a gas station, a glittering white island of glass and metal under
the huge black weight of space and sky — she saw an ice-cream cone
made of radiant tubing, hanging above the coiner of a street, and a
battered car being parked below, with a young boy at the wheel and
a girl stepping out, her white dress blowing in the summer wind —
she shuddered lor the two of them, thinking: 1 can't look at you, i
who know what it has taken to give you vour youth, to give you this
evening, this car and the ice-cieam cone you're going to buy for a
tjuarler- - she saw, on the edge beyond a town, a building glowing
with tiers of pale blue light, the industrial light she loved, with the
silhouettes of machines in its windows and a billboard in the darkness
above its roof- and suddenly her head fell on her arm. and she sat
shaking, crying soundlessly to the night, to herself, to whatever was
human in any living being: Don’t let it go! . . . Don't let it go! . . .

She jumped to her feet and snapped on the light. She stood still,
lighting to regain control, knowing that such moments were her
greatest danger. The lights of the town were past, her window was
now an empty rectangle, and she heard, in the silence, the progres-
Mon of the fourth knocks, the steps of the enemy moving on, not to
he hastened or stopped.

In desperate need of the sight of some living activity, she decided
she would not order dinner in her car, but would go to the diner.
As if stressing and mocking her loneliness, a voice came hack to her
mind: “But you would not run trains if they were empty.” Forget
it! — she told herself angrily, walking hastily to the door of her car.

She was astonished, approaching her vestibule, to hear the sound
of voices close by. As she pulled the door open, she heard a shout:
(let off, God damn you!"

An aging tramp had taken refuge in the corner of her vestibule.
He sat on the floor, his posture suggesting that he had no strength
left to stand up or to care about being caught. He was looking at
the conductor, his eyes observant, fully conscious, but devoid of any
reaction. The train was slowing down for a bad stretch of track, the
conductor had opened the door to a cold gust of wind, and was
waving at the speeding black void, ordering, “Get going! Get off as
you got on or I'll kick you off head first!"

ITiere was no astonishment in the tramp’s face, no protest, no
anger, no hope, he looked as if he had long since abandoned any
judgment of any human action. He moved obediently to rise, his
hand groping upward along the rivets of the car's wait. She saw him
glance at her and glance away, as if she were merely another inani-
mate fixture of the train. He did not seem to be aware of her person,
any more than of his own, he was indifferently ready to comply with
an order which, in his condition, meant certain death.

She glanced at the conductor. She saw nothing in his face except
the blind malevolence of pain, of some long-repressed anger that
broke out upon the first object available, almost without conscious-
ness of the object’s identity. The two men were not human beings
to each other any longer.

The tramp's* suit was a mass of careful patches on a doth so
stiff and shiny with wear that one expected it to crack like glass

603

if bent; but she noticed the collar of his shirt: it was bone-while
from repeated laundering and it still preserved a semblance of
shape. He had pulled himself up to his feet, he was looking indiffer-
ently at the black hole open upon miles of uninhabited wilderness
where no one would see the body or hear the voice of a mangled
man, but the only gesture of concern he made was to tighten his
grip on a small, dirty bundle, as tf to make sure he would not lose
it in leaping off the tram.

It was the laundered collar and this gesture for the last of his
possessions — the gesture of a sense ot properly — that made her teel
an emotion like a sudden, burning iwist within her. “Wait,” she said.

The two men turned to her.

“l.et him be my guest,” she said to the conductor, and held her
door open for the tramp, ordering, “Come in.”

The tramp followed her, obeying as blankly as he had been about
to obey the conductor.

He stood in the middle of her car. holding his bundle, looking
around him with the same observant, unreacting glance.

“Sit down,” she said

He obeyed — and looked at her, as if waiting for further orders.
There was a kind of dignity in his manner, the honesty of the open
admission that he had no claim to make, no plea to offer, no ques-
tions to ask, that he now had to accept whatever was done to him
and was ready to accept it.

He seemed to be in his early fifties; the structure of his bones and
the looseness of his suit suggested that he had once been muscular
The lifeless indifference of his eyes did not fully hide that they had
been intelligent; the wrinkles cutting his lace with the record of some
incredible bitterness, had not fully erased the fact that the face had
once possessed the kindliness peculiar to honesty.

“When did you eat last?” she asked.

“Yesterday,” he said, and added, “I think.”

She rang for the porter and ordered dinner for two, to be brought
to her car from the diner.

The tramp had watched her silently, but when the porter departed,
he offered the only payment it was in his power to otter: “I don't
want to get you in trouble, ma’am,” he said.

She smiled. “What trouble?”

“You’re traveling with one of those railroad tycoons, aren't you?”

“No, alone.”

“Then you're the wife of one of them?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She saw his effort at a look of something like respect, as
if to make up tor having forced an improper confession, and she
laughed.

“No, not that, cither. I guess I’m one of the tycoons* myself. My
name is Dagny T aggart and I work for this railroad.”

“Oh ... I think I’ve heard of you, ma’am — in the did days.” It
was hard to tell what “the old days” meant to him, whether it was
a month or a year or whatever period of time had passed since he
had gtven up. He was looking at her with a sort of interest in the

604

past tense, as if he were thinking that there had been a time when
he would have considered her a personage worth seeing. “You were
the lady who ran a railroad,’ 1 he said.

“Yes,” she said. “I was.”

He showed no sign of astonishment at the fact that she had chosen
to help him. He looked as if so much brutality had confronted him
that he had given up the attempt to understand, to trust or to ex-
pect anything.

“When did you get aboard the train?” she asked.

“Back at the division point, ma’am. Your door wasn’t locked.”
He added, “1 figured maybe nobody would notice me till morning
on account of it being a private car.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.” Then, almost as if he sensed that this could sound
too much like an appeal for pity, he added, “I guess f just wanted
to keep moving till 1 saw some place that looked like there might
be a chance to find work there.” This was his attempt to assume the
responsibility of a purpose, rather than to throw the burden of his
aimlessness upon her mercy — an attempt of the same order as his
shirt collar.

“What kind of work are you looking for?”

“People don’t look for kinds of work any more, ma’am,” he an-
swered impassively. “They just look for work.”

“What sort of place did you hope to find?”

“Oh . . . well . . . where there’s factories, J guess ”

“Aren't you going in the wrong direction for that? The factories
arc in the East.”

“No.” He said it with the firmness ol knowledge. “ There are loo
many people in the East. The factories are too well watched. I fig-
ured there might be a better chance some place where there's fewer
people and less law.”

“Oh, running away? A fugitive from the law, arc you?”

“Not as you’d mean it in the old davs, ma’am. But as things are
now. I guess I am. I want to work.”

“What do you mean?”

“ There aren't any jobs back East. And a man couldn’t give you a
job, it he had one to give — he'd go to jail for it. He’s watched. You
can't get work except through the Unification Board. The Unification
Board has a gang of its own friends waiting in line for the jobs,
more friends than a millionaire’s got relatives. Well, me — 1 haven't
got either.”

“Where did you work last?”

“I’ve been bumming around the country for six months— -no,
longer, J guess — I guess it’s closer to about a year-1 can't tell any
more- -mostly day work it was. Mostly on farms But it's getting to
he no use now. I know how the farmers look at you — they don't like
to see a man starving, but they’re only one jump ahead of starvation
themselves, they haven’t any work to give you, they haven’t any
food, and whatever they save, if the lax collectors don't get it, then
the raiders do — you know, the gangs that rove all through the coun-
try — deserters, they call them.”

605

“Do you think that it's any better in the West?"’

“No. 1 don’!.' 1

“Then why are you going there?”

“Because 1 haven't tried it before. That’s all there is left to try.
ft's somewhere to go. Just to keep moving , . . You know,” he added
suddenly, “1 don't think it will be any use. But there’s nothing to
do in the East except sit under some hedge and wait to die. I don’t
think I d mind it much now, the dying. I know it would be a lot
easier. Only I think that it's a sin to sit down and let your life go,
without making a try for it.”

She thought suddenly of those modern college-infected parasites
who assumed a sickening air of moral self-righteousness whenever
they uttered the standard bromides about their concern for the wel-
fare of others. The tramp’s last sentence was one of the most pro-
foundly moral statements she had ever heard; but the man did not
know it; he had said it in his impassive, extinguished voice, simply,
dryly, as a matter of fact.

“What part of the country do you come from?” she asked.

“Wisconsin,” he answered.

The waiter came m, bringing their dinner. He set a table and
courteously moved two chairs, showing no astonishment at the na-
ture of the occasion.

She looked at the table; she thought that the magnificence of a
world where men could afford the time and the effortless concern
for such things as starched napkins and tinkling ice cubes, offered
to travelers along with their meals for the price of a few dollars, was
a remnant of the age when the sustenance ot one's life had not been
made a crime and a meal had not been a matter of running a race
with death — a remnant which was soon to vanish, like the white
filling station, on the edge of the weeds of the jungle

She noticed that the tramp, who had lost the strength to stand up,
had not lost the respect tor the meaning of the things spread before
him. He did not pounce upon the food; he fought to keep his move-
ments slow, to unfold his napkin, to pick up his iork in tempo with
hers, his hand shaking — as if he still knew that this, no matter what
indignity was ever forced upon them, was the manner proper to men.

“What was your line of work — in the old days?” she asked, when
the waiter left. “Factories, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am ”

“What trade?”

“Skilled lathe -operator.' 1

“Where did you work at it last?”

“In Colorado, ma’am. For the Hammond Car Company ”

“Oh . . r

“Ma’am?”

“No, nothing. Worked there long?”

“No, ma’am. Just two weeks.”

“How come?” *

“Well, l’d waived a year lor it, hanging around Colorado just to
gel Vital job. They had a wailing Ust loo, the Hammond Car Com-
pany, only they didn’t go by friendships and they didn’t go by senior-

606

ity, they went by a man's record: I had a good record. But it was
just two weeks after I got the job that Lawrence Hammond quit. He
quit and disappeared. They closed the plant, Afterwards, there was
a citizens’ committee that reopened it. I got called back. But five
days was all it lasted. They started layoffs just about at once. By
seniority. So l had to go. 1 heard they lasted for about three months,
the citizens’ committee. Then they had to close the plant for good/’

“Where did you work before that?”

“Just about in every Eastern state, ma’am. But it was never more
than a month or two. The plants kept dosing.”

“Did that happen on every job you’ve held?”

He glanced at her, as if he understood her question. “No, ma’am.”
he answered and, for the first time, she caught a taint echo of pride
in his voice. “The first job I had, l held it for twenty years. Not the
same job, but the same place, I mean — 1 got to be shop foreman.
That was twelve years ago. Then the owner of the plant died, and
the heirs who took it over, ran it into the ground. Times were bad
then, but it was since then that things started going to pieces every-
where faster and faster. Since then, it seems like anywhere l turned —
the place cracked and went. At first, we thought it was only one
state ot another. A lot of us thought that Colorado would last. But
it went, too. Anything you tried, anything you touched — it fell. Any-
where you looked, work was stopping the factories were stopping —
the machines were stopping — ” he added slowly, tn a whisper, as if
seeing some secret terror of his own, "the motors . . . were . . .
stopping.” His voice rose: “Oh God, who is--” and broke off

“ — John Galt?” she asked

“Yes,” he said, and shook his head as if to dispel some vision,
“only I don't like to say that ”

“1 don’t, either, I wish l knew why people are saymg it and who
started it.”

“'Hiat's it. ma'am. That's what I’m afraid ot. it might have been
me who started it.”

"What?”

“Me or about six thousand others. We might have. I think we did
I hope we’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there was something that happened at that plant where I
worked for twenty years U was when the old man died and his heirs
took over. There were three of them, two sons and a daughter, and
they brought a new plan to run the factory. They let us vote on it,
too, and everybody — almost everybody — voted for it. We didn’t
know. We thought it was good. No, that’s not true, either. We
thought that we were supposed to think it was good. The plan was
that everybody in the factory would work according to his ability,
but would be paid according to his need. We— what’s the matter,
ma'am? Why do you look like that?”

“What was the name of the factory?” she asked, her voice barely
audible.

“The Twentieth Century Motor Company, ma'am, of Starnes-
vifte, Wisconsin.”

607

“Go on.”

“We voted for that plan at a big meeting, with ail of us present,
six thousand of us, everybody that worked in the factory, The Starnes
heirs made long speeches about it, and it wasn't too clear, but no-
body asked any questions. None of us knew just how the plan would
work, but every one of us thought that the next fellow knew it. And
if anybody had doubts, he felt guilty and kept his mouth shut —
because they made it sound like anyone who’d oppose the plan was
a child-killer at heart and less than a human being. They told us that
this plan would achieve a noble ideal. Well, how were we to know
otherwise? Hadn’t we heard it all our lives — from our parents and
our schoolteachers and our ministers, and m every newspaper we
ever read and every movie and every public speech? Hadn’t we
always been told that this was righteous and just? Well, maybe there’s
some excuse for what we did at that meeting. Still, we voted for the
plan — and what we got, wc had it coming to us. You know, ma’am,
we are marked men, in a way. those of us who lived through the four
years of that plan in the Twentieth Century factory. What is it that
hell is supposed to be? Evil — plain, naked, smirking evil, isn’t it?
Well, that’s what wc saw' and helped to make — and I think we’re
damned, every one of us, and maybe we’ll never be torgiven , . .

“Do you know how it worked, that plan, and what it did to peo-
ple? Try pouring water into a tank where there’s a pipe at the bottom
draining it out faster than you pour it, and each bucket you bring
breaks that pipe an inch wider, and the hardei you work the more
is demanded of you. and you stand slinging buckets forty hours a
week, then forty-eight, then fifty-six — for your neighbor’s supper ~
for his wife’s operation — for his child’s measles — toi his mother's

wheel chair — for his uncle’s shirt -for his nephew’s schooling for

the baby next dooi — for the baby to be born— for anyone anywhere
around you — it s theirs to receive, from diapers to dentures- -and
yours to work, from sunup to sundown, month after month, year
after year, with nothing to show for it but your sweat, with nothing
in sight for'you but their pleasure, for the whole of your life, without
rest, without hope without end. . . . From each according to his
ability, to each according to his need. . . .

“We're all one big family, they told us, we're all in this together
But you don’t stand, working an acetylene torch ten hours a day-
together, and you don’t all get a bellyache— together. What’s whose
ability and which of whose needs comes first? When it’s all one pot.
you can’t let any man decide what his own needs are, can you? It
you did, he might claim that he needs a yacht — and if his feelings is
ail you have to go by. he might prove it, too. Why not? If it's not
right for me to own a car until I’ve worked myself into a hospital
ward, earning a car for every loafer and every naked 'savage on
earth— why can’t he demand a yacht from me, too, it I still have the
ability not to have collapsed 7 No? He can’t? Then why |:an he de-
mand that I go without cream for my coffee until he's jteplastercd
his living room? ... Oh well . . . Well, anyway, it was decided that
nobody had the right to judge his own need or ability. Wc voted on
it. Yes, ma’am, we voted on it in a public meeting twice af year. How

608

else could it he done? Do you care to think what would happen at
sjich a meeting? It took us just one meeting to discover that we had
become beggars — rotten, whining, sniveling beggars all of us, because
no man could claim his pay as his rightful earning, he had no rights
and no earnings, his work didn’t belong to him, it belonged to ‘the
family,’ and they owed him nothing in return, and the only claim he
had on them was his need’ — so he had to beg in public for relief
from his needs, like any lousy moocher, listing all his troubles and
miseries, down to his patched drawers and his wife’s head colds,
hoping that ‘the family’ would throw him the alms. He had to claim
miseries, because it’s miseries, not work, that had become the coin
of the realm — so it turned into a contest among six thousand panhan-
dlers, each claiming that his need was worse than his brother's. How
else could it be done? Do you care to guess what happened, what
sort of men kept quiet, feeling shame, and what sort got away with
the jackpot?

“But that wasn’t all. There was something else that we discovered
at the same meeting. The factory’s production had fallen by forty
per cent, in that first half-year, so it was decided that somebody
hadn't delivered ‘according to his ability.’ Who? How would you tell
it? The family’ voted on that, too. They voted which men were the
best, and these men were sentenced to work overtime each night for
the next six months. Overtime without pay — because you weren’t
paid by time and you weren't paid by work, only by need.

“Do 1 have to tell you what happened after that — and into what
sort of creatures we all started turning, we who had once been
human? We began to hide whatever ability we had, to slow down
and watch like hawks that we never worked any faster or better than
the next fellow. What else could we do, when we knew that if we
did our best for 'the family/ it’s not thanks or rewards that we'd
get, but punishment? We knew that for every stinker who'd ruin a
batch of motors and cost the company money— either through his
sloppiness, because we didn't have to care, or through plain incompe-
tence — it’s we who’d have to pay with our nights and our Sundays.
So we dtd our best to be no gtx>d.

“ [here was one young boy who started out, full of tire for the
noble ideal, a bright kid without any schooling, but with a wonderful
head on his shoulders. The first year, he figured out a work process
that saved us thousands of man-hours. He gave it to ‘the family,’
didn’t ask anything lor it, ei'her. couldn't ask. but that was all right
with him. It was for the ideal, he said. But when he found himself
voted as one of our ablest and sentenced to night work, because we
hadn’t gotten enough from him, he shut his mouth and his brain.
You can bet he didn’t come up with any ideas, the second year.

“What was it they'd always told us about the vicious competition
of the profit system, where men had to compete for who’d do a
better job than his fellows? Vicious, wasn’t it? Well, they should
' have seen what it was like when we all had to compete with one
another for who’d do the worst job possible. There’s no surer way
to destroy a man than to force him into a spot where he has to aim
at not doing his best, where he has to struggle to do a bad job, day

609

after day. That will finish him quicker than drink or idleness or
pulling stick-ups for a living. But there was nothing else for us to
do except to fake unfitness. The one accusation we feared was to be
suspected of ability. Ability was like a mortgage on you that you
could never pay off. And what was there to work for? You knew
that your basic pittance would be given to you anyway, whether you
worked or not — your ‘housing and feeding allowance,’ it was called —
and above that pittance, you had no chance to get anything, no
matter how hard you tried. You couldn’t count on buying a new suit
of clothes next year — they might give you a ‘clothing allowance’ or
they might not, according to whether nobody broke a leg, needed
an operation or gave birth to more babies And if there wasn’t
enough money for new suits tor everybody, then you couldn’t get
yOurs, either.

“There was one man who’d worked hard all his life, because he’d
always wanted to send his son through college. Well, the boy gradua-
ted from high school in the second year ot the plan — but ‘the family'
wouldn’t give the father any ‘allowance’ for the college. I hoy said
his son couldn’t go to college, until we had enough to send every-
body’s sons to college — and that we first had to send everybody's
children through high school, and we didn’t even have enough for
that. The father died the following year, in a knife fight with some-
body in a saloon, a fight over nothing in particular — such fights were
beginning to happen among us all the time.

“Then there was an old guy, a widower with no family, who had
one hobby: phonograph records. I guess that was all he ever got out
of life. In the old days, he used to skip meals just to buy himselt
some new recording of classical music Well, they didn't give him
any ‘allowance’ for records — ‘personal luxury,' they called it. But at
that same meeting, Millie Bush, somebody’s daughter, a mean ugly
little eighl-year-old, was voted a pair of gold braces for her buck
teeth — this was ‘medical need.’ because the stall psychologist had
said that the poor girt would get an inferiority complex if her teeth
weren’t straightened out. 'The old guy who loved music, turned to
drink, instead- He got so you never saw him fully conscious anymore.
But it seems like there was one thing he couldn’t torget. One night,
he came staggering down the street, saw Millie Bush, swung his fist
and knocked all her teeth out. Every one of them.

“Drink, of course, was what we all turned to, some more, some
less. Don’t ask how we got the money for it. When all the decent
pleasures are forbidden, there’s always ways to get the rotten ones.
You don't break into grocery stores after dark and you don’t pick
your fellow’s pockets to buy classical symphonies or fishing tackle,
but if it’s to get stinking drunk and forget — you do. Fishing tackle?
Hunting guns? Snapshot cameras? Hobbies? There vfasn’t any
‘amusement allowance' for anybody. ‘Amusement’ was th^ first thing
they dropped. Aren’t you always supposed to be ashamc| to object
when anybody asks you to give up anything, if it’s something that
gave you pleasure? Even our ‘tobacco allowance’ was cuf to where
we got two packs of cigarettes a month — and this, they told us, was
because the money had to go into the babies’ milk fund. Babies was

610

the only item of production that didn’t fall, but rose and kept on
rising — because people had nothing else to do; I guess, and because
they didn’t have to care, the baby wasn’t their burden, it was 'the
family’s.’ In fact, the best chance you had of getting a raise and
breathing easier for a while was a ‘baby allowance.’ Either that or
a major disease.

“It didn't take us long to see how it all worked out. Any man
who tried to play straight, had to refuse himscit everything. He lost
h;r> taste for any pleasure, he haled to smoke a nickel's worth of
tobacco or chew a stick of gum, worrying whether somebody had
more need for that nickel. He felt ashamed of every mouthful of
food he swallowed, wondering whose weary night of overtime had
paid for it, knowing that his food was not his by right, miserably
wishing to be cheated rather than to cheat, to be a sucker, but not
a blood-sucker. He wouldn’t marry, he wouldn't help his folks back
home, he wouldn't put an extra burden on ’the family.’ Besides, if
he still had some sort of sense of responsibility, iie couldn’t marry
or bring children into the world, when he could plan nothing, prom-
ise nothing, count on nothing. But the shiftless and the irresponsible
had a field day of it. They bred babies, they got girls into trouble,
they dragged in every worthless relative they had from all over the
country, every' unmarried pregnant sister, for an extra ‘disability al-
lowance/ they got more sicknesses than any doctor could disprove,
they ruined their clothing, their furniture, their homes — what the
hell, ’the family’ was paying for it! They found more ways of getting
in need’ than the rest of us could ever imagine — they developed a
special skill for it, which was the only ability they showed.

“God help us, ma’am! Do you see what we saw? We saw' that
we’d been given a law to live by, a moral law. they called it, which
punished those who observed it— for observing it. The more you
tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated
it. the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at
the mercy of the next man's dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the
dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long
could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness? We were
a pretty decent bunch of fellows when we started. There weren't
many chiselers among us. We knew' our jobs and we were proud of
it and we worked for the best factory in the country, where old man
Starnes hired nothing but the pick of the country's labor. Within one
year under the new plan, there wasn’t an honest man left among us.
That was the evil, the sort of hell-horror evil that preachers used to
scare you with, but you never thought to see alive. Not that ihe plan
encouraged a few bastards, but that it turned decent people into
hastards, and there was nothing else that it could do— and it was
called a moral ideal!

“What was it we were supposed to want to work for? For the
love of our brothers? What brothers? For the bums, the loafers, the
moochers we saw all around us? And whether they were cheating
or plain incompetent, whether they were unwilling or unable — what
difference did that make to us? If we were tied for life to the level
of their unfitness, faked or real, how long could we care to go on?

611

We had no way of knowing their ability, we had no way of control-
ling their needs — all we knew was that we were beasts of burden
struggling blindly in some sort of place that was half-hospital, half-
Stockyards — a place geared to nothing but disability, disaster, dis-
ease-— beasts put there for the relief of whatever whoever chose to
say was whichever's need,

“Love of our brothers? That’s when we learned to hate our broth-
ers for the first time in our lives We began to hate them for every
meat they swallowed, tor every small pleasure they enjoyed, for one
man’s new shirt, for another’s wife's hat, for an outing with their
family, for a paint job on their house — it was taken from us, it was
paid for by our privations, our denials, our hunger. We began to spy
on one another, each hoping to catch the others lying about their
needs, so as to cut their ‘allowance’ at the next meeting. We began
to have stool pigeons who informed on people, who reported that
somebody had bootlegged a turkey to his family on some Sunday—
which he’d paid for by gambling, most likely. We began to meddle
into one another’s lives. We provoked family quarrels, to get some-
body's relatives thrown out. Any time we saw a man starting to go
steady with a girl, we made file miserable for him. We broke up
many engagements. We didn’t want anyone to marry, we didn’t want
any more dependents to feed.

“In the old days, we used to celebrate it somebody had a baby,
we used to chip in and help him out with the hospital bills, if he
happened to be hard-pressed for the moment. Now, if a baby was
bom we didn't speak to the parents for weeks. Babies, to us, had
become what locusts were to farmers. In the old days, we used to
help a man if he had a bad illness in the family. Now— well, I'll tell
you about just one case. It was the mother of a man who had been
with us for fifteen years. She was a kindly old lady, cheerful and
wise, she knew us all by our first names and we all liked her — we
used to like her. One day, she slipped on the cellar stairs and lei!
and brokq her hip. We knew what that meant at her age. The stall
doctor said that she’d have to be sent to a hospital in town, for
expensive treatments that would take a long time. The old lady died
the night before she was to leave for town. They never established
the cause of death. No. I don't know whether she was murdered.
Nobody said that. Nobody would talk about it at all. All i know is
that I — and that's what l can’t forget! — I, too. had caught myself
wishing that she would die. This — may Ciod forgive us! — was the
brotherhood, the security, the abundance that the plan was supposed
to achieve for us!

“Was there any reason why this sort of horror would ever be
preached by anybody? Was there anybody who got any profit from
it? There was. The Starnes heirs. I hope you’re not going to remind
me that they’d sacrificed a fortune and turned the factory over to us
as a gift. We were fooled by that one, too. Yes, they gave up the
factory, But profit, ma’am, depends on what it is you're after. And
what the Starnes heirs were after, no money on eartty could buy.
Money is too dean and innocent for that.

“Eric Starnes, the youngest — he was a jellyfish that didn't have

612

the guts to be after anything in particular. He got himself voted as
Director of our Public Relations Department, which didn't do any-
thing, except that he had a staff for the not doing of anything, so he
didn't have to bother sticking around the office. The pay he got—
well, I shouldn’t call it 'pay/ none of us was 'paid' — the alms voted
to him was fairly modest, about ten times what I got, but that wasn’t
riches. Eric didn’t care for money — he wouldn’t have known what
to do with it. He spent his time hanging around among us, showing
how chummy he was and democratic. He wanted to be loved, it
seems. The way he went about it was to keep reminding us that he
had given us the factory. We couldn’t stand him.

“Gerald Starnes was our Director of Production. We never learned
just what the size of his rake-off — his alms — had been. It would have
taken a staff of accountants to figure that out, and a staff of engineers
to trace the way it was piped, directly or indirectly into his office.
None of it was supposed to be for him — it was all tor company
expenses, Gerald had three cars, four secretaries, five telephones,
and he used to throw champagne and caviar parties that no tax-
paving tycoon in the country could have afforded He spent more
money m one year than his father had earned in profits in the last
two years of his life. We saw a hundred-pound stack — a hundred
pounds, we weighed them — of magazines in Gerald's office, full of
stories about our factory and our noble plan, with big pictures of
Gerald Staines calling h»m a great social crusader Gerald liked to
umie into the shops at night, dressed in his formal clothes, flashing
diamond eutf links the size of a nickel and shaking cigar ashes all
over. Any cheap show -oft who's got nothing to parade but his cash.
>\ bad enough * except that he makes no bones about the cash being
his. and you're free to gape at him or not as you wish, and mostly
>ou don’t. But when a bastard like Gerald Staines puts on an act
and keeps spouting that he doesn't care tor material wealth, that
he's only serving v the family,' that all the lushness is not for himself,
but tor our sake and foi the common good, because it’s necessary
to keep up the prestige of the company and of the noble plan in the
eyes ol the public then that’s when you learn to hate the creature
as you've never hated anything human.

“But his sister Ivy was worse She really did not care for material
wealth. The alms she got was no bigger than ours, and she went
about in scuffed, flat-heeled shoes and shirtwaists — just to show how
selfless she was. She was our Director of Distribution. She was the
lady in charge of our needs. She was the one who held us by the
throat. Of course, distribution was supposed to be decided by vo-
ting— by the voice of the people. But when the people are six thou-
sand howling voices, trying to decide without yardstick, rhyme or
reason, when there are no rules to the game and each can demand
anything, but has a right to nothing, when everybody holds power
over everybody’s life except his own — then it turns out, as it did,
that the voice of the people is Ivv Starnes. By the end of the second
year, we dropped the pretense of the ‘family meetings’ — in the name
of production efficiency and time economy,’ one meeting used to
take ten days — and all the petitions of need were simply sent to Miss

613

Starnes* office. No, not sent. They had to be recited to her in person
by every petitioner. Then she made up a distribution list, which she
read to us for our vote of approval at a meeting that lasted three-
quarters of an hour. We voted approval. There was a ten-minute
period on the agenda for discussion and objections. We made no
objections. We knew better by that time. Nobody can divide a facto-
ry's income among thousands of people, without some sort of a gauge
to measure people's value. Her gauge was bootlicking. Selfless? In
her father's time, all of his money wouldn't have given him a chance
to speak to his lousiest wiper and get away with it, as she spoke to
our best skilled workers and their wives. She had pale eyes that
looked fishy, cold and dead. And if you ever want to see pure evil,
you should have seen the way her eyes glinted when she watched
some man who'd talked back to her once and who’d just heard his
name on the list of those getting nothing above basic pittance. And
when you saw it, you saw the real motive of any person who's ever
preached the slogan: ‘From each according to his ability, to each
according to his need.'

“This was the whole secret of it. At first, I kept wondering how
it could be possible that the educated, the cultured, the famous men
of the world could make a mistake of this size and preach, as righ-
teousness, this sort of abomination — w hen five minutes ot that should
have told them what would happen if somebody tried to practice
what they preached. Now I know that they didn’t do it by any kind
of mistake. Mistakes of this size are never made innocently. If men
fall for some vicious piece of insanity, when they have no way to
make it work and no possible reason to explain their choice- -it's
because they have a reason that they do not wish to tell. And we
weren't so innocent either, when we voted for the plan at the first
meeting. We* didn’t do it just because we believed that the drippy
old guff they spewed was good. We had another reason, but the gufl
helped us to hide it from our neighbors and from ourselves. The
guff gave us a chance to pass off as virtue something that we'd Ik*
ashamed to admit otherwise. T here wasn't a man voting for it who
didn't think that under a setup ol this kind he’d muscle in on the
profits of the men abler than himself There wasn’t a man rich and
smart enough but that he didn't think that somebody was richer and
smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better's wealth
and brain. But while he was thinking that he’d get unearned benefits
from the men above, he forgot about the men below who'd get
unearned benefits, too. He forgot about all his interiors who'd rush
to drain him just as he hoped to drain his superiors The worker
who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his
boss's, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would Come howl-
ing that their need entitled them to an icebox like his owft. That was
our real motive when we voted — that was the truth oti it— but we
didn’t like to think it, so the less we liked it, the loude|r we yelled
about our love for the common good.

"Well, we got what we asked for. By the time we saw -What it was
that we'd asked for, it was too late. We were trapped, wfth no place
to go. The best men among us left the factory in the first week of

614

(he plan. We lost our best engineers, superintendents, foremen and
highest-skilled workers. A man of self-respect doesn’t turn into a
milch cow for anybody. Some able fellows tried to stick it out, but
they couldn’t take it for long. We kept losing our men, they kept
escaping from the factory like from a pest-hole— till we had nothing
left except the men of need, but none of the men ol ability.

“And the few of us who were still any good, but stayed on, were
only those who had been there too long. In the old days, nobody
ever quit the Twentieth Century — and, somehow, we couldn’t make
ourselves believe that it was gone, After a while, we couldn’t quit,
because no other employer would have us — for which 1 can't blame
him. Nobody would deal with us in any way, no respectable person
or firm. All the small shops, where we traded, started moving out of
Starncsville fast — till we had nothing left but saloons, gambling joints
and crooks who sold us trash at gouging prices. The alms we got
kept falling, but the cost of our living went up. The list of ihe facto-
r's needy kept stretching, but the list of its customers shrank. There
was less and less income to divide among more and more people.
In the old days, it used to be said that the Twentieth Century Motor
trademark was as good as the karat mark on gold. I don't know
what it was that the Starnes heirs thought, if they thought at all. but
I suppose that like all social planners and like savages, they thought
that this trademark was a magic stamp which did the trick by some
sort of voodoo power and that it would keep them rich, as it had
kept their father. Well, when our customers began to see that we
never delivered an order on time and never put out a motor that
didn’t have something wrong with it— the magic stamp began to work
the other way around: people wouldn’t take a motor as a gift, if it
was marked twentieth Century. And it came to where our only
customers were men who never paid and never meant to pay their
bills, Hut Gerald Starnes, doped by his own publicity, got huffy and
went around, with an air of moral superiority, demanding that busi-
nessmen place orders with us. not because our motors were good,
but because we needed the orders so badly.

* By that time, a village half-wit could see what generations of
professors had pretended not to notice. What good would our need
do to a powei plant when its generators stopped because of our
defective engines? What good would it do to a man caught on an
operating table when the electric light went out? What good would
it do to the passenger of a plane when its motor failed in mid-air?
And if they bought our product, not because of its merit, but because
of our need, would that be the good, the right, the moral thing to
do for the owner of that power plant, the surgeon in that hospital,
the maker of that plane?

"Yet this was the moral law that the professors and leaders and
thinkers had wanted to establish all over the earth. If this is what it
did in a single small town where wc all knew one another, do you
tare to think what it would do on a world scale? Do you care to
imagine what it would be like, if you had to live and to work, when
you're tied to all the disasters and all the malingering of the globe?
To work — and whenever any men failed anywhere, it’s you who

615

would have to make up for it. To work — with no chance to rise,
with your meals and your clothes and your home and your pleasure
depending on any swindle, any famine, any pestilence anywhere on
earth. To work — with no chance for an extra ration, till the Cambodi-
ans have been fed and the Patagonians have been sent through col-
lege. To work — on a blank check held by every creature born, by
men whom you’!! never see, whose needs you’ll never know, whose
ability or laziness or sloppiness or fraud you have no way to learn
and no right of question just to work and work and work-— and leave
it up to the Ivys and the Geralds of the world to decide whose
stomach will consume the effort, the dreams and the days of your
life. And this is the moral law to accept? This — a moral ideal?

“Well, we tried it— and we learned. Our agony took four years,
from our first meeting to our last, and it ended the only way it could
end: in bankruptcy. At our last meeting, Ivy Starnes was the one
who tried to brazen it out. She made a short, nasty, snippy little
speech in which she said that the plan had failed because the rest
of the country had not accepted it, that a single community could
not succeed in the midst of a selfish, greedy world — and that the
plan was a noble ideal, but human nature was not good enough for
it. A young boy — the one who had been punished for giving us a
useful idea in our first year— got up, as we all sat silent, and walked
straight to Ivv Staines on the platform. He said nothing. He spat in
her face. That was the end of the noble plan and of the Twentieth
Century.”

The man had spoken as if the burden of his years ol silence had
slipped suddenly out of his grasp. She knew that this was his tribute
to her: he had shown no reaction to her kindness, he had seemed
numbed to human value or human hope, but something within him
had been reached and his response was this confession, this long,
desperate cry of rebellion against injustice, held back for years, blit
breaking out m recognition of the first person he had met in whose
hearing an appeal for justice would not be hopeless. It was as it the
life he had been about to renounce were given back to him by the
two essentials he needed: by his loud and by the presence of a ratio
nal being.

“But what about John Galt?*’ she asked.

Oh . . he said, remembering. ‘Oh, yes . .

“You were going to tell me why people stalled asking that
question.”

“Yes . . .■* He was lt>oking off, as if at some sight which he had
studied for years, but which remained unchanged and unsolved; his
face had an odd. questioning look of tenor.

“You were going to tell me who was the John Gall they mean —
if there ever was such a person.” ;

“I hope there wasn't, ma'am. I mean, I hope that it's just a coinci-
dence, just a sentence that hasn't any meaning.”

“You had something in mind. What?” ?

“It was ... it was something that happened at that jhrst meeting
at the Twentieth Century factory. Maybe that was thp start of it.
maybe not. I don’t know . , . The meeting was held* on a spring

616

night, twelve years ago. The six thousand of us were crowded on
bleachers built way up to the rafters of the plant’s largest hangar.
We had just voted for the new plan and we were in an edgy sort of
mood, making too much noise, cheering the people’s victory, threat-
ening some kind of unknown enemies and spoiling for a fight, like
bullies with an uneasy conscience. There were white arclights beating
down on us and we felt kind of touchy and raw, and we were an
ugly, dangerous mob in that moment. Gerald Starnes, who was chair-
man, kept hammering his gavel for order, and we quieted down
some, but not much, and you could see the whole place moving
restlessly from side to side, like water in a pan that’s being rocked.
‘This is a crucial moment in the history of mankind!’ Gerald Starnes
yelled through the noise. ‘Remember that none of us may now leave
this place, for each of us belongs to all the others by the moral law
which we all accept!’ ‘1 don’t/ said one man and stood up. He was
one of the young engineers. Nobody knew much about him. He’d
always kept mostly by himself. When he stood up, we suddenly
turned dead-still. It was the way he held his head, lie was tall and
slim— and I remember thinking that any two of us could have broken
his neck without trouble— but what we all felt was fear. He st<x>d
like a man who knew that he was right. ‘I will put an end to this,
once and for all/ he said. His voice was dear and without any feeling,
that was all he said and started to walk out. He walked down the
length of the place, in the while light, not hurrying and not noticing
any of us. Nobody moved to slop him. Gerald Starnes cried suddenly
alter him, ‘How?’ He turned and answered. ‘I will stop the motor
ol the world? Then he walked out. We never saw him again. We
never heard what became of him. But years later, when we saw the
lights going out, one after another, in the great factories that had
stood solid like mountains for generations, when we saw the gates
closing and the conveyor belts turning still, when we saw the roads
growing empty and the stream of cars draining off, when it began
to look as if some silent power were stopping the generators ol the
woild and the woild was crumbling quietly. like a body when its
spirit is gone — (hen wc began to wonder and to ask questions about
him. We began to ask it of one another, those o{ who had heard
him say it. We began to thmk that he had kept his word, that he,
who had seen and known the truth we refused to know, was the
retribution wc had called upon our heads, the avenger, the man of
that justice which we had defied. We began to think that he had
damned us and there was no escape from his verdict and we would
never be able to get away from him— and this was the more terrible
because he was not pursuing us, it was we who were suddenly look-
ing tor him and he had merely gone without a trace. We found no
answer about him anywhere. Wc wondered by what sort of impossi-
ble power he could have done what tie had promised to do. There
was no answer to that. We began to think of him whenever wc saw
another collapse in the world, which nobody could explain, whenever
wc took another blow, whenever we lost another hope, whenever
we felt caught in this dead, gray fog that’s descending all over the
earth /Perhaps people heard us crying that question and they did not

617

know what we meant, but they knew too well the feeling that made
us cry it. They, too, felt that something had gone from the world.
Perhaps this was why they began to say it, whenever they felt that
there was no hope. I’d like to think that 1 am wrong, that those
words mean nothing, that there’s no conscious intention and no
avenger behind the ending of the human race. But when l hear them
repeating that question, 1 feel afraid. I think of the man who said
that he would stop the motor of the world. You see, his name was
John Galt.*’

* *

She awakened, because the sound of the wheels had changed. It
was an irregular beat, with sudden screeches and short, sharp cracks,
a sound like the broken laughter of hysteria, with the fitful jerking
of the car to match it. She knew, before she glanced at her watch,
that this was the track of the Kansas Western and that the train had
started on its long detour south from Kirby. Nebraska.

The train was half-empty; few people had ventured across the
continent on the first Comet since the tunnel disaster. She had given
a bedroom to the tramp, and then had remained alone with his story.
She had wanted to think of it, of all the questions she intended to
ask him tomorrow — but she had found her mind Iro/en and still,
like a spectator staring at the story, unable to function, only to stare.
She had felt as if she knew the meaning of that spectacle, knew it
with no further questions and had to escape it. To move — had been
the words beating in her mind with peculiar urgency — to move- -as
if movement had become an end in itself, crucial, absolute and
doomed.

Through a thin layer of sleep, the sound of the wheels had kept
running a race with the growth of her tension. She had kept awaken-
ing, as in a causeless start of panic, finding herself upright in the
darkness, thinking blankly: What was it: — then telling herself in reas-
surance: We’re moving . . . we’re still moving. . . .

The track of the Kansas Western was worse than she had ex-
pected — slie thought, listening to the wheels. The train was now car-
rying her hundreds of miles away from Utah. She had felt a
desperate desire to get off the train on the main line, abandon all
the problems of Taggart Transcontinental, find an airplane and fly
straight to Quentin Daniels. It had taken a cheerless effort of will
to remain in her car.

She lay in the darkness, listening to the wheels, thinking that only
Daniels and his motor still remained like a point of lire ahead, pull-
ing her forward. Of what use would the motor now be to her? She
had no answer. Why did she feel so certain of the desperate need
to hurry? She had no answer. To reach him in time, was the only
ultimatum left in her mind. She held onto it, asking qo questions.
Wordlessly, she knew the real answer: the motor was needed, not to
move trains, but to keep her moving.

She could not hear the beat of the fourth knocks <$ny longer in
the jumbled screeching of metal, she could not hear thi steps of the
enemy she was racing, only the hopeless stampede of $anic. . . . VU
get there in time, she thought, I’ll get there first. I'll save the motor.

618

There’s one motor he's not going to stop, she thought ... he's not
going to stop . , . he's not going to stop . . . He’s not going to stop,
she thought — awakening with a jolt, jerking her head off the pillow.

I he wheels had stopped.

For a moment, she remained still, trying to grasp the peculiar
stillness around her. It felt like the impossible attempt to create a
sensory image of non-existence. There were no attributes of reality
to perceive, nothing but their absence: no sound, as if she were alone
on the train— no motion, as if this were not a train, but a room in
a building — no light, as if this were neither train nor room, but space
without objects — no sign of violence or physical disaster, as if this
were the state where disaster is no longer possible.

In the moment when she grasped the nature of the stillness, her
body sprang upright with a single curve of motion, immediate and
violent like a cry of rebellion. The loud screech of the window shade
went like a knife-cut through the silence, as she threw the shade
upward. There was nothing outside but anonymous stretches of prai-
rie; a strong wind was breaking the clouds, and a shaft of moonlight
tell through, but it fell upon plains that seemed as dead as those
lrom which it came.

The sweep of her hand pressed the light switch and the bell to
summon the porter. 'Hie electric light came on and brought her back
to a rational world. She glanced at her watch: it was a few minutes
past midnight. She looked out of the rear window: the track went
off in a straight line and, at the prescribed distance, she saw the red
lanterns left on the ground, placed conscientiously to protect the rear
ot the train. The sight seemed reassuring.

She pressed the potter's bell once more. She waited. She went to
the vestibule, unlocked the door and leaned out to look down the
line ot the train. A few windows were lighted in the long, tapering
band ol steel, but she saw no figures, no sign of human activity. She
slammed the door, came back and started to dress, her movements
suddenly calm and swift.

No one came to answer her bell. When she hastened across to the
next car, she fell no fear, no uncertainty, no despair, nothing but the
urgency of action.

There was no porter in the cubbyhole of the next cat, no porter
m the car beyond. She hurried down the narrow passageways, meet-
ing no one. But a few compartment doors were open. The passengers
'al inside, dressed or half-dressed, silently as if waiting. They
watched her rush by with oddly furtive glances, as if they knew what
she was after, as they had expected someone to come and to face
what they had not faced. She went on, running down the spinal cord
of a dead train, noting the peculiar combination of lighted compart-
ments, open doors and empty passages: no one had ventured to step
out. No one had wanted to ask the first question.

She ran through the train’s only coach, where some passengers
slept in contorted poses of exhaustion, while others, awake and still,
sat hunched, like animals waiting for a blow, making no move to
avert i U

In the vestibule of the coach, she stopped. She saw a man, who

619

had unlocked the door and was leaning out, looking inquiringly
ahead through the darkness, ready to step off. He turned at the
sound of her approach. She recognized his face: It was Owen Kel-
logg, the man who had rejected the future she had once offered him.

“Kellogg!” she gasped, the sound of laughter in her voice like a
cry of relief at the sudden sight of a man in a desert.

“Hello, Miss Taggart,” he answered, with an astonished smile that
held a touch of incredulous pleasure — and of wistfulness. “1 didn’t
know you were aboard.”

“Come on,” she ordered, as if he were still an employee of the
railroad. “I think we’re on a frozen train.”

“We are,” he said, and followed her with prompt, disciplined
obedience.

No explanations were necessary. It was as if. in unspoken under-
standing. they were answering a call to duty — and it seemed natural
that of the hundreds aboard, it was the two of them who should be
pa rlners-in-d anger.

“Any idea how long we’ve been standing?” she asked, as they
hurried on through the next car.

“No,” he said. “We were standing when I woke up.”

They went the length of the train, finding no porters, no waiters
in the diner, no brakemen, no conductor. They glanced at each other
once in a while, but kept silent. They knew the stories of abandoned
trains, of the crews that vanished in sudden bursts of rebellion
against serfdom.

They got off at the end of the train, with no motion around them
save the wind on their faces, and they climbed swiftly aboard the
engine The engine's headlight was on, stretching like an accusing
arm into the void of the night. The engine’s cab was empty

Her cry of desperate triumph broke out in answer to the shock of
the sight: “Good for them! They’re human beings!”

She stopped, aghast, as at the cry ol a stranger. She noticed that
Kellogg slqpd watching her curiously, with the taint hint of a smile.

It was an old steam engine, the best that the railroad had been
able to provide for the Comet, The fire was banked in the grates,
the steam gauge was low, and in the great windshield before them
the headlight fell upon a band of ties that should have been running
to meet them, but lay still instead, like a ladder's steps, counted,
numbered and ended.

She reached for the logbook and looked at the names of tile train’s
last crew. The engineer had been Pat Logan.

Hei head dropped slowly, and she closed her eyes. She thought
of the first run on a green-blue track, that must have been in Pat
Logan’s mind — as it was now in hers— -through the silent hours of
his last run on any rail.

“Miss Taggart?” said Owen Kellogg softly. „

She jerked her head up. “Yes,” she said, “yes . . . Well”— her
voice had no color except the metallic tinge of decision— we’ll have
to get to a phone and call for another crew.” She glaiiced at her
watch. “At the rate we were running, 1 think we must be febout eight
miles from the Oklahoma state line. I believe Bradshaw is this road’s

620

nearest division point to call* We’re somewhere within thirty miles
of it.”

“Are there any Taggart trains following us?”

“ The next one is Number 253, the transcontinental freight, but it
won’t get here till about seven am., if it’s running on lime, which
1 doubt.”

“Only one freight in seven hours?” He said it involuntarily, with
a note of outraged loyally to the great railroad he had once been
proud to serve.

Her mouth moved in the brief snap of a smile. “Our transcontinen-
tal traffic is not what it was in your day.”

He nodded slowly. “1 don’t suppose there are any Kansas Western
trains coming tonight, either?”

“I can’t remember offhand, but 1 think not.”

He glanced at the poles by the side of the track. “I hope that the
Kansas Western people have kept their phones in order.”

“You mean that the chances are they haven’t, if we judge by the
state of their track. But we'll have to try it.”

“Yes ”

She turned to go, but stopped She knew' it was useless to com-
ment, but the w'ords came involuntarily. “You know,” she said, “it's
those lanterns our men pul behind the train to protect us that’s the
haidest thing to take. They . . . they felt more concern for human
lives than their country had shown for theirs ”

His swift glance at her was like a shot of deliberate emphasis, then
he answered gravely. “Yes. Miss Taggart ”

Climbing down the ladder on the side ol the engine, they saw a
clustei oi passengers gathered by the track and more figures emerg-
ing from the train to join them By some special instinct of their
own, the men who had sat waiting knew that someone had taken
charge, someone had assumed the responsibility and it was now safe
to show signs of life.

They all looked at her with an air of inquiring expectation, as she
apptoachcd. The unnatural pallor of the moonlight seemed to dis-
solve the differences of their faces and to stress the quality they all
had in common: a look of cautious appraisal, part fear, part plea,
part impertinence held in abeyance.

“Is there anyone here who wishes to be spokesman for the passen-
gers?” she asked.

They looked at one another. There was no answer.

“Very well,” she said. “You don’t have to speak. I’m Dagny Tag-
gart, the Operating Vice-President of this railroad, and” — there was
a rustle of response from the group, half-movement, half-whisper,
resembling relief — “and I’ll do the speaking. We are on a train that
has been abandoned by its crew. There was no physical accident.
The engine is intact. But there is no one to run it. litis is what the
newspapers call a frozen train. You all know what it means — and
you know the reasons. Perhaps you knew the reasons long before
they \fcere discovered by the men who deserted you tonight. The law
forbade them to desert. But this will not help you now.”

621

A woman shrieked suddenly, with the demanding petulance of
hysteria. "What are we going to do?"

Dagny paused to look at her* The woman was pushing forward,
to squeeze herself into the group, to place some human bodies be-
tween herself and the sight of the great vacuum — the plain stretching
off and dissolving into moonlight, the dead phosphorescence of im-
potent, borrowed energy The woman had a coat thrown over a
nightgown: the coat was slipping open and her stomach protruded
under the gown’s thin cloth, with that loose obscenity of manner
which assumes all human self-revelation to be ugliness and makes
no effort to conceal it, For a moment, Dagnv regretted the necessity
to continue.

“I shall go down the track to a telephone," she continued, her
voice dear and as cold as the moonlight "There are emergency
telephones at intervals of live miles along the right-of-way, l shall
call for another crew to be sent here. This will take some time. You
will please stay aboard and maintain such order as you are capable
of maintaining."

"What about the gangs of raiders?" asked another woman’s ner-
vous voice.

"1hats true," said Dagny. i'd better have someone to accompany
me. Who wishes to go?"

She had misunderstood the woman’s motive. There was no answer.
There were no glances directed at her or at one another. There were
no eyes — only moist ovals glistening in the moonlight. There they
were, she thought, the men of the new age. the demanders and recipi-
ents of self-sacrifice. She was struck by a quality of anger in their
silence -an anger saying that she was supposed to spare them mo-
ments such as this — and, with a feeling of cruelty new to her, she
remained silent by conscious intention.

She noticed that Owen Kellogg, too, was waiting; hut he was not
watching the passengers, he was watching her face. When he became
certain that there would be no answer from the crowd, he said qui-
etly, "I’ll go with you, of course, Miss Taggart."

"Thank you."

"What about us?" snapped the nervous woman,

Dagny turned to her, answering in the formal, inflect tonless mono-
tone of a business executive, "There have been no cases of raider
gang attacks upon frozen trains — unfortunately.”

"Just where are we?" asked a bulky man with too expensive an
overcoat and too flabby a face; his voice had a lone intended for
servants by a man unfit to employ them. "In what part of what
state?"

"I don’t know," she answered.

"How long will we be kept here?" asjted another, in the tone of
a creditor who is imposed upon by a dt&tor.

"I don’t know."

"When will we get to San Francisco?” asked a third, in the manner
of a sheriff addressing a suspect.

"1 don’t know."

The demanding resentment was breaking loose, in small, crackling

622

puffs, like chestnuts popping open in the dark oven of the minds
who now felt certain that they were taken care of and safe.

“This is perfectly outrageous!” yelled a woman, springing forward,
throwing her words at Dagny’s face. “You have no right to let this
happen! I don't intend to be kept waiting m the middle of nowhere!

1 expect transportation!”

“Keep your mouth shut." said Dagny, “or I’ll lock the train doors
and leave you wheie you are.”

“You can’t do that! You're a common carrier! You have no right
to discriminate against me* I’ll report it to the Unification Board!”

“—it I give you a train to get you within sight or hearing of your
Board.” said Dagny, turning away.

She saw Kellogg looking at hex, his glance like a line drawn under
her words, underscoring them for her own attention.

“Gel a flashlight somewhere.” she said, “while 1 go to get rny
handbag, then we'll start.”

When they started out on their way to the track phone, walking
past the silent line of cars, they saw another figure descending from
the train and hurrying to meet them. She recognized the tramp.

"Trouble, ma'am?” he asked, stopping.

“ I he crew has deserted.”

“Oh. What’s to be done 7 ”

“I’m going to a phone to call the division point.”

“You can't go alone, ma’am. Not these days I'd better go with
you.

She smiled, “ thanks. But I’ll be ail right. Mr. Kellogg here is going
with me. Say — what’s your name 7 ”

“Jeff Allen, ma’am.”

“I isten, Allen, have >ou evei worked for a railroad?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, you’re working foi one now. You're deputy-conductor and
proxy-vice-president in charge of operation. Your job is to take
charge ol this train in my absence, to preserve order and to keep
the cattle from stampeding. Tell them that I appointed you. You
don't need any proof. They’ll obey anybody who expects obedience.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered firmly, with a look of understanding.

She remembered that money inside a man's pocket had the power
to turn into confidence inside his mind; she took a hundred-doilar
bill (rom her bag and slipped it into his hand. “As advance on
wages,” she said.

“Yes. ma’am.”

She had started off, when he called after her, “Miss Taggart!”

She turned. “Yes?”

“Thank you,” he said.

She smiled, half-raising her hand in a parting salute, and walked
on.

“Who is that?” asked Kellogg.

“A tramp who was caught stealing a ride.”

“Hc*ll do the job, l think.”

“He will.”

They walked silently past the engine and on in the direction of its

623

headlight. At first, stepping from tie to tie, with the. violent light
beating against them from behind, they still felt as if they were at
home in the normal realm of a railroad. Then she found herself
watching the fight on the ties under her feet, watching it ebb slowly,
trying to hold it, to keep seeing its fading glow, until she knew that
the hint of a glow on the wood was no longer anything but moon-
light. She could not prevent the shudder that made her turn to look
back. The headlight still hung behind them, like the liquid silvei
globe of a planet, deceptively close, but belonging to another orbit
and another system.

Owen Kellogg walked silently beside her, and she felt certain that
they knew each other’s thoughts.

“He couldn’t have. Oh God, he couldn't!” she said suddenly, not
realizing that she had switched to words.

“Who?”

“Nathaniel Taggart. He couldn’t have worked with people like
those passengers. He couldn’t have run trains for them. He couldn’t
have employed them He couldn’t have used them at all, neither as
customers nor as workers.”

Kellogg smiled. “You mean that he couldn’t have grown rich by
exploiting them. Miss Taggart?”

She nodded. “They . . she said, and he heard the faint trembling
of her voice, which was love and pain and indignation, “they’ve said
for years that he rose by thwarting the ability of others, by leaving
them no chance, and that . . . that human incompetence was to his
selfish interest. . . . Bui he . . it wasn’t obedience that he required
of people.”

“Miss Taggart,” he said, with an odd note of sternness in his voice,
“just remember that he represented a axle ol existence which -lor
a brief span in all human history — drove slavery out of the civilized
world. Remember it, when you feel baffled by the nature of his
enemies.”

“Have you ever heard of a woman named Ivy Starnes?”

“Oh yes.”

“I keep thinking that this was what she would have enjoyed — the
spectacle of those passengers topight. This was what she’s after. But
we — we can’t five with it, you and I, can we? No one can live with
it. It’s not possible to live with it.”

“What makes you think that Ivy Starnes's purpose is fife?”

Somewhere on the edge of her mind —like the wisps she saw float-
ing on the edges of the prairie, neither quite rays nor fog nor cloud —
she felt some shape which she could not grasp, half -suggested and
demanding to be grasped.

She did not speak, and— like the linksjof a chain unrolling through
their silence — the rhythm of their steps! went on, spaced to the ties,
scored by the dry, swift beat of heels oh wood.

She had not had time to be awate of feim, except as of a providen-
tial comrade-in-competence: now she glanced at him with conscious
attention. His face had the clear, hard look she remembered having
liked in the past. But the face had growh calmer, as if more serenely
at peace. His clothes were threadbare, tfe wore an old leather jacket,

624

and even in the darkness she could distinguish the scuffed blotches
streaking across the leather.

“What have you been doing since you left Taggart Transcontinen-
tal?” she asked.

“Oh, many things.”

“Where are you working now?”

“On special assignments, more or less.”

“Of what kind?”

“Of every kind.”

“YouTe not working for a railroad?”

“No.”

The sharp brevity of the sound seemed to expand it into an elo-
quent statement. She knew that he knew her motive. “Kellogg, if I
told you that I don’t have a single first-rate man left on the Taggart
system, if I offered you any job, any terms, any money you cared to
name— would you come back to us?”

“No.”

“You were shocked by our loss of traffic. 1 don’t think you have
any idea of what our loss of men has done to us. 1 can’t tell you the
sort of agony 1 went through three days ago, trying to find somebody
able to build five miles ol temporary track. 1 have fifty miles to build
through the Rockies. I see no way to do it. But il has to be done.
I’ve combed the country for men. There aren’t any. And then to run
into you suddenly, to find you here, in a day coach, when I'd give
halt the system for one employee like you — do you understand why
I can’t let you go? Choose anything you wish. Want to be general
manager of a region? Or assistant operating v ice-pi esidont? ’

“No.”

“You’re still working for a living, aren’t vou?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem to be making very much ”

“I’m making enough for my needs -and for nobody else’s.”

"Why are you willing to work for anyone but Taggart Trans-
continental?”

"Because you wouldn't gne me the kind of job I’d want.”

"P” She stopped still. “Good God. Kellogg! — haven’t you under-
stood? I’d give you any job you name!”

“All right. Track walker ”

"Whai?"

' Section hand, fcngine wiper.” He smiled at the look on her face.
"No? You see. I smu you woutdn't.”

“Do you mean that you'd take a day laborer’s job?”

"Any time you offered it.”

“But nothing better?”

"lhat’s right, nothing better.”

"Don’t you understand that I have loo many men who* re able to
do those jobs, but nothing better?”

“I understand it. Miss Taggart, Do you?”

“What I need is your — ”

“ — mind. Miss Taggart? My mind is not on the market any
longer.”

625

She stood looking at him, her face growing harder. “You’re one
of them, aren’t you?” she said at last.

“Of whom?”

She did not answer, shrugged and went on.

“Miss Taggart,” he asked, “how long will you remain willing to
be a common carrier ?”

“I won’t surrender the world to the creature you’re quoting.”

“The answer you gave her was much more icalistic,”

The chain of their steps had stretched through many silent minutes
before she asked. “Why did you stand by me tonight? Why were
you willing to help me?”

He answered easily, almost gaily, “Because there isn't a passenger
on that train who needs to get where he’s going more urgently than
1 do. If the tram can be started, none will profit more than I. But
when l need something, I don’t sit and expect transportation, like
that creature of yours.”

“You don't? And what if all trains stopped running?”

“ITien l wouldn't count on making a crucial journey by train.”

“Where are you going?”

“West.”

“On a ‘special assignment”*”

“No. For a month's vacation with some friends.”

“A vacation? And it’s that important to you?”

“More important than anything on earth ”

They had walked two miles when they came to the small gray box
on a post by the traekside, which was the emergency telephone. The
box hung sidewise, beaten by storms. She jerked it open. The tele-
phone was there, a familiar, reassuring object, glinting m the beam
of Kellogg’s flashlight. But she knew, the moment she pressed the
receiver to her ear, and he knew, when he saw her linger tapping
sharply against the hook, that the telephone was dead.

She handed the receiver to him without a word. She held the
flashlight, while he went swiftly over the instrument, then tore it off
the wall and studied the wires.

“The wire’s okay,” he said. “The current’s on. It’s this particular
instrument that’s out of order. There’s a chance that the next one might
be working.” He added, “The next one is five miles away.”

“Let’s go,” she said.

Far behind them, the engine’s headlight was still visible, not a
planet any longer, but a small star winking through mists of distance
Ahead of them, the rail went off into bluish space, with nothing to
mark its end.

She realized how often she had glanced back at that headlight; so
long as it remained in sight, she had felt as if a life-line were holding
them anchored safely; now they had to break it and dive into . .
and dive off this planet, she thought. noticed that Kellogg, too,
stood looking back at the headlight. j

They glanced at each other, but sa|d nothing. The crunch of a
pebble under her shoe sole burst like' a firecracker in the silence.
With a coldly intentional movement, he kicked the telephone instru-

626

ment and sent it rolling into a ditch: the violence of the noise shat-
tered the vacuum.

“God damn him/’ he said evenly, not raising his voice, with a
loathing past any display of emotion. “He probably didn’t feel like
attending to his job, and since he needed his pay check, nobody had
the right to ask that he keep the phones vn order.”

“Come on/’ she said.

“We can rest, if you feel tired. Miss Taggart.”

“I’m all right. We have no time to feel tired.”

“That’S our great error. Miss T aggart. We ought to take the time,
some day.”

She gave a brief chuckle, she stepped onto a tie of the track,
stressing the step as her answer, and they went on.

It was hard, walking on ties, but when they tried to walk along
the trackside, they found that it was harder. ITie soil, half-sand, half-
dust, sank under their heels, like the soft, unresisting spread of some
substance that was neither liquid nor solid. They went back to walk-
ing from tie to tic; it was almost like stepping from log to log in the
midst of a river.

She thought of what an enormous distance five miles had suddenly
become, and that a division point thirty miles away was now unat-
tainable — after an eia of railroads built by men who thought in thou-
sands of transcontinental miles. That net of rails and lights, spreading
trom ocean to ocean, hung on the snap of a wire, on a broken
connection inside a rusty phone — no, she thought, on something
much more powcrtul and much more delicate. It hung on the connec-
tions in the minds of the men who knew that the existence of a wire,
of a train, ol a job, of themselves and their actions was an absolute
not to be escaped. When such minds were gone, a two-thousand-ton
train was left at the mercy of the muscles of her legs.

Fired? —she thought; even the strain of walking was a value, a
small piece of reality in the stillness around them. The sensation of
effort was a specific experience, it was pain and could be nothing
else -in the midst of a space which was neither light nor dark, a soil
which neither gave nor resisted, a fog which neither moved nor hung
still. Their strain was the only evidence of their motion: nothing
changed m the emptiness around them, nothing took form to mark
their progress. She had always wondered, in incredulous contempt,
about the sects that preached the annihilation of the universe as the
ideal to be attainted. There , she thought, was their world and the
content of their minds made real.

When the green light of a signal appeared by the track, it gave
them a point to reach and pass, but — incongruous in the midst of
the floating dissolution — it brought them no sense of relief, it seemed
to come from a long since extinguished world, like those stars whose
light remains after they are gone. The green circle glowed in space,
announcing a clear track, inviting motion where there was nothing
to move. Who was that philosopher, she thought, who preached that
motion exists without any moving entities? This was his world, too.

She found herself pushing forward with increasing effort, as if
against some resistance that was, not pressure, but suction. Glancing

627

at Kellogg, she saw that he, too, was walking like a .man braced
against a storm. She felt as if the two of them were the sole
survivors ... of reality, she thought — two lonely figures fighting, not
through a storm, but worse: through non-existence.

If was Kellogg who glanced back, after a while, and she followed
his glance: there was no headlight behind them.

TTiey did not stop. Looking straight ahead, he reached absently
into his pocket; she fell certain that the movement was involuntary;
he produced a package of cigarettes and extended it to her.

She was about to take a cigarette — then, suddenly, she seized his
wrist and tore the package out of his hand. It was a plain white
package that bore, as single imprint, the sign of the dollar.

“Give me the. flashlight!" she ordered, stopping.

He stopped obediently and sent the beam of the flashlight at the
package in her hands. She caught a glimpse of his face: he looked a
little astonished and very amused.

There was no printing on the package, no trade name, no address,
only the dollar sign stamped in gold. The cigarettes bore the same
sign.

“Where did you get this?” she asked.

He was smiling. “If you know enough to ask that. Miss Taggart,
you should know that I won’t answer.”

“I know that this stands for something.”

“The dollar sign? For a great deal. It stands on the vest of every
fat, piglike figure in ever> cartoon, for the purpose of denoting a
crook, a grafter, a scoundrel - as the one sure-fire brand of evil. It
stands — as the money of a free country — for achievement, for suc-
cess, for ability, for man s creative power —and. precisely for these
reasons, it is used as a brand of infamy. It stands stamped on the
forehead of a man like Hank Rearden, as a mark of damnation
Incidentally, do you know where that sign comes from? It stands for
the initials of the United States.”

He snapped the flashlight off, but he did not move to go; she could
distinguish I he hint of his bitter smile.

“Do you know that the United States is the only country in history
that has e\er used its own monogram as a symbol of depravity? Ask
yourself why. Ask yourself how long a country that did that could
hope to exist, and whose moral standards have destroyed it It was
the only country m history where wealth was not acquired by looting,
but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only country whose
money was the symbol of man’s right to his own nnnd, to his work,
to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, by the present
standards of the world, if this is the reason for damning us, then
we— we, the dollar chasers and makers-r-accepl it and choose to be
damned by that world. We choose to wjear the sign ol the dollar on
our foreheads, proudly, as our badge of nobility— the badge wc are
willing to live for and. if need be, to dife.”

He extended his hand for the packagd. She held it as if her lingers
would not let it go, but gave up and placed it on his palm. With
deliberate slowness, as if to underscore the meaning of his gesture,
he offered her a cigarette. She took if and placed it between her

628

lips. He took one for himself, struck a match, lighted both and they
walked on.

They walked, over rotting logs that sank without resistance into
the shifting ground, through a vast, uncongealed globe of moonlight
and coiling mist — with two spots of living fire in their hands and the
glow ol two small circles to light their faces.

“Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips . she remem-
bered the old man saying to her, the old man who had said that
these cigarettes were not made anywhere on earth. “When a man
thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind— and it’s proper that he
should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.’’

“1 wish you’d tell me who makes them,” she said, in the tone of
a hopeless plea.

He chuckled good-naturedly. “I can tell you this much: they’re
made by a friend of mine, for sale, but — not being a common ear-
lier — he sells them only to his friends."'

“Sell me that package, will you?”

“I don't think you’ll be able to afford it, Miss Taggart, but— all
right, if you wish.”

“How much is it?”

“Five cents.”

“Five cents?” che repeated, bewildered.

“Five cents --” he said, and added, “in gold.”

She stopped, staring at him. “In gold?”

“Yes, Miss Taggart.”

“Well, what's your rale of exchange 9 How much is it in our nor-
mal money?”

“There is no rate of exchange. Miss Taggart. No amount of physi-
cal — or spiritual-— currency, whose sole standard of value is the de-
cree of Mr. Wesley Mouch, will buy these cigarettes.”

“I see.”

He reached into his pocket, took out the package and handed it
to her. “I’ll give them to you. Miss Taggart.” he said, “because
you’ve earned them many times over- -and because you need them
foi the same purpose we do.”

“What purpose?”

“To remind us — in moments of discouragement, in the loneliness
ol exile — of our true homeland, which has always been yours, too,
Miss Taggart.”

“Thank you,” she said. She put the cigarettes in her pocket; he
saw that her hand was trembling.

When they reached the fourth of the five mileposts, they had been
silent for a long time, with no strength left for anything but the effort
of moving their feet. Far ahead, they saw a dot of light, too low on
the horizon and too harshly clear to be a star. They kept watching
it, as they walked, and said nothing until they became certain that
it was a powerful electric beacon blazing in the midst of the empty
prairie.

“What is that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It looks like — ”

“No,” she broke in hastily, “it couldn’t be. Not around here.”

629

She did not want to hear him name the hope which "she had felt
for many minutes past. She could not permit herself to think of it
or to know that the thought was hope.

They found the telephone box at the fifth milepost. The beacon
hung like a violent spot of cold tire, less than half a mile farther
south.

The telephone was working. She heard the buzz of the wire, like
the breath of a living creature, when she lifted the receiver. Then a
drawling voice answered. “Jessup, at Bradshaw.” The voice sounded
sleepy.

"This is Dagnv Taggart, speaking from- "

“Who?’*

“Dagny Taggart, of Taggart Transcontinental, speaking™"

-Oh. . . Oh yes ... I see . . Yes?”

“ — speaking from your track phone Number 83. The Comet is
stalled seven miles north of here It's been abandoned. The crew
has deserted.”

There was a pause. “Well, what do you want me to do about it 9 "

She had to pause m turn, in order to believe it. “Are you the
night dispatcher 9 ”

”Yeah.”

“Then send another crew out to us at once ”

“A full passenger train crew?”

“Of course.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. "The iules don't say anything about that.”

“Get me the chief dispatcher,” she said, choking.

“He's away on his vacation.”

“Get the division superintendent.”

“He’s gone down to Laurel for a couple of days."

“Get me somebody who’s in charge ”

“I’m in charge.”

“Listen,'’ she said slowly, fighting for patience, “do you understand
that there’s a train, a passenger limited, abandoned in the middle of
the prairie?”

“Yeah, but how am l to know what Lm supposed to do about it?
The rules don’t provide for it. Now if you had an accident, we’d
send out the wrecker, but if there was no accident . . . you don't
need the wrecker, do you?”

“No. We don't need the wrecker. We need men. Do you under-
stand? Living men to run an engine.” *

“The rules don’t say anything about a train without men. Or about
men without a train. There's no rule ft>r calling out a full crew in
the middle of the night and sending th^m to hunt for a train some-
where. I’ve never heard of it before.”

“You’re hearing it now. Don't you kjaow what you have to do?”

“Who am l to know?”

“Do you know that your job is to keep trains moving?”

“My job is to obey the rules. If I semi out a crew when I’m not
supposed to, God only knows what’s going to happen! What with

630

the Unification Board and all the regulations they've got nowadays,
who am I to take it upon myself/'*

“And what’s going to happen if you leave a train stalled on the
line?”

“That's not my fault I had nothing to do with it. They can’t blame
me 1 couldn’t help it.”

“You're to help it now.”

“Nobody told me to."

“/ m telling you to!”

“How do 1 know' whether you’re supposed to tell me or not?
We’re not supposed to furnish any Taggart crews. You people were
to run with your own crews. That's what we were told.”

“But this is an emergency!”

“Nobody told me anything about an emergency.”

She had to take a few seconds to control herself. She saw Kellogg
watching her with a bitter smile of amusement.

“Listen,” she said into the phone, “do you know' that the Comet
was due at Bradshaw over three hours ago?”

“Oh, sure. But nobody's going to make any trouble about that.
No tram’s ever on schedule these days.”

‘‘Then do you intend to leave us blocking your track forever**”

“We’ve got nothing due till Number 4. the northbound passenger
out of Laurel, at eight thirty-seven am You can wait till then. The
day-trick dispatcher will be on then. You can speak to him.”

“You blasted idiot! This is the Comet'"

“What's that to me? This isn't Taggart Transcontinental. You peo-
ple expect a lot for vour money. You’ve been nothing but a headache
to us, with all the extra work at no extra pay for the little fellows.”
His voice was slipping into whining insolence. “You can’t talk to me
that way. The time’s past when you could talk to people that way.”

She had never believed that there were rnen with whom a certain
method, which she had never used, would work; such men were not
hired by Taggart Transcontinental and she had never been forced to
deal with them before.

“Do you know who l am?” she asked, in the cold, oveibearing
tone ol a personal threat.

It worked. “I ... I guess so,” he answered.

“Then let me tell you that it you don’t send a crew to me at once,
you'll be oik of a job within one hour alter I reach Bradshaw, which
1 11 reach sooner or later. You’d better make it sooner.”

“Yes, ma’am.” he said.

“Call out a full passenger train crew and give them orders to run
us to Laurel, where we have oui own men.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He added, “Will you tell headquarters that it was
you who told me to do it?”

“I will.”

“And that it’s you who’re responsible for it?”

“I am.”

There was a pause, then he asked helplessly. “Now how am I
going to call the men? Most of them haven’t got any phones,”

“Do you have a call boy?”

631

“Yes, but he won't get here till morning/'

“Is there anybody in the yards right now?’'

“There's the wiper in the roundhouse/’

“Send him out to call the men/’

“Yes, ma’am. Hold the tine.”

She leaned against the side of the phone box. to wait. Kellogg
was smiling.

“And you propose to run a railroad — a transcontinental railroad —
with thaiT' he asked.

She shrugged.

She could not keep her eyes off the beacon. It seemed so close, so
easily within her reach. She felt as if the unconfessed thought were
struggling furiously against her. splattering bits of the struggle all over
her mind: A man able to harness an untapped source of energy, a
man working on a motor to make all other motors useless . , . she
could be talking to him, to his kind of brain, in a few hours ... in
just a few hours. . . . What if there was no need to hurry to him? It
was what she wanted to do. It was all she wanted. . . . Her work?
What was her work: to move on to the fullest, most exacting use ot
her mind — or to spend the rest of her life doing his thinking for a
man unfit to be a night dispatcher 7 Why had she chosen to work 7
Was it in order to remain where she had started— night operator of
Rockdale Station — no, lower than that— she had been better than that
dispatcher, even at Rockdale — was this to be the final sum: an end
lower than her beginning ’ . . . There was no reason to hurry? She
was the reason . . . They needed the trams, but they did not need the
motor? She needed the motor. . . . Her duty? To whom 7

The dispatcher was gone for a long time: when he came back, ins
voice sounded sulky: “Well, the wiper says he can get the men all
right, but it's no use. because how am 1 going to send them out to
you? We have no engine.”

“No engine?”

“No. The superintendent took one to run down to Laurel, and the
other’s in the shops, been there for weeks, and the switch engine
jumped a rail this morning, they’ll be working on her till tomorrow
afternoon.”

“What about the wrecker’s engine that you were offering to send
us?”

“Oh, she’s up north. They had a wreck there yesterday. She hasn’t
come back yet/’

“Have you a Diesel car?”

“Never had any such thing. Not around here.”

“Have you a track motor air?”

“Yes. We have that/* f

“Send them out on the track motor a|r.”

“Oh , . . Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell your men to stop here, at track? phone Number 83. to pick
up Mr. Kellogg and myself.” she was locking at the beacon.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call the Taggart trainmaster at Laurel, report the Comet’s delay
and explain to him what happened,” She put her hand into her pocket

632

and suddenly clutched her fingers: she felt the package of cigarettes.
“Say — ” she asked, “what's that beacon, about half a mile from here?**

“From where you are? Oh, that must be the emergency landing
field of the Flagship Airlines,”

“I see . . . Well, that’s all. Get your men started at once. Tell them
to pick up Mr. Kellogg by track phone Number 83.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She hung up. Kellogg was grinning.

“An airfield, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes ” She stood looking at the beacon, her hand still clutching the
cigarettes in her pocket.

“So they’re going to pick up Mr. Kellogg, arc they?”

She whirled to him. realizing what decision her mind had been
reaching without her conscious knowledge. “No,” she said, “no, I
didn’t mean to abandon you here. It’s only that 1, too, have a crucial
purpose out West, where 1 ought to hurry, so 1 was thinking of trying
to catch a plane, but 1 can’t do it and it’s not necessary.”

“Come on,” he said, starting in the direction of the airfield.

“But I — ”

“If there’s anything you want to do more urgently than to nurse
those morons — go right ahead.”

“More urgently than anything in the world,” she whispered.

“I'll undertake to remain in charge lor you and to deliver the Comet
to your man at Laurel.”

“T hank you . . But if you’re hoping ... I'm not deserting, you

know.”

“I know.”

“Then why are you so eager to help me?”

“I just want you to see what it’s like to do something you want,
for once.”

“There's not much chance that they'll have a plane at that field.”

“ There’s a good chance that they will.”

There were two planes on the edge of the airfield: one. the half-
charred remnant of a wreck, not worth salvaging for scrap-the other,
a Dwight Sanders monoplane, brand-new, the kind of ship that men
were pleading for. in vain, all over the country.

There was one sleepy attendant at the airfield, young, pudgy, and.
but for a faint smell of college about his vocabulary, a brain-brother
of the night dispatcher of Bradshaw. He knew nothing about the two
planes: they had been there when he first took this job a year ago.
He had never inquired about them and neither had anybody else. In
whatever silent crumbling had gone on at the distant headquarters, in
the slow dissolution of a great airline company, the Sanders mono-
plane had been forgotten — as assets of this nature were being forgot-
ten everywhere ... as the model of the motor had been forgotten on
a junk pile and, left in plain sight, had conveyed nothing to the inheri-
tors and the takers-over. . . .

There were no rules to tell the young attendant whether he was
expected to keep the Sanders plane or not. The decision was made
for him by the brusque, confident manner of the two strangers — by
the credentials of Miss Dagny Taggart, Vice-President of a railroad —

633

by brief hints about a secret, emergency mission, which bounded tike
Washington to him — by the mention of an agreement with the airline's
top officials in New York, whose names he had never heard before —
by a check for fifteen thousand dollars, written by Miss Taggart, as
deposit against the return of the Sanders plane — and by another
check, for two hundred bucks, for his own, personal courtesy.

He fueled the plane, he checked it as best he could, he found a
map of the country's airports — and she saw that a landing field on
the outskirts of Alton. Utah, was marked as still in existence. She had
been too tensely, swiftly active to fed anything, but at the last mo-
ment, when the attendant switched on the floodlights, when she was
about to climb aboard, she paused to glance at the emptiness of the
sky, then at Owen Kellogg. He stood, alone in the white glare, his
feet planted firmly apart, on an island of cement in a ring of blinding
lights, with nothing beyond the ring but an irredeemable night -and
she wondered which one of them was taking the greater chance and
facing the more desolate emptiness.

“In case anything happens to me,” she said, “will yon tell Eddie
Willers in my office to give Jeff Allen a job, as I promised?’ 1

“1 will . . Is this all you wish to be done ... in case anything

happens?”

She considered it and smiled sadly, in astonishment at the realiza-
tion. “Yes, l guess that’s all . . . Except, tell Hank Rearden what
happened and that 1 asked you to tell him.”

“I will.”

She lifted her head and said firmly, “I don’t expect it to happen,
however. When you reach Laurel, call Winston, Colorado, and tell
them that I will be there tomorrow by noon.”

“Yes, Miss Taggart ”

She wanted to extend her hand in parting, but it seemed inadequate,
and then she remembered what he had said about times of loneliness
She took out the package and silently offered him one of his own
cigarettes. His smile was a full statement of understanding, and the
small flame of his match lighting their two cigarettes was their most
enduring handshake.

r Iben she climbed aboard — and the next span of her consciousness
was not separate moments and movements, but the sweep of a single
motion and a single unit of time, a progression forming one entity,
like the notes of a piece of music: from the touch of her hand on the
starter — to the blast of the motor’s sound that broke off, like a moun-
tain rockslide, all contact with the time behind her -to the circling
fall of a blade that vanished in a fragile, sparkle of whirling air that
cut the space ahead- to the start for the runway — to the brief pause —
then to the forward thrust — to the long, ^perilous run, the run not to
be obstructed, the straight line run that fathers power by spending it
on a harder and harder and ever-accelerating effort, the straight fine
to a purpose — to the moment, unnoticed, when the earth drops off
and the line, unbroken, goes on into space in the simple natural act
of rising.

She saw the telegraph wires of the trat&side slipping past at the tip
of her toes. The earth was falling downward, and she felt as if its

634

weight were dropping off her ankles, as if the globe would go shrink-
ing to the size of a ball, a convict’s ball she had dragged and lost.
Her body swayed, drunk with the shock of a discovery, and the craft
rocked with her body, and it was the earth below that reeled with the
rocking of her craft— the discovery that her life was now in her own
hands, that there was no necessity to argue, to explain, to teach, to
plead, to fight — nothing but to see and think and act. Then the earth
steadied into a wide sheet that grew wider and wider as she circled,
rising When she glanced down for the last time, the lights of the field
were extinguished, there was only the single beacon left and it looked
like (he tip of Kellogg’s cigarette, glowing as a last salute in the
darkness.

Then she was Jeif with the lights on her instrument panel and the
spread of stars beyond her film of glass, there was nothing to support
heT but the beat of the engine and the minds of the men who had
made ihe plane. But what else supports one anywhere 7 - -she thought,

fhe line of her course went northwest, to cut a diagonal across the
state of Colorado. She knew' she had chosen the most dangerous route,
over too long a stretch of the worst mountain barrier —but it was the
shortest line, and safety lay in altitude, and no mountains seemed
dangerous compared to the dispatcher of Bradshaw,

The stars were like foam and the sk\ seemed full of flowing motion,
the motion of bubbles settling and forming, the floating of circular
waves without progression A spatk of light flared up on earth once
in a while, and it seemed brighter than all the static blue above. But
it hung alone, between the black of ashes and the blue of a crypt, it
seemed to tight for iis fragile foothold, it greeted her and went.

The pale streak ol a river came rising slowly from the void, and lor
a long stretch of time it remained in sight, gliding imperceptibly to
meet her It looked like a phosphorescent vein showing through the
skin of the earth a delicate vein without blood.

When she saw the lights of a town, like a handful of gold coins
flung upon the prairie, the brightly violent lights fed by an electric
current, they seemed as distant as the stars and now as unattainable.
The energy that had lighted them was gone, the power that created
power stations in empty prairies had vanished, and she knew of no
journey to recapture it. Yet these had been her stars — she thought,
kxiking down — these had been her goal, her beacon, the aspiration
drawing her upon her upward course. That which others claimed to
feel at the sight of the stars— stars safely distant by millions of years
and thus imposing no obligation to act, but serving as the tinsel of
futility — she had felt at the sight of electric bulbs lighting the streets
of a town, It was this earth below that had been the height she wanted
to reach, and she wondered how she had come to lose it, who had
made of it a convict’s ball to drag through muck, who had turned its
promise of greatness into a vision never to be reached. But the town
was past, and she had to look ahead, to the mountains of Colorado
rising in her way.

The small glass dial on her panel showed that she was now climbing.
The sound of the engine, beating through the metal shell around her,
trembling in the wheel against her palms, like the pounding of a heart

635

strained to a solemn effort, told her of the power carrying her above
the peaks. The earth was now a crumpled sculpture that swayed from
side to side, the shape of an explosion still shooting sudden spurts to
reach the plane. She saw them as dented black cuts ripping through
the milky spread of stars, straight in her path and tearing wider. Her
mind one with her body and her body one with the plane, she fought
the invisible suction drawing her downward, she fought the sudden
gusts that tipped the earth as if she were about to roll off into the
sky, with half of the mountains rolling alter. It was like fighting a
frozen ocean where the touch of a single spray would be fatal.

There were stretches of rest when the mountains shrank down, over
valleys tilled with fog. Then the fog rose higher to swallow the earth
and she was left suspended in space, left motionless but for the sound
of the engine.

But she did not need to see the earth. The instrument panel was
now her power of sight — it was the condensed sight of the best minds
able to guide her on her way. Their condensed sight, she thought,
offeied to hers and requiring only that she be able to read it. How
had they been paid for it, they, the sight-givers? From condensed milk
to condensed music to the condensed sight of precision instruments—
what wealth had they not given to the world and what had they
received in return? Where were they now? Where was Dwight Sand-
ers? Where was the inventor of her motor?

"Hie fog was lifting — and in a sudden clearing, she saw a drop of
fire on a spread of rock. It was not an electric light, it was a lonely
flame in the darkness of the earth. She knew where she was and she
knew that flame: it was Wyatt's Torch

She was coming close to her goal. Somewhere behind her, in the
northeast, stood the summits pierced by the Taggart Tunnel. The
mountains were sliding in a long descent into the steadier soil of Utah.
She let her plane slip closer to the earth.

The stars were vanishing, the sky was growing darker, but in the
bank of clouds to the east thin cracks were beginning to appear— first
as threads, then faint spots of reflection, then straight bands that were
not yet pink, but no longer blue, the color of a future light, the first
hints of the coming sunrise. I hey kept appearing and vanishing, slowly
growing dearer, leaving the sky darker, then breaking it wider apart,
like a promise struggling to be fulfilled. She heard a piece of music
beating in her mind, one she seldom liked to recall: not Halley's Fifth
Concerto, but his Fourth, the cry of a tortured struggle, with the chords
of its theme breaking through, like a distant vision to be reached.

She saw the Afton airport from across a span of miles, first as a
square of sparks, then as a sunburst of white rays. It was lighted for
a plane about to take off, and she had to Wait for her landing. Circling
in the outer darkness above the field, $ie saw the silver body of a
plane rising like a phoenix out of the white fire and— -in a straight
line, almost leaving an instant’s trail of |ght to hang in space behind
it— going off toward the east.

Then she swept down in its stead, to dive into the luminous funnel
of beams — she saw a strip of cement flying at her face, she felt the
jolt of the wheels stopping it in time, then the streak of her motion

636

ebbing out and the plane being tamed to the safety of a car, as it
taxied smoothly off the runway.

It was a small private airfield, serving the meager traffic of a few
industrial concerns still remaining in Afton. She saw a lone attendant
hurrying to meet her. She leaped down to the ground the moment
the plane stood still, the hours of the flight swept from her mind by
the impatience over the stretch erf a few more minutes.

“Can 1 get a car somewhere to drive me to the Institute of Technol-
ogy at once?” she asked.

The attendant looked at her, puzzled. “Why, yes, 1 guess so, ma’ani.
But ... but what for? There’s nobody there."

"Mr. Quentin Daniels is there.”

The attendant shook his head slowly — then jerked his thumb, point-
ing east to the shrinking taillights of the plane. "There's Mr. Daniels
going now."

-What?''

"He just left.”

“Left? Why?”

“He went with the man who flew in for him two-three hours ago.”

"What man?"

"Don’t know, never saw him before, but, boy! — he’s got a beauty
of a ship!"

She was back at the wheel, she was speeding down the runway, she
was rising into the air, her plane like a bullet aimed at two sparks of
red and green light that were twinkling away into the eastern sky —
while she was still repeating, "Oh no, they don't! They don’t! They
don't! They don't!"

Once and for all— she thought, clutching the wheel as it it were the
enemy not to be relinquished, her words like separate explosions with
a trail ol lire in her mind to link them —once and for all ... to meet
the destroyer face to face . . to learn who he is and where he goes
to vanish . . . not the motor . . he is not to carry the motor away
into the darkness of his monstrously closed unknown ... he is not to
escape, this time. . .

A band of light was rising in the east and it seemed to come from
the eaith, as a breath long-held and released. In the deep blue above
it, the stranger’s plane was a single spark changing color and flashing
from side to side, like the up ol a pendulum swinging in the darkness,
beating time.

The curve of distance made the spark drop closer to the earth, and
she pushed her throttle wide open, not to let the spark out of her
sight , not to let it touch the horizon and vanish. The light was flowing
into the sky. as if drawn from the earth by the stranger’s plane. The
plane was headed southeast, and she was following it into the com-
ing sunrise.

From the transparent green of ice, the sky melted into pale gold,
and the gold spread into a lake under a fragile film of pink glass, the
color of that forgotten morning which was the fu>t she had seen on
earth. The clouds were dropping away in long shreds of smoky blue,
She kept her eyes on the stranger’s plane, as if her glance were a

637

towline pulling her ship. The stranger's plane was now a* small black
cross, like a shrinking check mark on the glowing sky.

Then she noticed that the clouds were not dropping, that they stood
congealed on the edge of the earth — and she realized that the plane
was headed toward the mountains of Colorado, that the struggle against
the invisible storm lay ahead for her once more. She noted it without
emotion: she did not wonder whether her ship or her body had the
power to attempt it again. So long as she was able to move, she would
move to follow the speck that was fleeing away with the last of her
world She felt nothing but the emptiness left by a tire that had been
hatred and anger and the desperate impulse of a fight to the kill; these
had fused into a single icy streak, the single resolve to follow the
stranger, whoever he was, wherever he took her, to follow and . . . she
added* nothing in her mind, but unstated, what lay at the bottom of
the emptiness was: and give her life, if she could take his first.

Like an instrument set to automatic control, her body was performing
the motions of driving the plane— with the mountains reeling in a bluish
fog below and the dented peaks rising in her path as smoky formations
of a deadlier blue. She noticed that the distance to the stranger’s plane
had shrunk: he had checked his speed for the dangerous crossing, while
she had gone on, unconscious of the danger, with only the muscles of
her arms and legs fighting to keep her plane aloft. A briet. tight move-
ment of her lips was as dose as she could cotnc to a smile: it was he
who was flying her plane for her, she thought; he had given her the
power to follow him with a somnambulist’s unerring skill.

As it responding of itself to his control, the needle of her altimeter
was slowly moving upward. She was rising and she went on lising and
she wondered when her breath and her propeller would fail. He was
going southeast, toward the highest mountains that obstructed the
path of the sun.

It was his plane that was struck by the first sun ray. It flashed for
an instant, like a burst of white lire, sending rays to shoot from its
wings. The peaks of the mountains came next: she saw the sunlight
reaching the snow' in the crevices, then trickling down the granite
sides; it cut violent shadows on the ledges and brought the mountains
into the living finality of a form.

They were flying over the wildest stietch of Colorado, uninhabited,
uninhabitable, inaccessible to men on foot or plane. No landing was
possible within a radius of a hundred miles; she glanced at her fuel
gauge: she had one half-hour left. The stranger was heading straight
toward another, higher range. She wondered why he chose a course
no air route did or ever would travel. $he wished this range were
behind her; it was the last effort she coujd hope to make.

The stranger’s plane was suddenly slacking its speed. He was losing
altitude just when she had expected him |o climh. The granite barrier
was rising in his path, moving to meet fiim, reaching for his Wings,
but the long, smooth line of his motion $yas sliding down. She could
detect no break, no joit, no sign of mechanical failure: it looked like
the even movement of a controlled intention. With a sudden flash of
sunlight on its wings, the plane banked info a long curve, rays dripping

638

like water from its body — then went into the broad, smooth circles of
a spiral, as if circling for a landing where no landing was conceivable*

She watched, not trying to* explain it, not believing what she saw,
waiting for the upward thrust that would throw him back on his
course. But the easy, gliding circles went on dropping, toward a
ground she could not see and dared not think of. Like remnants of
broken jaws, strings of granite dentures stood between her ship and
his; she could not tell what lay at the bottom of his spiral motion*
She knew only that it did not look like, but was certain to be, the
motion of a suicide.

She saw the sunlight glitter on his wings for an instant. 7tten. like
the body of a man diving chest-first and arms outstretched, serenely
abandoned to the sweep of the fall, the plane went down and vanished
behind the ridges of rock.

She flew on, almost waiting for it to reappear, unable to believe
that she had witnessed a horrible catastrophe taking place so simply
and quietly. She flew on to where the plane had dropped. It seemed
to be a valley in a ring of granite walls.

She reached the valley and looked down. There was no possible
place for a landing. There was no sign of a plane.

The bottom of the valley looked like a stretch of the earth’s crust
mangled in the days when the earth was cooling, left irretrievable ever
since. It was a stretch of rocks ground against one another, with boul-
ders hanging in precarious formations, with long, dark crevices and a
few contorted pine trees growing ha If- horizon tally into the air. There
was no level piece oi soil the size of a handkerchief There was no
place for a plane to hide. There was no remnant of a plane’s wreck.

She banked sharply, circling above the valley, dropping down a
little. By some trick of light, which she could not explain, the floot of
the valley seemed more clearly visible than the rest of the earth. She
could distinguish it well enough to know that the plane was not there;
yet this was not possible.

She circled, dropping down farther. She glanced around her — and
for one frightening moment, she thought that it was a quiet summer
morning, that she was alone, lost in a region of the Rocky Mountains
which no plane should ever venture to approach, and, with the last
ot her fuel burning away, she was looking for a plane that had never
existed, m quest of a destioyer who had vanished as he always van-
ished; perhaps it was only his vision that had led her here to be
destroyed. In the next moment, she shook her head, pressed her
mouth tighter and dropped farther.

She thought that she could not abandon an incalculable wealth such
as the brain of Quentin Daniels on one of those rocks below, if he
was still alive and within her reach to help. She had dropped inside
the circle of the valley’s walls. It was a dangerous job of flying, the
space was much too tight, but she went on circling and dropping lower,
her life hanging on her eyesight, and her eyesight flashing between two
tasks: searching the floor of the valley and watching the granite walls
that seemed about to rip her wings.

She knew the danger only its part of the job. It had no personal
meaning any longer. The savage thing she felt was almost enjoyment.

639

It was the last rage of a lost battle. No! — she was crying in her mind,
crying it to the destroyer, to the world she had left, to the years
behind her, to the long progression of defeat — No! . . . No! . . . No! . . .

Her eyes swept past the instrument panel — and then she sat still
but for the sound of a gasp. Her altimeter had stood at 11,000 feet
the last time she remembered seeing it. Now it stood at 10,000. But
the floor of the valley had not changed. It had come no closer. It
remained as distant as her first glance down.

She knew that the figure 8,000 meant the level of the ground in
this part of Colorado, She had not noticed the length of her descent.
She had not noticed that the ground, which had seemed too clear and
too close from the height, was now too dim and too tar. She was
looking at the same rocks from the same perspective, they had grown
no larger, their shadows had not moved, and the oddly unnatural light
still hung over the bottom of the valley.

She thought that her altimeter was off, and she went on circling
downward. She saw the needle of her dial moving down, she saw the
walls of granite moving up, she saw the ring of mountains growing
higher, its peaks coming closer together in the sky— but the floor of
the valley remained unchanged, as if she were dropping down a well
with a bottom never to be reached. The needle moved to 9,500— to
9300— to 9,000 — to 8,700,

The flash of light that hit her had no source. It was as if the air
within and beyond the plane became an explosion ot blinding cold
fire, sudden and soundless, lire shock threw her back, her hands off
the wheel and over her eyes. In the break of an instant, when she
seized the wheel again, the light was gone, but her ship was spinning,
her ears were bursting with silence and her propeller stood stiffly
straight before her: her motor was dead.

She tried to pull for a rise, but the ship was going down — and what
she saw flying at her face was not the spread of mangled boulders, but
the green grass of a field where no field had been before. There was
no time to see the rest. There was no time to think of explanations.
There W'as no time to come out of the spin. The earth was a green
ceiling coming down upon her, a few hundred swiftly shrinking feet
away

Flung from side to side, like a battered pendulum, clinging to the
wheel, half in her seat, half on her knees, she fought to pull the ship
into a glide, for an attempt to make a belly-landing, while the green
ground was whirling about her, sweeping above her, then below, its
spiral coils coming closer. Her anus pulling at the wheel, with no
chance to know whether .she could succeed, with her space and lime
running out — she felt, in a flash of its full, violent purity, that special
sense of existence which had always beeri hers. In a moment’s conse-
cration to her love — to her rebellious denial of disaster, to her love
of life and of the matchless value that was herself — she felt the fiercely
proud certainty that she would survive.

And in answer to the earth that flew to meet her, she heard in her
mind, as her mockery at fate, as her cry |>t defiance, the words of the
sentence she hated-— the words of defeat, of despair and of a plea
for help:

“Oh hell! Who is John Galt?”

640

PART THREE

Chapter I ATLANTIS

When she opened her eyes, she saw sunlight, green leaves and a
man’s taco. She thought' 1 know what this is. This was the world as
she had expected to see it at sixteen— -and now she had reached it —
and it seemed so simple, so unastomshing, that the thing she fell was
like a blessing pronounced upon the universe by means ol three
woids: But of course.

She was looking up at the taco of a man who knelt by her side,
and she knew that in all the years behind her, this was what she
would have given her life to see. a face that bore no mark of pain
or lear or guilt. The shape of his mouth was pride, and more: it was
as if he took pride in being proud The angular planes ot his cheeks
made her think of arrogance, ot tension, ol scorn — yet the face had
none of these qualities, it had their final sum: a look of serene deter-
mination and ot ceitainty. and the look of a ruthless innocence which
would not seek foigiveness or grant it. H was a face that had nothing
to hide or to escape, a face with no tear of being seen or of seeing,
so that the first thing she grasped about him was the intense percep-
tive ness of his eyes— he looked as if his faculty of sight were his
best-loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous adventure,
as if his eyes imparted a superlative value to himself and to the
world- -to himself for his ability to see, to the world tor being a
place so eagerly worth seeing. It seemed to her for a moment that
she was in the presence of a being who was pure consciousness —
yet she had never been so aware of a man’s body. Hie light cloth
of his shiit seemed to stress, rather than hide, the structure of his
figure, his skin was suntanned, his body had the hardness, the gaunt
tensile strength, the clean precision of a foundry casting, he looked
as if he were poured out of metal, but some dimmed, soft-lustered
metal, like an aluminum copper alloy, the color of his skin blending
with the chest nut-brown of his hair, the loose strands of the hair
shading from brown to gold in the sun, and his eves completing the
colors, as the one part of the casting left undimmed and hardly lus-
trous: his eyes were the deep, dark green of light glinting on metal.
He was looking down at her with the faint trace of a smile, it was
not a look of discovery, but of familiar contemplation — as if he, too,
wore seeing the long-expected and the never-doubted.

643

This was her world, she thought, this was the way meo were meant
to be and to face their existence — and all the rest of it, all the years
of ugliness and struggle were only someone’s senseless joke. She
smiled at him, as at a fellow conspirator, in relief, in deliverance, in
radiant mockery of all the things she would never have to consider
important again. He smiled in answer, it was the same smile as her
own, as if he fell what she felt and knew what she meant.

“We never had to take any of it seriously, did wc?” she whispered.

“No, we never had to.”

And then, her consciousness returning fully, she realized that this
man was a total stranger.

She tried to draw away from him, but it was only a taint movcmcnl
of her head on the grass she felt under her hair. She tried to rise,
A shot of pain across her back threw her down again

“Don’t move. Miss Taggart. You’re hurt.”

“You know me?” Her voice was impersonal and hard.

“I’ve known you for many years.”

“Have I known you?”

“Yes, 1 think so.”

“What is your name?”

“John Galt.”

She looked at him, not moving.

“Why are you frightened?” he asked.

“Because 1 believe it.”

He smiled, as if grasping a full confession of the meaning she
attached to his name; the smile held an adversary’s acceptance of a
challenge — and an adult’s amusement at the self-deception of a child.

She felt as if she were returning to consciousness after a crash that
had shattered more than an airplane. She could not reassemble the
pieces now, she could not recall the things she had known about his
name, she knew only that it stood for a dark vacuum which she
would slowly have to fill. She could not do it now, this man was too
blinding a presence, like a spotlight that would not let her see the
shapes strewn in the outer darkness.

“Was it you that 1 was following?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She glanced slowly around her. She was lying in the grass of a
field at the foot of a granite drop that came down from thousands
of feet away in the blue sky. On the other edge of the field, some
crags and pines and the glittering leaves ol birch trees hid the space
that stretched to a distant wall of encircling mountains. Her plane
was not shattered — it was there, a few {eet away, fiat on its belly in
the grass. There was no other plane in sight, no structures, no sign
of human habitation.

“What is this valley?” she asked.

He smiled. “The Taggart Terminal.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll find out.”

A dim impulse, like the recoil of an antagonist, made her want to
check on what strength was left to her. She could move her arms
and kgs; she could lift her head; she felt a stabbing pain when she

644

breathed deeply; she saw a thin thread of blood running down her
stocking.

“Can one get out of this place?’’ she asked.

His voice seemed earnest, but the glint of the metal-green eyes
was a smile: “Actually — no. Temporarily — yes.”

She made a movement to rise. He bent to lift her, but she gathered
her strength in a swift, sudden jolt and slipped out of his grasp,
struggling to stand up. “1 think 1 can — ” she started saying, and
collapsed against him the instant her feet rested on the ground, a
stab of pain shooting up from an ankle that would not hold her.

He lifted her in his arms and smiled, “No. you can’t. Miss Tag-
gart,’’ he said, and started off across the field.

She lay still, her arms about him, her head on his shoulder, and
she thought: For just a few moments — while this lasts — it is all right
to surrender completely — to forget everything and just permit your-
self to feel. . . When had she experienced it before? — she wondered;
there had been a moment when these had been the words in her
mind, but she could not remember it now. She had known it, once —
this feeling of certainty, of the final, the reached, the not-to-be-ques-
tioned. But it was new to feci protected, and to feci that it was right
to accept the protection, to surrender— right, because this peculiar
sense of safety was not protection againsi the luture. but against the
past, not the protection of being spared from battle, but of having
won it, not a protection granted to her weakness, but to her
strength. . . Aware with abnormal intensity of the pressure of his

hands against her body, of the gold and copper threads of his hair,
the shadows of his lashes on the skin of lus face a lew inches away
from hers, she wondered dimly* Protected, from what? . . . it’s he
who was the enemy . . was he? . . why? . . She did not know,
she could not think of it now It took an effort to remember that
she had had a goal and a motive a few hours ago. She forced herself
to lecapture it.

“Did vou know that I was following you?” she asked,

“No.”

“Where is your plane 0 '*

“At the landing field.”

“Where is the landing field?"

“On the other side of the valley.”

“There was no landing field m this valley, when l looked down.
There as no meadow, either. How did it get here 0 ”

He glanced at the sky. “Look carefully. Do you see anything up
there?”

She dropped her head back, looking straight into the sky, seeing
nothing but the peaceful blue ol morning. After a while she distin-
guished a few faint strips of shimmering air.

“Heat waves.” she said.

“Refractor rays,” he answered. "The valley bottom that you saw is
a mountain top eight thousand feet high, five miles away from here.”

“A . . . what?”

“A mountain top that no flyer would ever choose for a landing.
What you saw was its reflection projected over this valley.”

645

“How?"

“By the same method as a mirage on a desert: an image refracted
from a layer of heated air."

“How?"

“By a set eon of rays calculated against everything — except a cour-
age such as yours."

“What do you mean?”

“I never thought that any plane would attempt to drop within
seven hundred feet of the ground. You hit the ray screen. Some of
the rays are the kind that kill magnetic motors. Well, that’s the
second time you beat me: I've never been followed, either."

“Why do you keep that screen?"

“Because this place is private property intended to remain as
such."

“What is this place?"

“I’ll show it to you, now that you’re here. Miss Taggart. I’ll answer
questions after you’ve seen it."

She remained silent. She noticed that she had asked questions
about every subject, but not about him. It was as if he were a single
whole, grasped by her first glance at him, like some irreducible abso-
lute, like an axiom not to be explained any lurther, as if she knew
everything about him by direct perception, and what awaited her
now was only the process ot identifying her knowledge.

He was carrying her down a narrow trail that went winding to the
bottom of the valley. On the slopes around them, the tall, dark pyra-
mids of llrs stood immovably straight, in masculine simplicity, like
sculpture reduced to an essential form, and they clashed with the
complex, feminine, overdet ailed lace-work of the birch leaves
trembling in the sun. The leaves let the sunrays fall through to sweep
across his hair, acioss both their faces. She could not see what lay
below, beyond the turns ot the trail.

Her eyes kept coming back to his lace. He glanced down at her
once in a while. At first, she looked away, as if she had been caught.
Then, as if learning it from him, she held his glance whenever he
chose to look down— knowing that he knew what she Icll and that
he did not hide from hei the meaning of his glance.

She knew that his silence was the same confession as her own. He
did not hold her in the impersonal manner of a man carrying a
wounded woman. It was an embrace, even though she felt no sugges-
tion of it in his bearing; she felt it only by means ot her certainty
that his whole body was aware of holding hers.

She heard the sound of the waterfall before she saw the fragile
thread that tell in broken strips of glitter down the ledges. The sound
came through some dim beat in her njind. some taint rhythm that
seemed no louder than a struggling memory-- but they went past and
the beat remained, she listened to the! sound of the water, but an-
other sound seemed to grow clearer, Rising, not in her mind, but
from somewhere among the leaves. Th<$ trail turned, and in a sudden
clearing she saw a small house on a Mge below, with a flash of sun
on the pane of an open window. In the moment when she knew what
experience had once made her want to surrender to the immediate

646

present — it had been the night in a dusty coach of the Comet, when
she had heard the theme of Halley's Fifth Concerto for "the first
time — she knew that she was hearing it now, hearing it rise from the
keyboard of a piano, in the clear, sharp chords of someone’s power-
ful, confident touch

She snapped the question at his face, as if hoping to catch him
unprepared: “That’s the Fifth Concerto bv Richard Hallcv. isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“When did he write it?”

“Why don’t you ask him that in person?”

“Is he here?”

“It's he who’s playing it. That's his house.”

“Oh . . . !”

“You’ll meet him, later. He'll he glad to speak to you. He knows
that his works are the only records you like to play, in the evening,
when you are alone ”

“How does he know that?”

“I told him ”

The look on her face was like a question that would have begun
with “How in hell . . . ?” — but she saw the look of his eyes, and she
laughed, her laughter giving sound to the meaning of his glance

She could not question anything, she thought, she could not doubt,
not now- -not with the sound of that music rising triumphantly
thiough the sun-drenched leaves, the music of release, of deliverance,
played as it was intended to he played, as her mind had struggled
to hear it in a rocking coach through the beat ot wounded wheels —
it was this that her mind had seen m the sounds, that night— this
valley and the morning sun and —

And then she gasped, because the trail had turned and from the
height of an open ledge she saw the town on the floor of the valley.

It was not a town, only a cluster of houses scattered at random
from the bottom to the rising steps of the mountains that went on
rising above their roofs, enclosing them within an abrupt, impassable
circle They were homes, small and new, with naked, angular shapes
and the glitter of broad windows Far in the distance, some structures
seemed taller, and the faint coils of smoke above them suggested an
industrial district But close before her, rising on a slender granite
column from a ledge below to the level of her eyes, blinding her by
its glare, dimming the rest, stood a dollar sign three feet tall, made
of solid gold. It hung in space above the town, as its coat-of-arms,
its trademark, its beacon — and it caught the sunrays, like some trans-
mitter of energy that sent them in shining blessing to stretch horizon-
tally through the air above the roofs.

“What's that?” she gasped, pointing at (he sign.

“Oh, that's Francisco's private joke.”

“Francisco — who?” she whispered, knowing the answer.

“Francisco d’Anconia.”

“Is he here, too?”

“He will be, any day now.”

“What do you mean, his joke?”

“He gave that sign as an anniversary present to the owner of this

647

place. And then we all adopted it as our particular emblem. We
liked the idea.”

“Aren’t you the owner of this place?”

‘*1? No.” He glanced down at the foot of the ledge and added,
pointing, “There’s the owner of this place, coining now.”

A car stopped at the end of a dirt road below, and two men were
hurrying up the trail. She coil Id not distinguish their faces; one of
them was slender and tall, the other shorter, more muscular. She lost
sight of them behind the twists of the trail, as he went on carrying her
down to meet them.

She met them when they emerged suddenly from behind a rocky
comer a few feet away. The sight of their faces hit her with the
abruptness of a collision.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned!” said the muscular man, whom she did
not know, staring at her.

She was staring at the tall, distinguished figure of his companion*
it was Hugh Akston.

It was Hugh Akston who spoke first, bowing to her with a courte-
ous smile of welcome. “Miss Taggart, this is the first lime anyone
has ever proved me wrong. I didn’t know- ‘•when l told you you’d
never find him— that the next time I saw you. you would he in his
arms.”

“In whose arms?”

“Why, the inventor of the motor ”

She gasped, closing her eyes; this was one connection she knew
she should have made. When she opened her eyes, she was looking
at Galt. He was smiling, faintly, derisively, as if he knew fully what
this meant to her.

“It would have served you right it you’d broken your neck!” the
muscular man snapped at her, with the anger of concern, almost of
affection. “What a stunt to pull — for a person who’d have been ad-
mitted here so eagerly, il she’d chosen to come through the front
door!”

“Miss Taggart, may 1 present Midas Mulligan?” said Galt

“Oh,” she said weakly, and laughed; she had no capacity for as-
tonishment any longer. “Do you suppose l was killed in that crash ~
and this is some other kind of existence?”

“It L\ another kind ol existence,” said Galt “Rut as ior being
killed, doesn’t it seem more like the other way around?”

“Oh yes,” she whispered, “yes . . She smiled at Mulligan.
“Where is the front door?”

“Here,” he said, pointing to his forehead.

“I’ve lost the key,” she said simply, vtfithout resentment. “I've lost
all keys, right now.” •

“YouTl find them. But what in blades were you doing in that
plane?” '

“Following,”

"Him?” He pointed at Galt.

“Yes.”

“You're lucky to be alive! Are you badly hurt?”

“1 don’t think so.”

648

“You’ll have a few questions to answer, after they patch you up.”
He turned brusquely, leading the way down to the car, then glanced
at Galt. “Well, what do we do now? There's something we hadn’t
provided for: the first scab.”

“The first . . . what?” she asked.

“Skip it,” said Mulligan, and looked at Galt, “What do we do?”

“It will be my charge,” said Galt. “1 will be responsible. You take
Quentin Daniels.”

“Oh. he’s no problem at all. He needs nothing but to get ac-
quainted with the place. He seems to know all the rest.”

“Yes. He had practically gone the whole way by himself.” He saw
her watching him in bewilderment, and said, “There’s one thing I
must thank you for. Miss Taggart: you did pay me a compliment
when you chose Quentin Daniels as my understudy. He was a plausi-
ble one.”

“Where is he?” she asked “Will you tell me what happened?”

“Why. Midas met us at the landing field, drove me to my house
and took Daniels with him. I was going to join them tor breakfast,
but I saw your plane spinning and plunging for that pasture. 1 was
the closest one to the scene.”

“We got here as fast as we could.” said Mulligan. “I thought he
deserved to get himself killed -whoever was in that plane. I never
dreamed that it was one of the only two persons in the whole world
whom I'd exempt.”

“Who is the other one ,; ” she asked

“Hank Rearden.”

She winced; it was like a sudden blow from another great distance.
She wondered why it seemed to her that Galt was watching her
lace intently and that she saw an instant’s change in his, too brief
to detine.

Hiey had come to the car. It was a Hammond convertible, its top
down, one ot the costliest models, some years old, but kept in the
shining trim of efficient handling. Galt placed her cautiously in the back
seal and held her in the circle of his arm. She felt a stabbing pain
once in a while, but she had no attention to spare for it. She watched
the distant houses of the town, as Mulligan pressed the starter and
the ear moved forward as they went past the sign of the dollar and
a golden ray hit her eyes, sweeping over her forehead.

“Who is the owner of this place?” she asked.

“1 am,” said Mulligan.

“What is he r ' She pointed to Galt.

Mulligan chuckled. “He just works here.”

“And you. Dr, Akston?” she asked.

He glanced at Galt. “I'm one of his two fathers. Miss Taggart,
l he one who didn't betray him.”

‘Oh!” she said, as another connection tell into place. “Your
third pupil?”

“That's right.”

“The second assistant bookkeeper!” she moaned suddenly, at one
more memory.

“What’s that?”

649

‘"That’s what Dr. Stadler called him. That’s what Dr. Stadler told
me he thought this third pupil had become.”

“He overestimated,” said Galt. “I’m much lower than that by the
scale of his standards and of his world.”

The car had swerved into a lane rising toward a lonely house that
stood on a ridge above the valley. .She saw a man walking down a
path, ahead of them, hastening in the direction of the town He wore
blue denim overalls and carried a lunchbox. There was something
faintly familiar in the swift abruptness of his gait. As the car went
past him. she caught a glimpse of his face — and she jerked backward,
her voice rising to a scream from the pain ol the movement and
from the shock of the sight: “Oh, stop! Stop! Don’t let him go!” It
was Ellis Wyatt.

The three men laughed, but Mulligan stopped the car “Oh .
she said weakly, in apology, realizing she had forgotten that this was
the place from which Wyatt would not vanish.

Wyatt was running toward them: he had recognized her, too. When
he seized the edge of the car, to brake his speed, she saw the face
and the young, triumphant smile that she had seen but once before:
on the platform of Wyatt Junction.

“Dagny! You, too, at last? One of us?”

“No.” said Galt. “Miss Taggart is a castaway.”

"Whal?"

“Miss Taggart's plane crashed Didn't you sec it?”

“ Crashed— here?'"

“Yes.”

“I heard a plane, but I . . His look of bewilderment changed
to a smile, regretful, amused and friendly “1 see. Oh. hell, Dagny,
it’s preposterous!”

She was staring at him helplessly, unable to reconnect the past to
the present. And helplessly— as one would say to a dead friend, m
a dream, the words one regrets having missed the chance to sav in
life — she said, with the memory of a telephone ringing, unansweied,
almost two years ago, the words she had hoped to say if she ever
caught sight of him again, “I ... I tried to teach you.”

He smiled gently. “We’ve been trying to reach you ever since,
Dagny. . . . I’ll see you tonight. Don’t worry, I won’t vanish — and I
don't think you will, either ”

He waved to the others and went off, swinging his lunchbox. She
glanced up, as Mulligan started the car, and saw Galt's eyes watching
her attentively. Her face hardened, as if in open admission of pain
and in defiance ol the satisfaction it might give him. “All right,” she
said. “I see what sort of show you want to put me through the shock
of witnessing.” ;

But there was neither cruelty nor $ity in his face, only the level
look of justice. “Our first rule here. Mjiss Taggart,” he answered, “is
that one must always see for oneself.’?

The car stopped in front of the lonejy house. It was built of rough
granite blocks, with a sheet of glass fjbr most of its front wall, “Til
send the doctor over,” said Mulligan, driving off, while Galt carried
her up the path.

650

“Your house?” she asked,

“Mine,” he answered, kicking the door open.

He carried her across the threshold into the glistening space of his
living room, where shafts of sunlight hit walls of polished pine. She
saw a few pieces of furniture made by hand, a ceiling of bare rafters,
an archway open upon a small kitchen with rough shelves, a bare
wooden tabic and the astonishing sight of chromium glittering on an
electric stove; the place had the primitive simplicity of a frontiers*
man’s cabin, reduced to essential necessities, but reduced with a
super-modern skill.

He carried her across the sunrays into a small guest room and
placed her down on a bed. She noticed a window open upon a long
slant of rocky steps and pines going off into the sky She noticed
small streaks that looked like inscriptions cut into the wood of the
walls, a few scattered lines that seemed made by different handwrit-
ings; she could not distinguish the words She noticed another door,
left half-open; it led to his bedroom.

“Am 1 a guest here or a prisoner?” she asked.

“The choice will be yours. Miss Taggart.”

“1 can make no choice when I ni dealing with a stranger.”

“But you’re not. Didn't you name a railroad line after me?”

“Oh f . . . Yes . . It was the small jolt of another connection
falling into place. “Yes, 1 — ” She was looking at the tall figure with
the sun-streaked hair, with the suppressed smile in the mercilessly
perceptive eyes- - she was seeing the struggle to build her Line and
the summer day of the first train’s run— she was thinking that if a
human figure could be fashioned as an emblem of that Line, this
was the figure “Yes ... 1 did . . Then, remembering the rest she
added, “But l named it after an enemy.”

He smiled. “That's the contradiction you had to resolve sooner or
later Miss Taggart.”

“It was you . . . wasn't it? . . who destroyed my Line. . .

“Why, no. It was the contradiction.”

She closed her eyes, in a moment, she asked, “All those stories 1
heard about you —which of them are true?”

“All of them.”

“Was it you who spread them?”

“No. What for? 1 never had any wish to be talked about.”

“But you do know that you've become a legend?”

“Yes.”

“The young inventor of the Twentieth Century Motor Company
is the one real version of the legend, isn’t it?”

“The one that’s concretely real- -yes.”

She could not say it indifferently; there was still a breathless tone
and the drop of her voice, toward a whisper, when she asked, “The
motor ... the motor I found ... it was you who made it?”

“Yes.”

She could not prevent the jolt of eagerness that threw her head
up. “The secret of transforming energy — ” she began, and stopped.

“I could tell it to you in fifteen minutes,” he said, in answer to
the desperate plea she had not uttered, “but there's no power on

651

earth that can force me to tell it. If you understand this, you’ll under-
stand everything that’s baffling you.”

“That night . . . twelve years ago ... a spring night when you
walked out of a meeting of six thousand murderers — that story is
true, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“You told them that you would stop the motor of the world.”

“I have.”

“What have you done?”

*Tve done nothing , Miss Taggart. And that's the whole ot my
secret.”

She looked at him silently for a long moment. He stood waiting,
as if he could read her thoughts. “The destroyer—” she said with a
tone of wonder and helplessness.

“ — the most evil creature that’s ever existed,” he said in the tone
of a quotation, and she recognized her own words, “the man who’s
draining the brains of the world.”

“How thoroughly have you been watching me,” she asked, "and
for how long?”

It was only an instant’s pause, his eyes did not move, but it seemed
to her that his glance was stressed, as if in special awareness of
seeing her, and she caught the sound of some patlicular intensity in
his voice as he answered quietly, “For years.”

She closed her eyes, relaxing and giving up. She felt an odd, light
hearted indifference, as it she suddenly wanted nothing but the com-
fort of surrendering to helplessness.

The doctor who arrived was a gray-haired man with a mild,
thoughtful face and a firmly, uuobtiusively confident manner.

“Miss Taggart, may I present Dr. Hendricks?” said Gall.

“Not Dr. Thomas Hendricks?” she gasped, with the involuntary
rudeness of a child; the name belonged to a great suigeon, who had
retired and vanished six years ago.

“Yes, of course.* said Galt

Dr. Hendricks smiled at her, in answer. “Midas told me that Miss
Taggart has to be treated for shock.” he said, “not for the one
sustained, but for the ones to come ”

‘I'll leave you to do it,” said Galt, ’ while l go to the market to
get supplies for breakfast.”

She watched the rapid efficiency of Dr. Hendricks 7 work, as he
examined her injuries. He had brought an object she had never seen
before: a portable X-ray machine She learned that she had torn the
cartilage of two ribs, that she had sprained an ankle, ripped patches
of skin oil one knee and one elbow, apd acquired a tew bruises
spread in purple blotches over her body. |*y the time Dr. Hendricks'
swift, competent hands had wound the bandages and the tight lacings
of tape, she felt as if her body were an engine checked by an expert
mechanic, and no further care was necessary.

“I would advise you to remain in bed* Miss Taggart.”

“Oh no! If I’m careful and move slowly. I'll be all right.”

“You ought to rest.”

“Do you think I can?”

652

He smiled, “I guess not.”

She was dressed by the time Gait came back. Dr. Hendricks gave
him an account of her condition, adding, “Til be back to check up,
tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” said Galt. “Send the bill to me.”

“C ertainly not!” she said indignantly. “I will pay it myself.”

The two men glanced at each other, in amusement, as at the boast
of a beggar.

“We’ll discuss that later,” said Galt.

Dr. Hendricks left, and she tned to stand up, limping, catching at
the furniture lor support. Gait lifted her in his arms, carried her to
the kitchen alcove and placed her on a chair by the table set for two.

She noticed that she was hungry, at the sight of the coffee pot
boiling on the stove, the two glasses of orange juice, the heavy white
pottery dishes sparkling in the sun on the polished table top.

“When did you sleep or eat last?” he asked.

“I don’t know ... I had dinner on the train, with — ” She shook
her head in helplessly bitter amusement: with the tramp, she thought,
with a desperate voice pleading for escape from an avenger who
would not pursue or be found— the avenger who sat facing her across
the table, drinking a glass of orange juice. “I don’t know ... it seems
centuries and continents away.”

“How did you happen to be following me?”

“I landed at the Alton airport just as you were taking off. The
man Iheie told me that Quentin Daniels had gone with you.”

“I remember your plane circling to land. But that was the one
and only time when 1 didn’t think of you. I thought you were coming
by train.”

She asked, looking straight at him, “How do you want me to
understand that?”

“What?”

“'I he one and only time when you didn't think of me.”

He held her glance; she saw the faint movement she had noted as
typical ot him: the movement of his proudly intractable mouth curv-
ing into the hint of a smile. “In any way you wish,” he answered.

She lei a moment pass to underscore her choice by the severity
oi her lace, then asked coldly, in the tone of an enemy's accusation,
“You knew that I was coming for Quentin Daniels?”

“Yes.”

“You got him first and fast, in order not to let me reach him? In
order to beat me — knowing fully what sort of beating that would
mean for me?”

“Sure.”

It was she who looked away and remained silent. He rose to cook
the rest of their breaklast. She watched him as he stood at the stove,
toasting bread, frying eggs and bacon. There was an easy, relaxed
skill about the way he worked, but it was a skill that belonged to
another profession; his hands moved with the rapid precision of an
engineer pulling the levers of a control board. She remembered sud-
denly where she had seen as expert and preposterous a performance.

653

“Is that what you learned from Dr. Akston?” she asked, pointing
at the stove.

‘That, among other things.'’

“Did he teach you to spend your time — your time!” she could
not keep the shudder of indignation out of her voice — “on this sort
of work?”

T've spent time on work ot much lesser importance.”

When he put her plate before her. she asked, “Where did you get
that food? Do they have a grocery store here?”

“The best one in the world It’s run by Lawrence Hammond.”

“What?”

“Lawrence Hammond, of Hammond Oars, t he bacon is from the
farm ot Dwight Sanders — of Sanders Aircraft. The eggs and the but-
ter from Judge Nanagansctt- ot the Superior Court of the State
of Illinois ”

She looked at her plate, bitterly, almost as it she were afraid to
touch it. “It’s the most expensive breakfast I’ll ever eat, considering
the value of the cook’s time and of all those others.”

“Yes- -from one aspect. But from another, it's the cheapest break-
fast you'll ever eat — because no part of it has gone to feed the looters
who’ll make you pay for it through year after year and leave you to
starve in the end.”

After a long silence, she asked simply, almost wistfully, "What is
it that you’re all doing here?”

“Living.”

She had never heard that word sound so real.

“What is your job?’ she asked. “Midas Mulligan said that you
work here.”

“I'm the handy man, I guess.”

“The what?”

“I’m on call whenever anything goes wrong with any ol the instal-
lations — with the power system, for instance.”

She looked at him — and suddenly she tore forward, staring at the
electric stove, but fell back on her chair, stopped by pain.

He chuckled. “Yes, that's true -but take it easy or Dr. Hendricks
will order you back to bed.”

“The power system . . .” she said, choking, “the power system
here . . . it’s run by means of your motor?”

“Yes.”

“It’s built? It’s working? It’s functioning?”

“It has cooked your breakfast.”

“I want to see it!”

“Don’t bother crippling yourself to Jook at that stove. It’s just a
plain electric stove like any other, (^nly about a hundred times
cheaper to run. And that’s all you'll have a chance to see. Miss
Taggart.”

“You promised to show me thL valley.”

“I’ll show it to you. But not the poier generator,”

“Will you take me to sec the place now, as soon as we finish*?”

“If you wish — and if you’re able to move.”

“I am.”

654

He got up, went to the telephone and dialed a number, “Hello,
Midas? . . . Yes ... He did? Yes, she’s all right. . . . Will you rent
me your car for the day? . . . Thanks. At the usual rate — twenty*
five cents. . . . Can you send it over? . . . Do you happen to have
some sort of cane? She’ll need it. . . . Tonight? Yes, I think so. We
will. Thanks.”

He hung up. She was staring at him mciedulousiy.

“Did 1 understand you to say that Mr. Mulligan— who's worth
about two hundred million dollars. I believe — is going to charge you
twenty-five cents for the use of his car?”

“That’s right/’

“Good heavens, couldn’t he give it to you as a courtesy?”

He sat looking at her for a moment, studying her face, as if deliber-
ately letting her see the amusement in his. “Miss Taggart/' he said,
“we have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of
any kind. We come here because we want to rest. But we have
certain customs, which we all observe, because they pertain to the
things we need to rest from. So I'll warn you now that there is one
word which is forbidden m this valley: the word l give.’"

“I’m sorry/’ she said. “You're right.”

He refilled her cup of coffee and extended a package of cigarettes.
She smiled, as she took a cigarette: it bore the sign of the dollar.

"If you're not too tired by evening,” he said, “Mulligan has invited
us lor dinner. He'll have some guests there whom, 1 think, you’ll
want to meet.”

“Oh, ol course! 1 won’t be too tired. 1 don’t think I’ll ever fed
tired again.”

They were finishing breakfast when she saw Mulligan's car stop-
ping in front of the house. The driver leaped out, raced up the path
and rushed into the room, not pausing to ring or knock. It took her
a moment to realize that the eager, breathless, disheveled young man
was Quentin Daniels.

“Miss Taggart,” he gasped, “I'm sorry’” The desperate guilt in his
voice clashed with the joyous excitement in his face. “I’ve never
broken my word befote! There’s no excuse for it, 1 can't ask you to
lorgive me, and I know that you won’t believe it, but the truth is
that I — 1 forgot!”

She glanced at Galt. “I believe you.”

“1 forgot that l promised to wait, I forgot everything — until a few
minutes ago, when Mr. Mulligan told me that you’d crashed here in
a plane, and then 1 knew it was my fault, and if anything had hap-
pened to you —oh God, are you all right?”

“Yes. Don’t worry. Sit down.”

“I don't know how one can forget one’s word of honor. I don’t
know what happened to me.”

“i do.”

"Miss Taggart, 1 had been working on it for months, on that one
particular hypothesis, and the more I worked, the more hopeless it
seemed to become. I’d been in my laboratory for the last two days,
trying to solve a mathematical equation that looked impossible. I
felt Fd die at that blackboard, but wouldn’t give up. It was late at

655

night when he came in. I don’t think I even noticed him, not really.
He said he wanted to speak to me and I asked him to wait and went
nght on. I think I forgot his presence. I don't know how long he
stood there, watching me. but what I remember is that suddenly his
hand reached over, swept all my figures off the blackboard and wrote
one brief equation. And then I noticed him! Then I screamed —
because it wasn’t the full answer to the motor, but it was the way
to it, a way l hadn’t seen, hadn’t suspected, but 1 knew where it led!
I remember I cried, ‘How could you know it?' — and he answered,
pointing at a photograph of your motor, Tm the man who made it
in the first place.’ And that's the last I remember. Miss Taggart — 1
mean, the last 1 remember of my own existence, because after that
we talked about static electricity and the conversion of energy and
the motor.”

“We talked physics all the way down here,” said Galt.

“Oh, 1 remember when you asked me whether I’d go with you,”
said Daniels, “whether I’d be willing to go and never come back
and give up everything . . . Everything? Give up a dead Institute
that’s crumbling back into the jungle, give up my future as a janitor-
slave-by-law, give up Wesley Mouch and Directive 10-289 and sub-
animal creatures who crawl on their bellies, grunting that there is no
mind! . . . Miss Taggart” — he laughed exultantly — “he was asking
me whether I’d give that up to go with him\ He had to ask me twice,
f couldn’t believe it at first, I couldn't believe that any human being
would need to be asked or would think of it as a choice. To go? 1
would have leaped off a skyscraper just to follow him — and to hear
his formula before we hit the pavement’”

”1 don't blame you,” she said; she looked at him with a tinge of
wistfulness that was almost envy. “Besides, you’ve fulfilled your con-
tract. You’ve led me to the secret of the motor.”

“I’m going to be a janitor here, too,” said Daniels, grinning hap-
pily. “Mr. Mulligan said he’d give me the job of janitor — at the power
plant . And when I learn. I’ll rise to electrician. Isn’t he great— Midas
Mulligan? That’s what l want to be when I reach his age. 1 want to
make money. 1 want to make millions. I want to make as much as
he did!”

“Daniels!” She laughed, remembering the quiet self-control, the
strict precision, the stern logic of the young scientist she had known.
“What’s the matter with you? Where are you? Do you know what
you’re saying?”

“I’m here. Miss Taggart— and there’s no limit to what’s possible
here! I'm going to be the greatest electrician in the world and the
richest! I’m going to — ”

“You’re going to go back to Mulligan’s house,” said Galt, “and
sleep for twenty-four hours — or 1 woft’l lei you near the power
plant.”

“Yes, sir,” said Daniels meekly.

The sun had trickled down the peaks fend drawn a circle of shining
granite and glittering snow to enclose the valley — when they stepped
out of the house. She felt suddenly as if nothing existed beyond that
circle, and she wondered at the joyous, proud comfort to be found

656

in a sense of the finite, in the knowledge that the field of one's
concern lay within the realm of one's sight. She wanted to stretch
out her arms over the roofs of the town below, feeling that her
fingertips would touch the peaks across. But she could not raise her
arms; leaning on a cane with one hand and on Galt’s arm with the
other, moving her feet by a slow, conscientious effort, she walked
down to the car like a child learning to walk for the first time.

She sat by Galt’s side as he drove, skirting the town, to Midas
Mulligan’s house. It stood on a ridge, the largest house of the valley,
the only one built two stories high, an odd combination of fortress
and pleasure resort, with stout granite walls and broad, open ter-
races. He stopped to let Daniels off, then drove on up a winding
road rising slowly into the mountains.

It was the thought of Mulligan’s wealth, the luxurious car and the
sight of Galt’s hands on the wheel that made her wonder for the
first time whether Galt, too, was wealthy. She glanced at his clothes:
the gray slacks and white shirt seemed of a quality intended for long
wear: the leather of the narrow belt about his waistline was cracked;
the watch on his wrist was a precision instrument, but made of plain
stainless steel. The sole suggestion of luxury was the color of his
hair — the strands stirring m the wind like liquid gold and copper

Abruptly, behind a turn of the road, she saw the green acres of
pastures stretching to a distant farmhouse. There were herds of
sheep, some horses, the fenced squares of pigpens under the sprawl-
ing shapes of wooden barns and, failhci away, a metal hangar of a
type that did not belong on a farm

A man in a bright cowboy shirt was hurrying toward them. Galt
stopped the ear and waved to him. but said nothing in answer to her
questioning glance. He let her discover for herself, when the man
came closer, that M was Dwight Sanders.

“Hello. Miss Taggart,” he said, smiling.

She looked silently at his rolled shirt sleeves, at his heavy boots,
at the herds of cattle. “So that's all that’s left of Sanders Aircraft.”
she said.

“Why. no. I here’s that excellent monoplane, my best model, which
you flattened up m the foothills."

“Oh, you know about that? Yes. it was one of yours. U was a
wonderful ship But I’m afraid I've damaged it pretty badly.”

“You ought to have it fixed.”

“1 think I’ve ripped the bottom. Nobody can fix it.”

“I can.”

These were the words and the tone of confidence that she had not
heard tor years, this was the manner she had given up expecting--
hut the start of her smile ended in a bitter chuckle. “How?” she
asked. “On a hog farm?”

“Why, no. At Sanders Aircraft.”

“Where is it?”

“Where did you think it was? In that building in New Jersey,
which Tinky Holloway’s cousin bought from my bankrupt successors
by means of a government loan and a tax suspension? In that build-

657

ing where he produced six planes that never left th<; ground and
eight that did, but crashed with forty passengers each?”

‘‘Where is it, then?”

“Wherever l am.”

He pointed across the road. Glancing down through the tops of
the pine trees, she saw the concrete rectangle of an airfield on the
bottom of the valley.

“We have a few planes here and it’s my job to take care of them,”
he said. “I’m the hog farmer and the airfield attendant. I'm doing
quite well at producing ham and bacon, without the men from whom
I used to buy it But those men cannot produce airplanes without
me — and, without me. they cannot even produce their ham and
bacon.”

“But you — you have not been designing airplanes, cither”

“No, 1 haven’t. And I haven’t been manufacturing the Diesel en-
gines 1 once promised you Since the lime 1 saw you last, I have
designed and manufactured just one new tractor. I mean, one - 1
tooled it by hand — no mass production was necessary. But that trac-
tor has cut an eight-hour workday down to four hours on” — the
straight line of his arm, extended to point across the valley, moved
like a royal scepter: her eyes followed it and she saw the tei raced
green of hanging gardens on a distant mountainside— “the chicken
and dairy farm of Judge Narragansett” — his arm moved slowly to a
long, flat stretch of greenish gold at the foot of a canyon, then to a
band of violent green— “in the wheat fields and tobacco patch of
Midas Mulligan” — his arm rose to a granite flank striped by glisten-
ing tiers of leaves — “in the orchards of Richard Halley.”

Her eyes went slowly over the curve his arm had traveled, ovei
and over again, long after the arm had dropped: but she said only,
“I see.”

“Now do you believe that I can fix your plane?” he asked.

“Yes. But have you seen it?”

“Sure. Midas called two doctors immediately — Hendricks for you,
and me for your plane. It can be fixed. But it will be an expensive
job,”

“How much?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred dollars?” she repeated incredulously: the price
seemed much loo low.

“In gold. Miss Taggart.”

“Oh . . . ! Well, where can l buy the gold?”

“You can’t.” said (Jalt.

She jerked her head to face him defiantly. “No?”

“No. Not where you come from. Your laws forbid it.”

“Yours don’t?”

“No.”

“Then sell it to me. Choose your dwn rate of exchange. Name
any sum you want — in my money.”

“What money? You’re penniless, Mbs Taggart/’

"What?” It was a word that a Taggart heiress could not ever ex-
pect to hear.

658

“You're penniless in this valley. You own millions of dollars in
Taggart Transcontinental stock — but it will not buy one pound of
bacon from the Sanders hog farm.”

“I see.”

Galt smiled and turned to Sanders. “Go ahead and fix that plane.
Miss Taggart will pay for it eventually.”

He pressed the starter and drove on, while she sat stiffly straight,
asking no questions,

A stretch of violent turquoise blue split the cliffs ahead, ending
the road; it took her a second to realize that it was a lake. Ibe
motionless water seemed to condense the blue of the sky and the
green of the pine-covered mountains into so brilliantly pure a color
that it made the sky look a dimmed pale gray. A streak of boiling
foam came from among the pines and went crashing down the rocky
steps to vanish in the placid water. A small granite structure stood
by the stream.

Galt stopped the car just as a husky man in overalls stepped out
to the threshold of the open doorway It was Dtck McNamara, who
had once been her best contractor.

“Good day. Miss Taggart!” he said happily. “I’m glad to see that
you weren’t hurt badly.”

She inclined her head in silent greclmg — it was like a greeting to
the loss and the pain of the past, to a desolate evening and the
desperate face of Eddie Willers telling her the news of this man’s
disappearance —hurt badly? she thought — 1 was, but not in the plane
crash --on that evening, in an empty office . . Aloud, she asked.
“What ate you doing here? What was it that you betrayed me tor,
at the worst time possible 7 ”

He smiled, pointing at the stone structure and down at the rocky
drop where the tube of a water main went vanishing into the under-
hiush. ‘Tin the utilities man.” he said. “1 take care of the water
lines, the powei lines and the telephone service.”

“Alone?”

“Used to. But we’ve grown so much in the past year that I’ve had
to hire three men to help me.”

“What men? From where 7 ”

“Well, one of them is a professor of economics who couldn’t get
a job outside, because he taught that you can’t consume more than
you have produced— one is a professor of history who couldn’t get
a job because he taught that the inhabitants of slums were not the
men who made this country — and one is a professor of psychology
who couldn’t get a job because he taught that men are capable of
thinking.”

“They work for you as plumbers and linesmen?”

“Yqu’J be surprised how good they are at it.”

“And to whom have they abandoned our colleges?”

“To those who’re wanted there.” He chuckled. “How long ago
was it that 1 betrayed you. Miss Taggart? Not quite three years,
wasn’t it? It’s the John Galt Line that I refused to build for you.
Where is your Line now? But my lines have grown, in that time,
from the couple of miles that Mulligan had built when I took over,

659

to hundreds of miles of pipe and wire, all within the space of this
valley/’

He saw the swift, involuntary look of eagerness on her face, the
look of a competent person’s appreciation; he smiled, glanced at her
companion and said softly, “You know, Miss Taggart, when it comes
to the John Galt Line — maybe it’s 1 who’ve followed it and you
who’re betraying it.”

She glanced at Galt. He was watching her face, but she could read
nothing in his.

As they drove on along the edge of the lake, she asked, “You’ve
mapped this route deliberately, haven’t you? You’re showing me all
the men whom” — she stopped, feeling inexplicably reluctant to say
it, and said, instead — “whom I have lost?”

‘Tin showing you all the men whom I have taken away from you,”
he answered firmly.

This was the root, she thought, of the guiltlessness of his face: he
had guessed and named the words she had wanted to spare him. he
had rejected a good will that was not based on his values — and in
proud certainty of being right, he had made a boast of that which
she had intended as an accusation.

Ahead of them, she saw' a wooden pier projecting into the water
of the lake. A young woman lay stretched on the sun-flooded planks,
watching a battery of fishing rods. She glanced up at the sound of
the car, then leaped to hci feet in a single swift movement, a shade
too swift, and ran to the road. She wore slacks, rolled above the
knees of her bare legs, she had dark, disheveled hair and large eyes.
Galt waved to her.

“Hello, John! When did you get in?” she called.

“This morning/’ he answered, smiling and driving on.

Dagny jerked her head to look back and saw the glance with
which the young woman stood looking after Galt. And even though
hopelessness, serenely accepted, was part of the worship in that
glance, she experienced a feeling she had never known before: a stab
of jealousy.

“Who is that?” she asked.

“Our best lishwife. She provides the fish for Hammond’s grocery
market.”

“What else is she?”

“You’ve noticed that there’s a l what else’ for every one ot us
here? She’s a writer. The kind of writer who wouldn’t be published
outside. She believes that when one deals with words, one deals with
the mind.”

The car turned into a narrow path, climbing steeply into a wilder-
ness of brush and pine trees. She kndw what to expect when she
saw a handmade sign nailed to a treej with an arrow pointing the
way: ihh bupna f.spkran/a pass

ft was not a pass, it was a wall of laininatcd rock with a complex
chain of pipes, pumps and valves climbing like a vine up its narrow
ledges, but it bore, on its crest, a huge wooden sign— and the proud
violence of the letters announcing their message to an impassable

660

tangle of ferns and pine branches, was more characteristic, more
familiar than the words: wyatt oil.

It was oil that ran in a glittering curve from the mouth of a pipe
into a tank at the foot of the wall, as the only confession of the
tremendous secret struggle inside the stone, as the unobtrusive pur-
pose of all the intricate machinery— but the machinery did not re-
semble the installations of an oil derrick, and she knew that she was
looking at the unborn secret of the Buena Esperanza Pass, she knew
that this was oil drawn out of shale by some method men had consid-
ered impossible.

Ellis Wyatt stood on a ridge, watching the glass dial of a gauge
imbedded in the rock. He saw the car stopping below, and called,
“Hi, Dagny! Be with you in a minute’”

There were two other men working wilh him: a big, muscular
roughneck, at a pump halfway up the wall, and a young boy, by the
tank on the ground. The young boy had blond hair and a face with
an unusual purity of lorm. She felt certain that she knew this face,
hut she could not recall where she had seen it. The boy caught her
puzzled glance, grinned and, as if to help her, whistled softly, almost
inaudibly the first notes of Halley's Fifth Concerto. It was the young
brakeman of the Comet.

She laughed. “It was the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley,
wasn’t it?”

“Sure," he answered, “But do \ou think I’d tell that to a scab?”

“A what?"

“What am 1 paying you tor?" asked Ellis Wyatt, approaching; the
hoy chuckled, darting hack to seize the lever he had abandoned for
a moment. “It’s Miss Taggart who couldn’t lire you, if you loafed
on the job. I can."

“That’s one of the reasons why I quit the railroad. Mtss Taggart,”
said the boy.

“Did you know 1 that l stole him from you’ > " said Wyatt. “He used
to be your best brakeman and now he’s my best grease -monkey, but
neither one of us is going to hold him permanently. "

“Who is?”

“Richard Halley. Music. He’s Halley's best pupil."

She smiled. “1 know, this is a place where one employs nothing
but aristocrats lor the lousiest kinds of jobs.”

“They’re all aristocrats, that's true," said Wyatt, “because they
know that there’s no such thing as a lousy job — only lousy men who
don't care to do it."

The roughneck was watching them from above, listening wilh curi-
osity. She glanced up at him, he looked like a tiuck driver, so she
asked, “What were you outside? A professor of comparative philol-
ogy, 1 suppose?”

“No, ma’am.” he answered. “I was a truck driver." He added,
“But that’s not what I wanted to remain.”

Ellis Wyatt was looking at the place around them with a kind of
youthful pride eager for acknowledgment: it was the pride of a host
at a formal reception in a drawing room, and the eagerness of an

661

artist at the opening of his show in a gallery. She smiled and asked,
pointing at the machinery, “Shale oil?'*

“Uh-huh”

‘"That’s the process which you were working to develop while you
were on earth?” She said it involuntarily and she gasped a little at
her own words.

He laughed. “White I was in hell- -yes. I’m on earth now ”

“How much do you produce?”

“Two hundred barrels a day ”

A note of sadness came back into her voice- “It’s the process by
which you once intended to till live tank-trains a day.”

“Dagny.” he said earnestly, pointing at his tank, “one gallon of it
is worth more than a traintul back there in hell — because this is
mine , all of it, every single drop of it. to be spent on nothing but
myself.” He raised his smudged hand, displaying the greasy stains as
a treasure, and a black drop on the tip of his linger Hashed like a
gem in the sun. “Mine,” he said. “Have you let them beat you into
forgetting what that word means, what it feds like? You should give
yourself a chance to relearn it.”

“You’re hidden in a hole in the wilderness,” she said bleakly, “and
you’re producing two hundred barrels of oil, when you could have
flooded the world with it.”

“What for? To feed the looters > ”

“No! To earn the fortune you deserve.”

“But I’m richer now than 1 was m the world What's wealth but
the means of expanding one’s lite? There's two ways one can do it
either by producing more or by producing it faster . And that's what
I’m doing: I’m manufacturing time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m producing everything I need. I’m working to improve mv
methods, and every hour I save is an hour added to my life. It used
to take me five hours to till that tank. It now takes three. The two
1 saved are mine — as price lessly mine as if I moved my grave two
further hours away from every five I’ve got It’s two hours released
from one task, to be invested in another— two more hours in which
to work, to grow, to move forward. That's the savings account I’m
hoarding. Is there any sort of safety vault that could protect this
account in the outside world 7 ”

“But what space do you have for moving forward? Where’s
your market?”

He chuckled. “Market? I now work lor use, not for profit- -my
use, not the looters’ profit. Only those who add to my life, not those
who devour it, are my market. Only those who produce, not those
who consume, can ever be anybody’s Market. I deal with the life
givers, not with the cannibals. If my oil* takes less effort to produce.
I ask less of the men to whom I trade if for the things I need. I add
an extra span of time to their lives with every gallon of my oil that
they burn. And since they’re men like nie, they keep inventing faster
ways to make the things they make— $o every one of them grams
me an added minute, hour or day with- the bread I buy from them,
with the clothes, the lumber, the metal” — he glanced at Galt — “an

662

added year with every month of electricity l purchase. That’s our
market and that’s how it works for us- “but that was not the way it
worked in the outer world. Down what drain were they poured out
there, our days, our lives and our energy? Into what bottomless,
tufureless sewer of the unpaid-for? Here, we trade achievements, not
failures — values, not needs. We’re free of one another, yet we alt
grow together Wealth. Dagny? What greater wealth is there than
to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must
grow. It can’t stand still, it must grow or perish Look — ” He pointed
at a plant fighting upward from under the weight of a rock— a long,
gnarled stem, contorted by an unnatural struggle, with drooping, yel-
low remnants of unformed leaves and a single green shoot thrust
upward to the sun with the desperation of a last, spent, inadequate
effort. “That’s what they’re doing to us back there in hell. Do you
see me submitting to it 7 ”

“No.” she whispered.

“Do you see him submitting?” He pointed at Galt.

“God. no 1 ”

“Then don’t be astonished by anything you see in this valley.”

She remained silent when they diove on, Galt said nothing.

On a distant mountainside, in the dense green of a forest, she saw
a pine tree slanting down suddenly, tracing a curve, like the hand of
a clock, then crashing abruptly out of sight She knew that it was a
man-made motion

“Who’s the lumberjack around here?” she asked.

“ led Nielsen.”

Die road was relaxing into wider curves and gentlei grades, among
the softer shapes of hillsides. She saw a rust-brown slope patched by
two squares of unmatching green: the dark, dusty green of potato
plants, and the pale, greenish-silver of cabbages. A man in a red
shirt w'as riding a small ti actor, cutting weeds.

“Who’s the cabbage tycoon?” she asked.

“Roger Marsh.”

She dosed her eyes. She thought of the weeds that were climbing
up the steps of a closed factory, over its lustrous tile front, a few
hundred miles away, beyond the mountains

The road was descending to the bottom of the valley. She saw the
roofs of the town straight below, and the small, shining spot of the
dollar sign in the distance at the other end. Galt stopped the car in
front of the first structure on a ledge above the roofs, a brick building
with a faint tinge of red trembling over its smokestack. It almost
shocked her to see so logical a sign as “Stockton Foundry” above
its door.

When she walked, leaning on her cane, out of the sunlight into
the dank gloom of the building, the shock she felt was part sense of
anachronism, part homesickness. This was the industrial East, which
in the last few hours, had seemed to be centuries behind her. This
was the old, the familiar, the loved sight of reddish billows rising to
steel rafters, of sparks shooting in sunbursts from invisible sources,
of sudden flames streaking through a black fog, of sand molds glow-
ing with white metal. The fog hid the walls of the structure, dissolving

663

its size — and for a moment, this was the great, dead foundry at Stock-
ton, Colorado, it was Nielsen Motors ... it was Rearden Steel.

“Hi, Dagny!”

The smiling face that approached her out of the fog was Andrew
Stockton’s and she saw a grimy hand extended to her with a gesture
of confident pride, as if it held all of her moment’s vision on its palm.

vShe clasped the hand. “Hello,” she said softly, not knowing
whether she was greeting the past or the future. Then she shook her
head and added, “How come you’re not planting potatoes or making
shoes around here? You've actually remained in your own
profession.”

“Oh, Calvin Atwood of the Atwood Light and Power Company
of New York City is making the shoes. Besides, my profession is
one of the oldest and most immediately needed anywhere. Still, l
had to fight for it. 1 had to ruin a competitor, first.”

“What?"

He grinned and pointed to the glass door of a sun-flooded room,
“There's my ruined competitor,” he said.

She saw a young man bent over a long table, working on a com-
plex model for the mold of a drill head. He had the slender, powerful
hands of a concert pianist and the grim lace of a surgeon concentrat-
ing on his task.

“He’s a sculptor,” said Stockton. “When I came here, he and his
partner had a sort of combination hand-torge and repair shop. 1
opened a real foundry, and took all their customers away from them.
The boy couldn't do the kind ot job I did, it was only a part-time
business for him. anyway — sculpture is his real business — so he came
to work for me. He’s making more money now. in shorter hours,
than he used to make m his own foundry. His partner was a chemist,
so he went into agriculture and he’s produced a chemical fertilizer
that’s doubled some of the crops around here — did you mention
potatoes? — potatoes, in particular.”

“Then somebody could put you out of business, too?”

“Sure. Any time. I know one man who could and probably will,
when he gets here. But, boy! — I’d work for him as a cinder sweeper.
He’d blast through this valley like a rocket. He’d triple every-
body’s production.”

“Who’s that?”

u Hank Rearden,”

“Yes . . she whispered. “Oh yes!”

She wondered what had made her say it with such immediate
certainty. She felt, simultaneously, that Hank Rearden’s presence in
this valley was impossible — and that this was his place, peculiarly
his, this was the place of his youth, of jhis start, and, together, the
place he had been seeking all his life, the land he had struggled to
reach the goal of his tortured battle. . It seemed to her that the
spirals of flame-tinged fog were drawing time into an odd circle —
and while a dim thought went floating through her mind like the
streamer of an unfollowed sentence: To hold an unchanging youth
is to reach, at the end, the vision with which one started — she heard
the voice of a tramp in a diner, saying, “John Galt found the fountain

664

of youth which he wanted to bring down to men. Only he never
came back . . . because he found that it couldn’t be brought down.”

A sheaf of sparks went up in the depth of the fog — and she saw
the broad back of a foreman whose arm made the sweeping gesture
of a signal, directing some invisible task. He jerked his head to snap
an order — she caught a glimpse of his profile — and she caught her
breath. Stockton saw it, chuckled and called into the fog:

"Hey, Ken! Come here! Here’s an old friend of yours!”

She looked at Ken Da nagger as he approached them. The great
industrialist, whom she had tried so desperately to hold to his desk,
was now dressed in smudged overalls.

‘Hello, Miss Taggart. 1 told you we’d soon meet again ”

Her head dropped, as if in assent and in greeting, but her hand
bore down heavily upon her cane, tor a moment, while she stood
reliving their last encounter: The tortured hour of waiting, then the
gently distant face at the desk and the thinking ol a glass-paneled
door closing upon a stranger.

It was so brief a moment that two ot the men before her could
take it only as a greeting— but it was at Galt that she looked when
she raised her head, and she saw him looking at her as if he knew
what she felt —she saw him seeing in her face the realization that it
was he who had walked out of Danagger’s office, that day. His face
gave her nothing in answer: it had lhat look of respectful severity
with which a man stands before the fact that the truth is the truth.

“1 didn't expect it,” she said softly, to Danagger. “I never expected
to see you again.”

Danagger was watching her as it she were a promising child he
had once discovered and was now affectionately amused to watch.
"I know,” he said. “But why are you so shocked?”

"I . . oh, it’s just that it's preposterous!” She pointed at his

clothes.

“What's wrong with it?”

"Is this, then, the end of your road 0 ”

"Hell, no! The beginning.”

"What are you aiming at?”

“Mining. Not coal, though. Iron.”

"Where?”

He pointed toward the mountains. "Right here. Did you ever
know Midas Mulligan to make a bad investment? You’d be surprised
what one can find in that stretch of rock, if one knows how to look,
lliat’s what I’ve been doing — looking,”

"And if you don’t find any iron ore?”

He shrugged. “There's other things to do. I’ve always been short
on time in my life, never on what to use it for.”

She glanced at Stockton with curiosity. "Aren't you training a man
who could become your most dangerous competitor?”

"That's the only sort of men I like to hire. Dagny, have you lived
too long among the looters? Have you come to think that one man’s
ability is a threat to another?”

"Oh no! But I thought I was almost the only one left who didn’t
think that,”

665

“Any man who’s afraid of hiring the best ability he tan find* is a
cheat who’s in a business where he doesn’t belong. To me — the foul-
est man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer
who rejects men lor being too good. That’s what I’ve always thought
and — say, what are you laughing at?”

She was listening to him with an eager, incredulous smile. “It’s so
startling to hear,” she said, “because it's so right!”

“What else can one think?”

She chuckled softly. “You know, when l was a child, 1 expected
every businessman to think it.”

“And since then^”

“Since then. I've learned not to expect it ”

“But it's right, isn't it?”

“I've learned not to expect the right ”

“But it stands to reason, doesn't it?”

“Tve given up expecting reason.”

“That’s what one must never give up,” said Ken Danagger.

They had returned to the car and had started down the last, de-
scending curves of the road, when she glanced at Galt and he turned
to her at once, as if he had expected it.

“It was you in Danagger's office that dav. wasn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes ”

“Did you know, then, that l was waiting outside?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know what it was like, to wait behind that closed door?”

She could not name the nature of the glance with which he looked
at her. It was not pity, because she did not seem to be its object; it
was the kind of glance with which one looks at suffering, but it was
not her suffering that he seemed to be seeing.

“Oh yes,” he answered quietly, almost lightly.

The first shop to rise by the side of the valley’s single street was
like the sudden sign of an open theater: a frame box without tront
wall, its stage set in the bright colors of a musical comedy---with red
cubes, green circles, gold triangles, which were bins of tomatoes,
barrels of lettuce, pyramids of oranges, and a spangled backdrop
where the sun hit shelves of rreial containers. The name on the
marquee said; hammono iwxtky marki i. A distinguished man in
shirt sleeves, with a stern profile and gray temples, was weighing a
chunk of butter for an attractive young woman who stood at the
counter, her posture light as a show girl’s, the skirt of her cotton
dress swelling faintly in the wind, like a dance costume. Dagny smiled
involuntarily, even though the man was Lawience Hammond.

Tire shops were small one -story structures, and as they moved past
her, she caught familiar names on their signs like headings on the pages
of a book riffled by the car’s motion: ]muuj(;an general sroKk-
a rwooo leather goods — nieisen lumber — then the sign .of the
dollar above the door of a small brick Tact cry with the inscription;
mulligan roBAcroo company. “Who's the Company, besides Midas
Mulligan?” she asked: “Dr. Akston.” hfe answered.

There were few passers-by, some men, fewer women, and they
walked with purposeful swiftness, as if bound on specific errands,

666

One after another, they stopped at the sight of the car, they waved
to Galt and they looked at hei with the unastonished curiosity of
recognition ’‘Have I been expected here for a long time?” she asked,
“You still are,” he answered.

On the edge of the road, she saw a structure made of glass sheets
held together by a wooden framework, but for one instant it seemed
to her that it was only a frame for the painting of a woman — a tall,
fragile woman with pale blond hair and a face of such beauty that
it seemed veiled by distance, as it the artist had been merely able
to suggest it, not to make it quite real. In the next instant the woman
moved her head — and Daguy realized that there were people at the
tables inside the structure, that it was a cafeteria, that the woman
stood behind tire counter, and that she was Kay Ludlow, the movie
star who, once seen, could nevei be forgotten: the star who had
retired and vanished five years ago. to be replaced by girls of indistin-
guishable names and interchangeable faces. But at the shock of the
iculi/atum, Dugny thought of the sort of movies that were now being
made — and then she ielt that the glass cafeteria was a cleaner use
for Kay Ludlow’s beautv than a role in a picture glorifying the com-
monplace for possessing no glory.

The building that carne next was a small, squat block of rough
granite, sturdy, solid, neatly built, the fines of its rectangular bulk as
severely previse as the creases of a formal garment — but she saw,
like an instant s ghost, the long streak of a skyscraper rising into the
coils ot Chicago’s fog. the skyscraper that had once borne the sign
she now saw written m gold letters above a modest pine-wood door:
Mulligan Bank

Galt slowed the car while moving past the hank, as if placing the
motion in some special italics

A small brick structure came next, bearing the sign: moi.uoan
mini “A mint?" she asked “What’s Mulligan doing with a mint?”
Galt reached into his pocket and dropped two small coins into the
palm of her hand. They were miniature disks ol shining gold, smaller
than pennies, (he kind that had not been in circulation since the days
of Nat Taggart: they bore the head of the Statue of Liberty on one
side, the words “United States of America — One Dollar” on the
other, but the dates stamped upon them were of the past two years.

“That's the money we use heie “ he said, it’s minted by Midas
Mulligan.”

“But . . . on whose authority?”

“That’s stated on the com — on both sides ot it.”

“What do you use for small change?”

“Mulligan mints that, too, in silver. We don’t accept any other
currency in this valley. We accept nothing but objective values.”

She was studying the coins. “ Phis looks like . . . like something
from the first morning in the age of my ancestors.”

He pointed at the valley. “Yes, doesn’t it?”

She sat looking at the two thin, delicate, almost weightless drops
of gold in the palm of her hand, knowing that the whole of the
Taggart Transcontinental system had rested upon them, that this had
been the keystone supporting all the keystones, all the arches, all

667

the girders of the Taggart track, the Taggart Bridge, the Taggart
Building. . . . She shook her head and slipped the coins hack into
his hand.

‘•You’re not making it easier for me,” she said, her voice low.

“Pm making it as hard as possible.”

“Why don’t you say it? Why don’.t you tell me all the things you
want me to learn?”

The gesture of his arm pointed at the town, at the road behind
them. “What have I been doing?” he asked.

They drove on in silence. After a while, she asked in the tone of a
dryly .statistical inquiry, “How much of a fortune has Midas Mulligan
amassed in this valley?”

He pointed ahead. ‘ Judge for yourself.”

The road was winding through stretches of unleveled soil toward
the homes of the valley. The homes were not lined along a street,
they were spread at irregular intervals over the rises and hollows of
the ground, they were small and simple, built of local materials,
mostly of granite and pine, with a prodigal ingenuity of thought and
a tight economy of physical effort. Every house looked as if it had
been put up by the labor of one man, no two houses were alike, and
the only quality they had in common was the stamp of a mind grasp-
ing a problem and solving it. Cialt pointed out a house, once in a
while, choosing the names she knew — and it sounded to her like a
list of quotations from the richest stock exchange in the world, or
like a roll call of honor: “Ken Da nagger . . . Ted Nielsen . . Law-

rence Hammond . . . Roger Marsh . . . Hllis Wyatt . . . Owen
Kellogg . . . Dr. Akston.”

The home of Dr. Akston was the last, a small cottage with a large
terrace, lifted on the crest of a wave against the rising walls of the
mountains, lire road went past it and climbed on into the coils of
an ascending grade. The pavement shrank to a narrow path between
two walls of ancient pines, their tall, straight trunks pressing against
it like a grim colonnade, their branches meeting above, swallowing
the path into sudden silence and twilight. There were no marks of
wheels on the thin strip of earth, it looked unused and forgotten, a
few minutes and a few turns seemed to take the car miles away from
human habitation — and then the»e was nothing to break the pressure
of the stillness but a rare wedge of sunlight cutting across the trunks
in the depth of the forest once in a while.

The sudden sight of a house on the edge of the path struck her
like the shock of an unexpected sound: built in loneliness, cut off
from all ties to human existence, it looked like the secret retreat of
some great defiance or sorrow. It was the humblest home of the
valley, a log cabin beaten in dark streaky by the tears of many rains,
only its great windows withstanding the storms with the smooth,
shining, untouched serenity of glass. I

“Whose house is . . . Oh!” — she caught her breath and jerked her
head away. Above the door, hit by a rhy of sun, its design blurred
and worn, battered smooth by the windi of centuries, hung the silyer
coat-of-arms of Sebastian d’Anconia.

As if in deliberate answer to her involuntary movement of escape,

668

Galt stopped the car in front of the house. For a moment, they held
each other’s eyes: her glance was a question, his a command, her
face had a defiant frankness, his an unrevealing severity; she under-
stood his purpose, but not his motive. She obeyed. Leaning on her
cane, she stepped out of the car, then stood erect, facing the house.

She looked at the silver crest that had come from a marble palace
in Spain to a shack in the Andes to a log cabin in Colorado — the
crest of the men who would not submit. The door of the cabin was
locked, the sun did not reach into the glazed darkness beyond the
windows, and pine branches hung outstretched above the roof like
arms spread in protection, in compassion, in solemn blessing. With
no sound but the snap of a twig or the ring of a drop falling some-
where in the forest through long stretches oi moments, the silence
seemed to hold all the pain that had been hidden here, but never
given voice. She stood, listening with a gentle, resigned, unlamenting
respect; Let’s see who’ll do greater honor, you — to Nat Taggart, or
1 — to Sebastian d'Anconia. . . . Dagny! Help me to remain. To refuse.
Even though he’s right! . . .

She turned to look at Galt, knowing that he was the man against
whom she had had no help to offer. He sat at the wheel of the car,
he had not followed her or moved to assist her, as if he had wanted
her to acknowledge the past and had respected the privacy of her
lonely salute She noticed that he still sat as she had left him, his
forearm leaning against the wheel at the same angle, the fingers of
his hand hanging down in the same sculptured position. His eyes
were watching hei, but that was all she could read in his face: that
he had watched her intently, without moving.

When she was seated beside him once more, he said, “That was
the first man I took away from you."

She asked, her face stern, open and quietly defiant, “How much
do you know about that?"

“Nothing that he told me in words. Everything that the tone of
his voice told me whenever he spoke of you."

She inclined her head. She had caught the sound of suffering in
the faintest exaggeration of evenness in his voice.

He pressed the starter, the motor’s explosion blasted the story
contained in the silence, and they drove on.

The path widened a little, streaming toward a pool of sunlight
ahead. She saw a brief glitter of wires among the branches, as they
drove out into a clearing. An unobtrusive little structure stood
against a hillside, on a rising slant of rocky ground. It was a simple
cube of granite, the size of a loolshed. it had no windows, no aper-
tures of any kind, only a door of polished steel and a complex set
of wire antenna branching out from the roof. Galt was driving past,
leaving it unnoticed, when she asked with a sudden start, “What’s
that?""

She saw the faint break of his smile. “The powerhouse."

"Oh, stop, please!"

He obeyed, backing the car to the foot of the hillside. It was her
first few steps up the rocky incline that stopped her, as if there were
no need to move forward, no further place to rise — and she stood

669

as in the moment when she had opened her eyes on ,the earth of
the valley, a moment uniting her beginning to her goal.

She stood looking up at the structure, her consciousness surrend-
ered to a single sight and a single, wordless emotion— but she had
always known that an emotion was a sura totaled by an adding ma-
chine of the mind, and what she now felt was the instantaneous total
of the thoughts she did not have to name, the final sum of a long
progression, like a voice telling her by means of a feeling: If she had
held onto Quentin Daniels, with no hope of a chance to use the
motor, for the sole sake of knowing that achievement had not died
on earth — if, like a weighted diver sinking in an ocean of mediocrity,
under the pressure of men with gelatin eyes, rubber voices, spiral-
shaped convictions, non-committal souls and non-committing hands,
she had held, as her life line and oxygen tube, the thought of a
superlative achievement of the human mind— if, at the sight of the
motor’s remnant, in a sudden gasp of suffocation, as a last protest
from his corruption-eaten lungs. Dr. Stadler had cried for something,
not to look down at, but up to, and (fits had been the cry, the longing
and the fuel of her life — if she had moved, drawn by the hunger of
her youth for a sight of clean, hard, radiant competence — then here
it was before her, reached and done, the power of an incomparable
mind given shape in a net ot wires sparkling peacefully under a
summer sky, drawing an incalculable power out of space into the
secret interior of a small stone hovel.

She thought of this structure, half the si/e of a boxcar, replacing
the power plants of the country, the enormous conglomerations of
steel, luel and effort — she thought of the current flowing from this
structure, lifting ounces, pounds, tons of strain from the shoulders
of those who would make it or use it, adding hours, days and years
of liberated time to their lives, be it an extra moment to lift one's
head from one’s task and glance at the sunlight, or an extra pack of
cigarettes bought with the money saved from one’s electric bill, or
an hour cut from the work day of every factoiy using power, or a
month’s journey through the whole, open width of the world, on a
ticket paid for by one day of one’s labor, on a train pulled by the
power ot this motor — with all the energy of that weight, that strain,
that time replaced and paid for by the energy of a single mind who
had known how to make connections of wire follow the connections
of his thought. But she knew that there was no meaning in motors
or factories or trains, that their only meaning was in man’s enjoyment
of his life, which they served — and that her swelling admiration at
the sight of an achievement was for the man from whom it came,
for the power and the radiant vision within him which had seen the
earth as a place of enjoyment and hijd known that the work ot
achieving one’s happiness was the purpose, the sanction and the
meaning of life. l

The door of the structure was a straight, smooth vsheet ol stainless
steel, softly lustrous and bluish in the svjn. Above it, cut in the gran-
ite, as the only feature of the building’* rectangular austerity, there
stood an inscription:

I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER

670

LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER MAN
TO LIVE FOR MINE

She turned to Galt. He stood beside her; he had followed her, she
had known that this salute was his. She was looking at the inventor
of the motor, but what she saw was the easy, casual figure of a
workman in his natural setting and function — she noted the uncom-
mon lightness of his posture, a weightless way of standing that
showed an expert control of the use of his body — a tall body in
simple garments: a thin shirt, light slacks, a belt about a slender
waistline — and loose hair made to glitter like metal by the current of
a sluggish wind. She looked at him as she had looked at his structure.

Then she knew that the first two sentences they had said to each
other still hung between them, filling the silence — that everything
said since, had been said over the sound of those words, that he had
known it, had held it. had not let her forget it. She was suddenly
aware that they were alone; it was an awareness that stressed the
fact, permitting no further implication, yet holding the full meaning
oi the unnamed in that special stress They were alone in a silent
forest, at the foot of a structure that looked like an ancient temple —
and she knew what rite was the proper form of worship to be offered
on an altar of that kind She telt a sudden pressure at the base of
her throat, her head leaned back a little, no more than to feel the
hunt shift of a current against her hair, but it was as if she were
lying back in space, against the wind, conscious of nothing but his
legs and the shape of his mouth. He stood watching her, his face
still but for the taint movement of his eyelids drawing narrow as if
against too strong a light. It was like the beat of three instants — this
was the first — and in the next, she felt a sub of ferocious triumph
at the knowledge that his effort and his struggle were harder to
endure than hers~and then he moved his eyes and raised his head
to look at the inscription on the temple

She let him look at it for a moment, almost as an act of conde-
scending mercy to an adversary struggling to refuel his strength, then
she asked, with a note of imperious pride in her voice, pointing at
the inscription. “What's that?"

it’s the oath that was taken by every person in this valley, but
you.”

She said, looking at the words, “This has always been my own
rule of living.”

“I know it,”

“But I don't think that yours is the wav to practice it."

“Then you'll have to learn which one of us is w r rong.”

She walked up to the steel door of the structure, with a sudden
confidence faintly stressed in the movements of her body, a mere
hint of stress, no more than her awareness of the power she held by
means of his pain— and she tried, asking no permission, to turn the
knob of the door. But the door was locked, and she felt no tremor
under the pressure of her hand, as if the lock were poured and sealed
to the stone with the solid steel of the sheet.

“DonT try to open that door, Miss Taggart.”

He approached her, his steps a shade too slow, as if stressing his

671

glitter faintly in the corners of his eyes, a humor that was shrewder,
more demanding, yet warmer than a smile.

He opened the door of his house, moving his arm a shade more
slowly than normal, giving an imperceptibly solemn emphasis to his
gesture. Walking into the living room, she faced seven men who lose
to their leet at her entrance.

“Gentlemen — Taggart Transcontinental," said Midas Mulligan.

He said it smiling, but only half-jesting; sonic quality in his voice
made the name of the railroad sound as if it would have sounded in
the days of Nat Taggart, as a sonorous title of honor.

She inclined her head, slowly, in acknowledgment to the men be-
fore her, knowing that these were the men whose standards ol value
and honor were the same as hei own, the men who recognized the
glory of that title as she recognized it, knowing with a sudden stab
ot wistfulness how much she had longed for that recognition through
all her years

Her eyes moved slowly, in greeting, from face to lace. Ellis
Wyatt — Ken Danaggcr — Hugh Akston - Dr. Hendricks -Quentin
Daniels — Mulligan’s voice pronounced the names of the two others:
“Richard Halley — Judge Narragansett."

The faint smile on Richard Halley’s face seemed to tell her that
they had known each other foi years — as. in her lonely evenings
by the side of her phonograph, they had. 'The austerity ol Judge
Narragansett’s white-haired ligure reminded hei that she had once
heard him described as a marble statue — a blindfolded marble statue,
it was the kind of figure that had vanished from the courtrooms ot
the country when the gold coins had vanished from the country’s
hands.

“You have belonged here for a long time. Miss Taggart." said
Midas Mulligan. “This was not the way we expected you to come,
but — welcome home."

No! She wanted to answer, but heard herself answering soitly,
“Thank you."

“Dagny, how many years is it going to take you to learn to be
yourself?" It was Ellis Wyatt, grasping her elbow, leading her to a
chair, grinning at her look of helplessness, at the struggle between
a smile and a tightening resistance in her face. “Don't pretend that
you don’t understand us. You do."

“We never make assertions. Miss Taggart x " said Hugh Akston
“That is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell —
we show. We do not claim — we prove. It is not your obedience that
we seek to win, but your rational conviction. You have seen all the
elements of our secret. The conclusion is now yours to draw — we
can help you to name it, but not to accept it — the sight, the knowl-
edge and the acceptance, must be youri"

“I feel as if I know it," she answered jsimply, “and more: 1 feel as
if Eve always known it, but never tounc| it, and now I’m afraid, not
afraid to hear it, just afraid that it’s cothing so close."

Akston smiled. “What does this look like to you. Miss Taggart?"
He pointed around the room.

“This?” She laughed, suddenly, looking at the faces of the men

674

against the golden sunburst of rays filling the great windows. 'This
looks like . . . You know, 1 never hoped to see any of you again, I
wondered at times how much I'd give for just one more glimpse or
one more word — and now — now this is like that dream you imagine
in childhood, when you think that some day, in heaven, you will see
those great departed whom you had not seen on earth, and you
choose, from all the past centuries, the great men you would like
to meet.”

“Well, that’s one clue to the nature of our secret,” said Akston.
“Ask yourself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should
be left waiting lor us in our graves — or whether it should be ours
here and now and on this earth ”

“1 know,” she whispered.

“And if you met those great men in heaven,’' asked Ken Danag-
ger, “what would you want to say to them?”

“.lust . . . just ‘hello,’ I guess.”

“That's not ail.” said Dunagger “There's something you'd want
to hear from them. 1 didn't know it. either, until I saw him foi the
first time” — he pointed to Galt “and he said it to me. and then I
knew what it was that 1 had missed all my life. Miss Taggart, you’d
want them to look at you and to say. ‘Well done.' ” She dropped
her head and nodded silently, head down, not to let them see the
sudden spurt of teats to her eves. “All right, then. Well done,
Dagny! — well done- too well -and now it's time tor you to rest from
that burden which none of us should ever have had to carry.”

“Shut up,” said Midas Mulligan, looking at her bowed head with
anxious concern

But she raised her head, smiling “Thank you, ' she said to
Danagger.

“If you talk about resting, then let her rest,” said Mulligan. “She’s
had loo much for one day.”

“No.” She smiled. “Go ahead, say it- -whatever it is.”

“Later,” said Mulligan.

It was Mulligan and Akston who served dinner, with Quentin Dan-
iels to help them. They served it cm small silver trays, to be placed
on the arms of the chairs- -and they all sat about the room, with the
fire of the skv fading in the windows and sparkles of electric light
glittering in the wine glasses There was an air ot luxury about the
room, but it was the luxury of expert simplicity: she noted the costly
furniture, carefully chosen tor comfort, bought somewhere at a time
when luxury had still been an art. There were no superfluous objects,
but she noticed a small canvas by a great master of the Renaissance
worth a fortune, she noticed an Oriental rug of a texture and color
that belonged under glass in a museum. This was Mulligan’s concept
of wealth, she thought— the wealth of selection, not of accumulation.

Quentin Daniels sat on the floor, with his tray on his lap: he
seemed completely at home, and he glanced up at her once in a
while, grinning like an impudent kid brother who had beaten her to
a secret she had not discovered. He had preceded her into the valley
by some ten minutes, she thought, but he was one of them, while
she was still a stranger.

675

Gall sat aside, beyond the circle of lamplight, on the arm of Dr.
Afcston’s chair. He had not said a word, he had stepped back and
turned her over to the others, and he sat watching it as a spectacle
in which he had no further part to play. But her eyes kept coming
back to him, drawn by the certainty that the spectacle was of his
choice and staging, that he had set it in motion long ago, and that
all the others knew it as she knew it.

She noticed another person who was intensely aware of nail’s
presence: Hugh Akston glanced up at him once in a while, involun-
tarily, almost surreptitiously, as if struggling not to confess the loneli-
ness of a long separation, Akston did not speak to him, as it taking
his presence for granted. But once, when Galt bent forward and a
strand of hair fell down across his face, Akston reached over and
brushed it back, his hand lingering for an imperceptible instant on
his pupil’s forehead: it was the only break of emotion he permitted
himself, the only greeting; it was the gesture o( a father.

She found herself talking to the men around her, relaxing in light-
heaited comfort. No, she thought, what she felt was not strain, it
was a dim astonishment at the strain which she should, but did not.
feel; the abnormality of it was that* it seemed so normal and simple.

She was barely aware of her questions, as she spoke to one man
after another, but their answeis were printing a record in her mind,
moving sentence by sentence to a goal.

“The Fifth Concerto?" said Richard Halley, in answer to her ques-
tion. “1 wrote it ten years ago. We call it the Concerto of Deliver-
ance. Thank you for recognizing it from a few notes whistled in the
night. . . . Yes, 1 know about that. . . . Yes, since you knew my
work, you would know, when you heard it. that this Concerto said
everything T had been struggling to say and reach. It’s dedicated to
him." He pointed to Galt. “Why, no, Miss Taggart, 1 haven't given
up music. What makes you think so? I’ve written more in the last
ten years than in any other period of my life. I will play it for you.
any of it, when you come to my house. . . . No, Miss Taggart, it will
not be published outside. Not a note of it will be heard beyond
these mountains."

“No, Miss Taggart, l have not given up medicine," said Dr. Hen-
dricks, in answer to her question. “1 have spent the last six years on
research. I have discovered a method to protect the blood vessels of
the brain from that fatal rupture which is known as a brain stroke
It will remove from human existence the terrible threat of sudden
paralysis. . . . No, not a word of my method will be heard outside."

“The law. Miss Taggart?" said Judge Narragansett, “What law? I
did not give it up-— it has ceased to exist But I am still working in
the profession I had chosen, which was that of serving the cause of
justice. , . . No, justice has not ceased } to exist. How could it? It is
possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice
that destroys them. But it is not posable for justice to go out of
existence, because one is an attribute cp the other, because justice is
the act of acknowledging that which e^sts. ... Yes, I am continuing
in my profession. I am writing a treatise on the philosophy of law,
I shall demonstrate that humanity’s dankest evil, the most destructive

676

horror machine among all the devices of men, is non -objective
law. . . . No, Miss Taggart, my treatise will not be published outside,”

“My business, Miss Taggart?” said Midas Mulligan. “My business
is blood transfusion — and I’m still doing it My job is to feed a life-
fuel into the plants that are capable of growing. But ask Dr. Hen-
dricks whether any amount of blood will save a body that refuses to
function, a rotten hulk that expects to exist without effort. My blood
bank is gold. Gold is a fuel that will perform wonders, but no fuel
can work where there is no motor. . . . No, l haven't given up. I
merely got fed up with the job of running a slaughter house, where
one drams blood out of healthy living beings and pumps it into
gutless half-corpses.”

“Given up?" said Hugh Akston. “Check your premises. Miss Tag-
gart. None of us has given up. It is the world that has. . . . What is
wrong with a philosopher running a roadside diner? Or a cigarette
factory, as I am doing now? Alt work is an act of philosophy. And
when men will learn to consider productive work— and that which
is its source — as the standard of their moral values, they will reach
that state of perfection which is the birthright they lost. . . . Hie
source of work? Man’s mind. Miss Taggart, man’s reasoning mind.

I am vvriting a book on this subject, defining a moral philosophy that
I learned from my own pupil. . . Yes, it could save the world. , . .

No, it will not be published outside.”

“Why 0 ” she cried “Why° What are you doing, all of you?”

“We are on strike.” said John Galt

They all turned to him, as if they had been waiting for his voice
and tor that word. She heard the empty beat of time within her,
which was the sudden silence of the room, as she looked at him
across a span of lamplight. He sat slouched casually on the arm of
a chair, leaning forward, his forearm across his knees, his hand hang-
ing down idly— and it was the faint smile on his face that gave to
his words the deadly sound of the irrevocable*

“Why should this seem so staitling? There is only one kind of
men who ha\e never been on strike in human history Every other
kind am! class have stopped, when they so wished, and have pre-
sented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable— except
the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept
it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked
out on the human race Well, their turn has come. Let the world
discover who they aie, what they do and what happens when they
refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind. Miss
Taggart. This is the mind on strike.”

She did not move, except for the fingers of one hand that moved
slowly up her check to her temple.

“Through all the ages,” he said, “the mind has been regarded as
evil, and every form of insult: from heretic to materialist to ex-
ploiter- every form of iniquity: from exile to disfranchisement to
expropriation — every form of torture: from sneers to rack to firing
squad — have been brought down upon those who assumed the re-
sponsibility of looking at the world through the eyes of a living
consciousness and performing the crucial act of a rational connection.

677

Yet only to the extent to which— in chains, in dungeons, in hidden
comers, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders — some
men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to
survive. Through all the centuries of the worship of the mindless,
whatever stagnation humanity chose to endure, whatever brutality
to practice— it was only by th£ grace of the men who perceived that
wheat must have water in order to grow, that stones laid in a curve
will form an arch, that two and two makes four, that love is not
served by torture and life is not fed by destruction — only by the
grace of those men did the rest of them learn to experience moments
when they caught the spark of being human, and only the sum of
such moments permitted them to continue to exist. It was the man
of the mind who taught them to bake their bread, to heal their
wounds, to forge their weapons and to build the jails into which they
threw him. He was the man of extravagant energy — and reckless
generosity — who knew that stagnation is not man’s fate, that impo-
tence is not his nature, that the ingenuity of his mind is his noblest
and most joyous power — and in service to that love of existence he
was alone to feel, he went on working, working at any price, working
for his despoilers, for his jailers, for his torturers, paying with his hie
for the privilege of saving theirs. This was his glory and his guilt —
that he let them teach him to feel guilty of his glory, to accept the
part of a sacrificial animal and, in punishment for the sin of intelli-
gence, to perish on the altars of the brutes. The tragic joke of human
history is that on any of the altars men erected, it was always man
whom they immolated and the animal whom they enshrined. It was
always the animal’s attributes, not man’s, that humanity worshipped:
the idol of instinct and the idol of force— the mystics and the kings —
the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled
by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to
reason, that knowledge came in blind, causeless tits, blindly to be
followed, not doubted — and the kings, who ruled by means of claws
and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim,
with a dub or a gun as sole sanction of their power. The defenders
of man’s soul were concerned will) his feelings, and the defenders
of man’s body were concerned with his stomach — but both weie
united against his mind. Yet no one, not the lowest of humans, is
ever able fully to renounce his brain No one has ever believed in
the irrational; what they do believe in is the unjust. Whenever a man
denounces the mind, it is because his goal is of a nature the mind
would not permit him to confess. When he preaches contradictions,
he does so in the knowledge that someone will accept the burden
of the impossible, someone will make it work for him at the price
of his own suffering or life; destruction?^ the price of any contradic-
tion. It is the victims who made injustice possible. It is the men of
reason who made it possible for the rule of the brute to work. The
despoiling of reason has been the motive of every anti-reasoft creed
on earth. The despoiling of ability ha& been the purpose of every
creed that preached self-sacrifice. The $espoilers have always known
it. Wc haven’t. The time has come fot us to see. What we are now
asked to worship, what had once been dressed as God or king, is

678

the naked, twisted, mindless figure of the human Incompetent. This
is the new ideal, the goal to aim at, the purpose to live for, and all
men are to be rewarded according to how close they approach it.
This is the age of the common man, they tell us — a title which any
man may claim to the extent of such distinction as he has managed
not to achieve. He will rise to a rank of nobility by means of the
effort he has failed to make, he will be honored for such virtue as
he has not displayed, and he will be paid for the goods which he
did not produce. But we — we, who must atone tor the guilt of abil-
ity — we will work to support him as he orders, with his pleasure as
our only reward. Since we have the most to contribute, we will have
the least to say. Since we have the better capacity to think, we will
not be permitted a thought of our own. Since we have the judgment
to act, we will not be permitted an action of our choice. We will work
under directives and controls, issued by those who are incapable of
working. They will dispose of our energy, because they have none
to offer, and of our product, because they can’t produce. Do you
say that this is impossible, that it cannot be made to work? They
know it, but it is you who don’t— and they are counting on you not
to know it They are counting on you to go on. to work to the limit
of the inhuman and to feed them while you last —and when you
collapse, there will be another victim starting out and feeding them,
while struggling to survive — and the span of each succeeding victim
will be shorter, and while you'll die to leave them a railroad, your
last descendant -in-spirit will die to leave them a loaf of bread. This
does not worry the looters of the moment. Their plan — like all the
plans of all the royal looters of the past — is only that the loot shall
last their lifetime. It has always lasted before, because m one genera-
tion they could not run out of victims. But this time — it will not last
The victims are on strike. We are on strike against maityrdom — and
against the moral code that demands it. We are on strike against
those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another.
We are on strike against the morality of cannibals, be it practiced
in body or in spirit. We will not deal with men on any terms but
ours -and our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an
end in himself and not the means to any end of others. We do not
seek to force our code upon them. They are free to believe what
they please. But, lor once, they will have to believe it and to exist —
without our help. And, once and for all, they will learn the meaning
of their creed. T hat creed has lasted for centuries solely by the sanc-
tion of the victims — by means of the victims’ acceptance of punish-
ment for breaking a code impossible to practice. But that code was
intended to be broken. It is a code that thrives not on those who
observe it, but on those who don’t, a morality kept m existence not
by virtue of its saints, but by the grace of its sinners. We have de-
cided not to be sinners any longer. We have ceased breaking that
moral code. We shall blast it out of existence forever by the one
method that it can’t withstand: by obeying it. We are obeying it. We
arc complying. In dealing with our fellow men, we are observing
their code of values to the letter and sparing them all the evils they
denounce. The mind is evil? We have withdrawn the works of our

679

minds from society, and not a single idea of ours is to be known or
used by men. Ability is a selfish evil that leaves no chance to those
who are less able? We have withdrawn from the competition and
left all chances open to incompetents. The pursuit of wealth is greed,
the root of all evil? We do not seek to make fortunes any longer. It
is evil to cam more than one’s bare sustenance? We take nothing
but the lowliest jobs and we produce, by the effort of our muscles,
no more than we consume for our immediate needs — with not a
penny nor an inventive thought left over to harm the world. It is
evil to succeed, since success is made by the strong at the expense
of the weak? We have ceased burdening the weak with our ambition
and have left them free to prosper without us. It is evil to be an
employer? We have no employment to offer. It is evil to own prop-
erty? We own nothing. It is evil to enjoy one’s existence m this
world? There is no form of enjoyment that we seek from their world,
and — this was hardest tor us to attain — what we now feel for their
world is that emotion which they preach as an ideal: Indifference —
the blank — the zero— the mark ot death. . . . We are giving men
everything they’ve professed to want and to seek as virtue for centu
ties. Now let them see whether they want it.”

“It was you who started this strike?” she asked.

“I did.”

He got up, he stood, hands in pockets, his lace in the light --and
she saw him smile with the easy, eifortless, implacable amusement
of certainty.

“We’ve heard so much about strikes,” he said, “and about the
dependence of the uncommon man upon the common. We’ve heard
it shouted that the industrialist is a parasite, that his workers support
him, create his wealth, make his luxury possible — and what would
happen to him if they walked out? Veiy well 1 propose to show to
the world who depends on whom, who supports whom, who is the
source of wealth, who makes whose livelihood possible and what
happens to whom when who walks out.”

The windows were now sheets of darkness, reflecting the dots ol
lighted cigarettes. He picked a cigarette fiom a table beside him,
and in the flare ol a match she saw the brief sparkle of gold, the
dollar sign, between his fingers.

“1 quit and joined him and went on strike,” said Hugh Akston,
“because I could not share my profession with men who claim that
qualification of an intellectual consists of denying the existence ot
the intellect. People would not employ a plumber who’d attempt to
prove his professional excellence by asserting that there’s no such
thing as plumbing-- but, apparently, t{ie same standards of caution
are not considered necessary in regard to philosophers. 1 learned
from my own pupil, however, that it was l who made this possible.
When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as
fellow thinkers of a different school of thought — it is they who
achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy’s basic
premise, thus granting the sanction of Reason to formal dementia. A
basic premise is an absolute that pet|mits no co-operation with its
antithesis and tolerates no tolerance. Jn the same manner and for

680

the same reason as a banker may not accept and pass counterfeit
money, granting it the sanction, honor and prestige of his bank, just
as he may not grant the counterfeiter’s demand for tolerance of a
mere difference of opinion — so 1 may not grant the title of philoso-
pher to Dr. Simon Pritchett or compete with him for the minds of
men. Dr. Pritchett has nothing to deposit to the account of phiioso*
phy, except his declared intention to destroy it. He seeks to cash
in- by means of denying it— on the power of reason among men.
He seeks to stamp the mint-mark of reason upon the plans of his
looting masters. He seeks to use the prestige of philosophy to pur-
chase the enslavement of thought. But that prestige is an account
which can exist only so long as 1 am there to sign the checks. Let
him do it without me. Let him — and those who entrust to him their
children’s minds— have exactly that which they demand: a world of
intellectuals without intellect and of thinkers who proclaim that they
cannot think. I am conceding it. I am complying. And when they see
the absolute reality of their non-absolute world, 1 will not be there
and it will not be 1 who will pay the price of their contradictions.”

“Dr. Akston quit on the principle of sound banking,” said Midas
Mulligan. ‘1 quit on the principle of love. Love is the ultimate form
of recognition one grants to superlative values. It was the Hunsacker
case that made me quit - that case when a court of law ordered that
1 honor, as first right to my depositors’ tunds, the demand of those
who would offer proof that they had no right to demand it. 1 was
ordered to hand out money earned by men, to a worthless rotter
whose only claim consisted of his inability to earn it. 1 was born on
a farm. I knew the meaning of money, i had dealt with many men
in my life. I had watched them grow, t had made my fortune by
being able to spot a certain kind of man. The kind who never asked
you for faith, hope and charity, but offered you facts, proof and
profit. Did you know that l invested in Hank Reardeifs business at
the time when he was rising, when he had just beaten his way out
of Minnesota to buy the steel mills in Pennsylvania? Well, when 1
looked at that court order on my desk, 1 had a vision. 1 saw a picture,
and I saw it so dearly that it changed the looks of everything tor
me. I saw the bnght face and the eyes of young Rearden, as he’d
been when Pd met him first. 1 saw him lying at the foot of an altar,
with his blood running down into the earth - and what stood on that
altar was Lee Hunsacker, with the mucus-filled eyes, whining that
he’d never had a chance. . . . IPs strange how simple things become,
once you see them clearly. It wasn’t hard for me to dose the bank
and go: I kept seeing, for the first time in my life, what it was that
I had lived for and loved.”

She looked at Judge Narragansett. “You quit over the same case,
didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Judge Narragansett “1 quit when the court of appeals
reversed my ruling. The purpose for which 1 had chosen my work,
was my resolve to be a guardian of justice. But the laws they asked
me to enforce made me the executor of the vilest injustice conceiv-
able. I was asked to use force to violate the rights of disarmed men,
who came before me to seek my protection for their rights. Litigants

681

obey the verdict of a tribunal solely on the premise that there is an
objective rule of conduct, which they both accept. Now I saw that
one man was to be bound by it, but the other was not, one was to
obey a rule, the other was to assert an arbitrary wish— his need —
and the law was to stand on the side of the wish. Justice was to
consist of upholding the unjustifiable. I quit — because I could not
have borne to hear the words Your Honor’ addressed to me by an
honest man.”

Her eyes moved slowly to Richard Halley, as if she were both
pleading and afraid to hear his story. He smiled.

“I would have forgiven men for my struggle,” said Richard Halley.
*it was their view of my success that I could not forgive. I had felt
no hatred in all the years when they rejected me. If my work was
new, 1 had to give them time to learn, if I took pride in being first
to break a trail to a height of my own, 1 had no right to complain
if others were slow to follow. That was what I had told myself
through all those years — except on some nights, when 1 could neither
wait nor believe any longer, when I cried ‘why?’ but found no an-
swer. Then, on the night when they chose to cheer me, l stood before
them on the stage of a theater, thinking that this was the moment I
had struggled to reach, wishing to feel it, but feeling nothing. 1 was
seeing all the other nights behind me, hearing the ‘why?' which still
had no answer— and their cheers seemed as empty as their snubs. It
they had said, ‘Sorry to be so late, thank you for waiting’ — 1 would
have asked for nothing else and they could have had anything I had
to give them. But what l saw in their taces, and in the way they
spoke when they crowded to praise me. was the thing 1 had heard
being preached to artists — only I had never believed that anyone
human could mean it. They seemed to say that they owed me noth-
ing, that their deafness had provided me with a moral goal, that it
had been my duty to struggle, to sutler, to bear— tor their sake--
whatever sneers, contempt, injustice, torture (hey chose to inflict
upon me. to bear it in order to teach them to enjoy my work, that
this was their rightful due and my proper purpose And then I under-
stood the nature of the looter-in-spirit, a thing I had never been able
to conceive. I saw them reaching into my soul, just as they reached
into Mulligan’s pocket, reaching to expropriate the value of my per-
son, just as they reach to expropriate his wealth — I saw the imperti-
nent malice of mediocrity boastfully holding up its own emptiness
as an abyss to be filled by the bodies of its betters — I saw them
seeking, just as they seek to feed on Mulligan’s money, to feed on
those hours when I wrote my music and on that which made me
write it, seeking to gnaw their way to self-esteem by extorting from
me the admission that they were thd goal of my music, so that pre-
cisely by reason of my achievement, it would not be they who’d
acknowledge my value, but I who vfould bow to theirs. .... It was
that night that I took the oath nevef to let them hear another note
of mine. The streets were empty whfen I left that theater. I was the
last one to leave—and I saw a man whom l had never seen before,
waiting for me in the light of a lamppost. He did not have to tell

682

me much. But the concerto I dedicated to him is called the Concerto
of Deliverance.”

She looked at the others. “Please tell me your reasons,” she said,
with a faint stress of firmness in her voice, as if she were taking a
beating, but wished to take it to the end.

T quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years
ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform
a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and
the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to
acquire that skill? That was what 1 would not place at the disposal
of men whose sole qualilication to rule me was their capacity to spout
the lraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of
enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them
dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or
the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount
of my reward. 1 observed that in all the discussions that preceded
the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything — except the
desires of the doctors. Men considered only the "welfare' of the pa-
tients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a
doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was
regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only
to serve/ ITiat a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is
too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards — never
occurred to those who ptoposed to help the sick by making life
impossible for the healthy. 1 have often wondered at the smugness
with which people asserl their right to enslave me, to control my
work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind —
yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an
operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them
Jo believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well,
that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of
doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in
their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place
their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It
is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it — and still less safe,
if he is the sort who doesn’t.”

“I quit,” said Ellis Wyatt, “because 1 didn't wish to serve as the
cannibals' meal and to do the cooking, besides/’

”1 discovered,” said Ken Danagger, “that the men I was fighting
were impotent The shiftless, the purposeless, the irresponsible, the
irrational- it was not I who needed them, it was not theirs to dictate
icrms to me, it was not mine to obey demands. I quit, to let them
discover it, UK)/’

T quit,” said Quentin Daniels, “because, if there are degrees of
damnation, the scientist who places his mind in the service of brute
force is the longest- range murderer on earth/’

lhey were silent. She turned to Galt. “And you?” she asked. “You
wore first. What made you come to it?”

He chuckled. “My refusal to be bom with any original sin,”

“What do you mean?”

“I have never felt guilty of my ability. 1 have never felt guilty of

683

my mind. I have never felt guilty of being a man, I accepted no
unearned guilt, and thus was free to earn and lo know my own value.
Ever since I can remember, I had felt that I would kill the man who’d
claim that I exist for the sake of his need — and I had known that this
was the highest moral feeling. That night, at the Twentieth Century
meeting, when 1 heard an unspeakable evil being spoken in a tone of
moral righteousness, 1 saw the root of the world's tragedy, the key to
it and the solution. I saw what had to be done. I went out to do it.”

"And the motor?” she asked. "Why did you abandon it? Why did
you leave it to the Starnes heirs?”

"It was their father's property. He paid me for it. It was made on
his time. But I knew that it would be of no benefit to them and that
no one would ever hear of it again. It was my first experimental
model. Nobody but me or my equivalent could have been able to
complete it or even to grasp what it was. And I knew that no equiva-
lent of mine would come near that factory from then on.”

"You knew the kind of achievement vour motor represented?”

"Yes.”

"And you knew you were leaving it lo perish?”

"Yes.” He looked off into the darkness beyond the windows and
chuckled softly, but it was not a sound of amusement ”1 looked at
my motor for the last time, before I left. I thought of the men who
claim that wealth is a matter of natuial resources- and of the men
who claim that wealth is a matter of ser/mg the factories— and of the
men who claim that machines condition their brains. Well, there was
the motor to condition them, and there it remained as just exactly
what it is without man’s mind— as a pile of metal scraps and wires,
going to rust. You have been thinking of the great service which that
motor could have rendered to mankind, if it had been put into produc-
tion. I think that on the day when men understand the meaning of its
fate in that factory's junk heap — it will have rendered a greater one ”

"Did you expect to sec that dav, when you left it?”

"No.”

"Did you expect a chance to rebuild it elsewhere 7 ”

"No.”

"And you were willing to let it lernam in a junk heap k> ”

"For the sake of what that motor meant to me.” he said slowly, "1
had to be willing to let it crumble and vanish forever” — he looked
straight at her and she heard the steady, unhesilanl. unintlected ruth-
lessness ol his voice — "just as you will have to be willing to let the
rail of T aggart Transcontinental crumble and vanish.”

She held his eyes, her head was lifted, and she said softly, in the
tone of a proudly open plea. "Don't make me answer you now.”

"1 won’t. We'll tell you whatever yoiu wish to know. We won’t urge
you to make a decision.” He added^ and she was shocked by the
sudden gentleness of his voice, "1 said that that kind of indifference
toward a world which should have bfcen ours was the hardest thing
to attain, l know. We've all gone through it.”

She looked at the quiet, impregnable room, and at the light— the
light that came from his motor— on the faces of men who were the
most serene and confident gathering She had ever attended.

684

“‘What did you do, when you walked out of the Twentieth Cen-
tury?” she asked.

“I went out to become a llame-spotter. I made it my job to watch
lor those bright flares in the growing night of savagery, which were
the men of ability, the men of the mind— to watch their course, their
struggle and their agony— and to pull them out, when I knew that
they had seen enough.”

“What did you tell them to make them abandon everything?”

“I told them that they were light.”

In answer to the silent question of her glance, he added, “I gave
them the pride they did not know they had. I gave them the words
to identify i(. 1 gave them that priceless possession which they had
missed, had longed for, yet had not known they needed: a moral
sanction. Did you call me the destroyer and the hunter of men? 1 was
the walking delegate of this strike, the leader of the victims’ rebellion,
the defender oi the oppressed, the disinherited, the exploited — and
when / use these words, they have, for once, a literal meaning.”

“Who were the first to follow you?”

He let a moment pass, in deliberate emphasis, then answered, “My
two best friends. You know one of them. You know, perhaps better
than anyone else, what price he paid for it. Our own teacher. Dr.
Akston, was next. He joined us within one evening’s conversation.
William Hastings, who had been my boss in the research laboratory
ot Twentieth Century Motors, had a hard time, fighting it out with
himself. It took him a year But he joined. Then Richard Halley. Then
Midas Mulligan.”

“ — who took fifteen minutes,” said Mulligan.

She turned to him “it was you who established this valley?”

“Yes,” said Mulligan. “It was just my own private retreat, at first.

1 bought it years ago, l bought miles of these mountains, section by
section, from ranchers and cattlemen who didn’t know what they
owned. The valley is not listed on any map l built this house, when
1 decided to quit. I cut off all possible avenues of approach, except
one road— and it’s camouflaged beyond anyone's power to discover —
and I stocked this place to be self-supporting, so that 1 could live here
for the rest of my life and never have to see the face of a looter.
When I heard that John had got Judge Narragansett, too, I invited
ihc Judge to come here. Then we asked Richard Halley to join us.
The others remained outside, at first.”

“We had no rules of any kind.” said Galt, “except one. When a
man look our oath, it meant a single commitment: not to work in his
own profession, not to give to the world the benefit of his mind. Each
of us carried it out in any manner he chose. Those who had money,
retired to live on their savings. Those who had to work, took the
lowest jobs they could find. Some of us had been famous; others —
like that young brakeman of yours, whom Halley discovered — were
stopped by us before they had set out to get tortured. But we did not
give up our minds or the work we loved. Each of us continued in his
real profession, in whatever manner and spare time he could man-
age — but he did it secretly, for his own sole benefit, giving nothing to
men, sharing nothing. We were scattered all over the country, as the

685

outcasts we had always been, only now we accepted our parts with
conscious intention. Our sole relict were the rare occasions when we
could see one another. We found that we liked to meet- -in order to
be reminded that human beings still existed. So we came to set aside
one month a year to spend m this valley— to rest, to live in a rational
world, to bring our real work out ot hiding, to trade our achieve-
ments — here, where achievements meant payment, not expropriation.
Each of us built his own house here, at his own expense — for one
month of life out of twelve. It made the eleven easier to bear. 1 *

“You see. Miss Taggart,” said Hugh Akston, “man is a social being,
but not in the way the looters preach.”

“It's the destruction of Colorado that started the growth of this
valley,” said Midas Mulligan. “Ellis Wyatt and the others came to live
here permanently, because they had to hide Whatever part of their
wealth they could salvage, they converted into gold or machines, as 1
had, and they brought it here There were enough of us to develop
the place and to create jobs for those who had had to earn their living
outside. We have now reached the stage wheie most of us can live
here full time. The valley is almost self-supporting— and as to the
goods that we can’t yet produce, I purchase them from the outside
through a pipe line of my own. It's a special agent, a man who does
not let my money reach the looters. We are not a state here, not a
society of any kind— we're just a voluntary association ot men held
together by nothing but every man's self-interest. I own the valley
and I sell the land to the olhers, when they want it Judge Narragansett
is to act as our arbiter, in case o! disagreements. He hasn't had to be
called upon, as yet. They say that it’s hard for men to agree. You'd
be surprised how easy it is — when both parties hold as their moral
absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason
is their only means of trade. The time is approaching when all of us
will have to be called to live here— because the world is falling apart
so fast that it will soon be starving. But we will be able to support
ourselves in this valley.”

“The world is crashing faster than we expected,*’ said Hugh Akston.
“Men are stopping and giving up. Your frozen trains, the gangs of
raiders, the deserters, they’re men who’vc never heard of us. and
they’re not part of our strike, they are acting on their own — it's the
natural response of whatever rationality is still left in them — it's the
same kind of protest as ours.”

“We started with no time limit in view,” said Galt. “We did not
know whether we’d live to see the liberation of the world or whethei
we’d have to leave our battle and our secret to the next generations.
We knew only that this was the only way we cared to live. But now we
think that we will sec, and soon, the; day of our victory and of our
return.”

“When?” she whispered.

“When the code of the looters has?collapsed.”

He saw her looking at him, her gtarfee half-question, half-hope, and
he added, “When the creed of sclf-irfcmolation has run, for once, its
undisguised course — when men find no victims ready to obstruct the
path of justice and to deflect the fall* of retribution on themselves—

686

when the preachers of self-sacrifice discover that those who are willing
to practice it, have nothing to sacrifice, and those who have, are not
willing any longer— when men see that neither their hearts nor their
muscles can save them, but the mind they damned is not there to
answer their screams for help — when they collapse as they must, as
men without minds — when they have no pretense of authority left, no
lemnant of law, no trace of morality, no hope, no food and no way
to obtain it -when they collapse and the road is clear — then we’ll
come back to rebuild the world.”

The Taggart Terminal, she thought; she heard the words beating
through the numbness of her mind, as the sum of a burden she had
not had time to weigh. This was the Taggart Terminal, she thought,
this room, not the giant concourse in New York — tins was her goal,
the end of track, the point beyond the curve ol the earth where the
two straight lines of rail met and vanished, drawing her forward — as
they had drawn Nathaniel Taggart- -this was the goal Nathaniel Tag-
gart had seen in the distance and this was the point still holding the
straight-line glance ol his lifted head above the spiral motion of men
in the granite concourse. It was tor the sake of this that she had
dedicated herself to the rail of Taggart Transcontinental, as to the
body of a spirit yet to be found. .She had found it, everything she had
cvet wanted, it was here in this room, reached and hers — but the price
\\ as the net of rail behind hei, the rati that would vanish, the bridge
that would crumble, the signal lights that would go out. . . . And
yet . F very thing. I had ever wanted, she thought — looking away
iiom the figure of a man with sun -colored hair and implacable eyes.

‘You don’t have to answer us now.”

She raised her head; he was watching her as if he had lollowed the
steps in her mind.

“We never demand agreement,” he said. ‘ We never tell anyone
more than he is ready to hear. You are the first person who has
learned out secret ahead of time. But you're here and you had to
Know. Now you know the exact nature of the choice you'll have to
make If it seems hard, it’s because you still think that it does not
have to be one or the other. You will learn that it does.”

"Will you give me time?”

“Your time is not ours to give. Take your time. You alone can
decide what you’ll choose to do, and when. We know the cost of that
decision We’ve paid it. That you’ve come here might now make it
easier for you— or harder.”

“Harder,” she whispered.

“I know.”

He said it, his voice as low as hers, with the same sound of being
forced past one’s breath, and she missed an instant of time, as the
stillness after a blow, because she felt that this— not the moments
when he had earned her in his arms down the mountainside, but
this meeting of their voices — had been the closest physical contact
between them.

A full moon stood in the sky above the valley, when they drove
back to his house; it stood like a fiat, round lantern without rays, with
a haze of light hanging in space, not reaching the ground, and the

687

illumination seemed to come from the abnormal white brightness of
the soil. In the unnatural stillness of sight without color, the earth
seemed veiled by a film of distance, its shapes did not merge into a
landscape, but went slowly flowing past, like the print of a photograph
on a cloud. She noticed suddenly that she was smiling. She was looking
down at the houses of the valley. Their lighted windows were dimmed
by a bluish cast, the outlines of their walls were dissolving, long hands
of mist were coiling among them in torpid, unhurried waves. It looked
Tike a city sinking under water.

“What do they call this place?” she asked.

“I call it Mulligan’s Valley,” he said. “The others call it Galt’s
Gulch.”

“I’d call it-—” but she did not finish.

He glanced at her. She knew' what he saw in her face. He turned
away.

She saw a faint movement of his lips, like the release of a breath
that he was forcing to function. She dropped her glance, her arm
falling against the side of the car, as if her hand were suddenly too
heavy for the weakness in the crook of her elbow.

The road grew darker, as it went higher, and pine branches met
over their heads. Above a slant ol rock moving to meet them, she
saw the moonlight on the windows of his house. Her head tell back
against the seat and she lay still, losing awareness of the car, feeling
only the motion that carried her forward, watching the glittering drops
of water in the pine branches, which were the stars.

When the car stopped, she did not permit herself to know why she
did not look at him as she stepped out. She did not know that she
stood still for an instant, looking up at the dark windows. She did not
hear him approach; but she fell the impact of his hands with shocking
intensity, as if it were the only awareness she could now experience
He lifted her in his arms and started slowly up the path to the house

He walked, not looking at her, holding her tight, as if trying to hold
a progression of time, as if his arms were still locked over the moment
when he had lifted her against his chest. She fell his steps as if they
were a single span of motion to a goal and as if each step were a
separate moment in which she dared not think of the next Her head
was dose to his, his hair brushing her cheek, and she knew that neither
of them would move his lace that one breath closer. It was a sudden,
stunned state of quiet drunkenness, complete in itself, their hair min-
gled like the rays of two bodies in space that had achieved their
meeting, she saw that he walked witty his eyes closed, as if even sight
would now be an intrusion. >

He entered the house, and as he hfioved across the living room, lie
did not look to his left and neither pid she, but she knew that both
of them were seeing the door on hisjleft that led to his bedroom. He
walked the length of the darkness to-the wedge of moonlight that fell
across the guest-room bed, he placed her down upon it, she felt an
instant’s pause of his hands still holding her shoulder and waistline,
and when his hands left her body, she knew that the moment was over

He stepped back and pressed a switch, surrendering the room m

688

the harshly public glare of light. He stood still, as if demanding that
she look at him, his face expectant and stem.

‘Have you forgotten that you wanted to shoot me on sight?” he
asked.

It was the unprotected stillness of his figure that made it real. The
shudder that threw her upright was like a cry of terror and denial;
but she held his glance and answered evenly, “That’s true. I did.”

“Then stand by it,”

Her voice was low, its intensity was both a surrender and a scornful
reproach: “You know better than that, don’t you?”

He shook his head. “No, 1 want you to remember that that had
been your wish. You were right, in the past. So long as you were part
ot the outer world, you had to seek to destroy me. And of the two
courses now open to you, one will lead you to the day when you will
find yourself forced to do it.” She did not answer, she sat looking
down, he saw the strands of her hair swing jerkily as she shook her
head in desperate protest. “You are my only danger. You are the
only person who could deliver me to my enemies. If you remain with
them, you will. Choose that, if you wish, but choose it with full knowl-
edge. Don’t answer me now. But until you do” — the stress of seventy
in his voice was the sound of effort directed against him — “remember
that I know the meaning of either answer.”

“As fully as I do?” she whispered

“As fully ”

He turned to go, when her eyes fell suddenly upon the inscriptions
she had noticed, and forgotten, on the walls of the room.

I hey weie cut into the polish ot the wood, still showing the force
ol the pencil's pressure in the hands that had made them, each in his
own violent writing: “You'll get over it— Ellis Wyatt” “It will be all
right by morning- -Ken Danagger” “It’s w r orth it— Roger Marsh.”
There were others

“What is that 0 ” she asked

He smiled. “This is the room where they spent their first night in
the valley. The first night is the hardest, it’s the last pull of the break
with one’s memories, and the worst. 1 let them stay here, so they am
call for me, if they want me. I speak to them, if they can't sleep. Most
o| them can't. But they're free of it by morning. . . .They've ail gone
through this room. Now they call it the torture chamber or the ante-
mom— because everyone has to enter the valley through my house.”

He turned to go. he stopped on the threshold and added:

“This is the room 1 never intended you to occupy. Good night,
Miss Taggart ”

Chapter I! THE UTOPIA OF GREED

“Good morning.”

She looked at him across the living room from* the threshold of
her door. In the windows behind him, the mountains had that tinge
of silver-pink which seems brighter than daylight, with the promise
of a light to come. The sun had risen somewhere over the earth, but

689

it had not reached the top of the barrier, and the sky was glowing
in its stead, announcing its motion. She had heard the'joyous greeting
to the sunrise, which was not the song of birds, but the ringing of
the telephone a moment ago; she saw the start of day, not in the
shining green of the branches outside, but in the glitter of chromium
on the stove, the sparkle of a glass ashtray on a table, and the crisp
whiteness of his shirt sleeves. Irresistibly, she heard the sound of a
smile in her own voice, matching his, as she answered;

“Good morning.”

He was gathering notes of penciled calculations from his desk and
stuffing them into his pocket. “1 have to go down to the power-
house,” he said. “They've just phoned me that they’re having trouble
with the ray screen. Your plane seems to have knocked it off key.
I'll be back in half an hour and then HI cook our breakfast.”

It was the casual simplicity of his voice, the manner of taking her
presence and their domestic routine for granted, as if it were of
no significance to them, that gave her the sense of an underscored
significance and the feeling that he knew it.

She answered as casually, “If you’ll bring me the cane I left in the
car. I’ll have breakfast ready for you by the time you come back.”

He glanced at her with a slight astonishment; his eyes moved from
her bandaged ankle to the short sleeves of the blouse that left her
arms bare to display the heavy bandage on her elbow. But the trans-
parent blouse, the open collar, the hair falling down to the shoulders
that seemed innocently naked under a thin film of cloth, made her
look like a schoolgirl, not an invalid, and her posture made the
bandages look irrelevant.

He smiled, not quite at her, but as if in amusement at some sudden
memory of his own. “If you wish.” he said.

It was strange to be left alone in his house. Part of it was an
emotion she had never experienced before: an awed respect that
made her hesitantly conscious of her hands, as if to touch any object
around her would be too great an intimacy. The other part was a
reckless sense of ease, a sense of being at home in this place, as it
she owned its owner.

It was strange to feel so pure a joy in the simple task of preparing
a breakfast ITie work seemed an end in itself, as if the motions of
filling a coffee pot, squeezing oranges, slicing bread were performed
for their own sake, for the sort of pleasure one expects, but seldom
finds, in the motions of dancing. It startled her to realize that she
had not experienced this kind of pleasure in her work since her days
at the operator’s desk m Rockdale Station.

She was setting the table, when she saw the figure of a man hur-
rying up the path to the house, a swift, agile figure that leaped over
boulders with the casual ease of a (light. He threw the door open,
calling, “Hey, John!”— and stopped short as he saw her. He wore a
dark blue sweater and slacks, he ha<| gold hair and a face of such
shocking perfection of beauty that shk stood still, staring at him, not
in admiration, at first, but in simple disbelief.

He looked at her as if he had not expected to find a woman in
this house. Then she saw a look of recognition melting into a differ-

690

ent kind of astonishment, part amusement, part triumph melting into
a chuckle. “Oh, have you joined us?” he asked.

“No.” she answered dryly, “I haven’t. I’m a scab.”

He laughed, like an adult at a child who uses technological words
beyond its understanding. “If you know what you’re saying, you
know that it’s not possible,” he said. ‘Not here.”

“I crashed the gate. Literally.”

He looked at her bandages, weighing the question, his glance al-
most insolent in its open curiosity. “When?”

“Yesterday.”

“How?”

“In a plane.”

“What were you doing in a plane in this part of the country?”

He had the direct, imperious manner of an aristocrat or a rough-
neck; he looked like one and was dressed like the other. She consid-
ered him for a moment, deliberately letting him wait. “1 was trying
to land on a prehistoricai mirage." she answered. “And 1 have.”

“You arc a scab,” he said, and chuckled, as if grasping all the
implications of the problem. “Where’s John?”

“Mr. Galt is at the powerhouse. He should be back any moment.”

He sat down in an armchair, asking no permission, as if he were
at home. .She turned silently to her work. He sat watching her move-
ments with an open grin, as if the sight of her laying out cutlery on
a kitchen table were the spectacle of some special paradox.

“What did Francisco say when he saw you here?” he asked.

She turned to him with a slight jolt, but answered evenly, “He is
not here yet."

‘‘Not yet?” He seemed startled “Are you sure?”

“So I was told."

He lighted a cigarette. She wondered, watching him, what profes-
sion he had chosen, loved and abandoned in order to join this valley.
She could make no guess: none seemed to tit: she caught herself m
the preposterous feeling of wishing that he had no profession at all,
because any woik seemed too dangerous for his incredible kind of
beauty. It was an impersonal feeling, she did not look at him as at
a man, but as at an animated work of art — and it seemed to be a
stressed indignity of the outer world that a perfection such as his
should be subjected to the shocks, the strains, the scars reserved
lor any man who loved his work. But the feeling seemed the more
preposterous, because the lines of his face had the sort of hardness
for which no danger on earth was a match.

“No, Miss Taggart,” he said suddenly, catching her glance “you’ve
never seen me before.”

She was shocked to realize that she had been studying him openly.
“How do you happen to know who I am?” she asked.

“First, I’ve seen your pictures in the papers many times. Second,
you’re the only woman left m the outer world, to the best of oui
knowledge, who’d be allowed to enter Galt’s Gulch. Third, you're
the only woman who’d have the courage — and prodigality — still to
remain a scab.”

“What made you certain that I was a scab?”

691

“If you weren’t, you’d know that it’s not this valley, ljut the view
of life held by men in the outer world that is a prehistorical mirage.”

They heard the sound of the motor and saw the car stopping
below, in front of the house. She noticed the swiftness with whieh
he rose to his feet at the sight of Galt in the car; if it were not for
the obvious personal eagerness, it would have looked like an instinc-
tive gesture of military respect.

She noticed the way Galt stopped, when he entered and saw his
visitor. She noticed that Galt smiled, but that his voice was oddly
low, almost solemn, as if weighted with unconfessed relief, when he
said very quietly, “Hello.”

“Hi, John,” said the visitor gaily.

She noticed that their handshake came an instant too late and
lasted an instant too long, like the handshake of men who had not
been certain that their previous meeting would not be their last.

Galt turned to her. “Have you met?” he asked, addressing them
both.

“Not exactly,” said the visitor.

“Miss Taggart, may l present Ragnar Danneskjdld?”

She knew what her face had looked like, when she heard Dannes-
kj old’s voice as from a great distance: “You don't have to be fright-
ened, Miss Taggart. I’m not dangerous to anyone in Galt’s Gulch,”

She could only shake her head, before she recaptured her voice
to say, “It’s not what you're doing to anyone . . . it's what they’TC
doing to you. ...”

His laughter swept her out of hei moment's stupor. “Be careful.
Miss Taggart, If that's how you’re beginning to lee!, you won t re-
main a scab for long.” He added, “But you ought to start by adopting
the right things from the people in Galt's Gulch, not their mistakes,
they've spent twelve years worrying about me- -needlessly,” He
glanced at Galt.

“When did you get in?” asked Galt.

“Late last night.”

“Sit down. You’re going to have breakfast with us."

“But where’s Francisco? Why isn’t he here vet?”

“I don't know,” said Gall, tmwning slightly. “I asked at the an -
port, just now. Nobody’s heard from him.”

As she turned to the kitchen, Gail moved to follow. “No.” she
said, “it’s my job today.”

“Let me help you.”

“This is the place where one doesn't ask for help, isn't it?”

He smiled. “That’s right.”

She had never experienced the pleasure of motion, of walking as
if her feet had no weight to carry, as if? the support of the cane in
her hand were merely a superfluous touch of elegance, the pleasure
of feeling her steps trace swift, straight Irnes, of sensing the faultless,
.spontaneous precision of her gestures— «s she experienced it while
placing their food on the table in front cjf the two men. Her bearing
told them that she knew they were watching her — she held her head
like an actress on a stage, like a woman in a ballroom, like the
winner of a silent contest.

6<>2

“Francisco will be glad to know that it’s you who were his stand-
in today,*’ said Danneskjdld, when she joined them at the table.

“His what?”

“You see, today is June first, and the three of us — John, Francisco
and I— have had breakfast together on every June first for twelve
years.”

“Here?”

“Not when we started. But here, ever since this house was built
eight years ago.” He shrugged, smiling. “For a man who has more
centuries of tradition behind him than 1 have, it’s odd that Francisco
should be the first to break our own tradition.”

“And Mr. Galt?” she asked. “How many centuries does he have
behind him?”

“John? None at all. None behind him— but all of those ahead.”

“Never mind the centuries,” said Galt. “Tell me what soil of year
you’ve had behind vou. Lost any rnen?”

“No.”

“Lost any of your time?”

“You mean, was l wounded? No. I haven’t had a scratch since
that one time, ten years ago, when 1 was still an amateur, which you
ought to forget by now. 1 wasn't in any danger whatever, this year —
in fact, J was much more safe than if 1 were running a small-town
drugstore under Directive 10-289,”

“Lost any battles 7 ”

“No. The losses were all on the other side, this year. The looters
lost most of their ships to me — and most of their men to you. You’ve
had a good year, too, haven’t you? 1 know, I’ve kept track of it.
Since our last breakfast together, you got everyone you wanted from
the state of Colorado, and a tew cithers besides, such as Ken Danag^
ger, who was a great prize to get. But let me tell you about a still
greater one, who is almost yours. You’re going to get him soon,
because he’s hanging by a thin thread and is just about ready to fall
at your feet. He's a man who saved my life — so you can sec how
far he’s gone.”

Cialt leaned back, his eyes narrowing. “So you weren’t in any
danger whatever, were you 7 ”

Danneskjbld laughed. “Oh, 1 took a slight risk, it was worth it. It
was the most enjoyable encounter I’ve ever had. I’ve been waiting
to tell you about it in person. It's a story you’ll want to hear Do
you know who the man was? Hank Rearden. I — ”

“No!”

It was Galt's voice; it was a command; the brief snap of sound had
a tinge of violence neither of them had ever heard from him before.

“Whal?” asked Datmeskjbld softly, incredulously.

“Don’t tell me about it now.”

“But you’ve always said that Hank Rearden was the one man you
wanted to see here most.”

“1 still do. But you’ll tell me later.”

She studied Galt's face intently, but she could find no clue, only
a closed, impersonal look, either of determination or of control, that
tightened the skin of his cheekbones and the line of his mouth. No

693

matter what he knew about her, she thought, the onlv knowledge
that could explain this, was a knowledge he had ha<5 no way o
acquiring.

' You've met Hank Rearden?” she asked, turning to Danneskjdld
“And he saved vour life?”

“Yes.”

“I warn to hear about it.”

"1 don’t,” said Galt,

“Why not?”

“You’re not one ot us. Miss Taggart."

“1 see.” She smiled, with a faint touch of defiance. “Were yot
thinking that l might prevent you from getting Hank Rearden?”

“No, that was not what 1 was thinking ”

She noticed that Danneskjold was studying Gulfs lace, as if hr
too, found the incident inexplicable Galt held his glance, deliberate!’
and openly, as il challenging him to find the explanation and promts
ing that he would fail. She knew that Danneskjold had failed, whci
she saw a faint crease ol humor softening Galt’s eyelids

“What else,” asked Galt, “have you accomplished this year 7 ”

“I’ve defied the law of gravitation "

“You've always done that. In what particular form now 7 ”

“In the form of a (light from mid-Atlantic to Colorado m a plan>
loaded with gold beyond the safety point of its capacity. Wait til
Midas sees the amount I have to deposit. My customers, this ye;n
will become richer by — Say. have you told Miss Taggail that she'
one of my customers?”

“No, not yet. You may tell her, il you wish.”

“I’m — What did you say 1 am?” she asked.

“Don’t be shocked. Miss Taggart,” said Dannesk|old. “And don’
object. I'm used to objections. I'm a sort of freak here, anyway
None of them approve of my particular method of lighting our battle
John doesn’t, Dr Akston doesn’t. They think that my life is to<
valuable for it. But, you .see, my father was a bishop— and of all hi
teachings there was only one sentence that I accepted. ‘All they tha
take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ ”

“What do you mean?”

“That violence is not practical. If my lellow men believe that th
force of the combined tonnage of theii muscles is a practical mean
to rule me — let them learn the outcome of a contest in w hich there’
nothing but brute force on one side, and force ruled by a mind, oi
the other. Even John grants me that in our age I had the moral righ
to choose the course I’ve chosen. I am doing just what he is doing-
only in my own way. He is withdrawing man’s spirit from the looter*
I’m withdrawing the products of man’s; spirit. He is depriving ther
of reason, I'm depriving them of wealth. He is draining the soul o
the world, I’m draining its body. His is fhe lesson they have to learr
only I'm impatient and I’m hastening their scholastic progress. Bin
like John, I’m simply complying with their moral code and refusin
to grant them a double standard at nty expense. Or at Rearden’
expense. Or at yours'”

“What are you talking about?”

694

“About a method of taxing the income taxers. AH methods of
taxation are complex, but this one is very simple, because it’s the
naked essence of all the others. Let me explain it to you/’

She listened. She heard a sparkling voice reciting, in the tone of
a dryly meticulous bookkeeper, a report about financial transfers,
bank accounts, income-tax returns, as if he were reading the dusty
pages of a ledger — a ledger wheie every entry was made by means
of offering his own blood as the collateral to be drained at any
moment, at any slip of his bookkeeping pen. As she listened, she
kept seeing the perfection of his face- -and she kept thinking that
this was the head on which the world had placed a price of millions
for the purpose of delivering it to the rot of death. , . . The face she
had thought too beautiful tor the scars ot a productive career —she
kept thinking numbly, missing half his words —the face too beautiful
to risk. . . . Then it struck her that his physical perfection was only
a simple illustration, a childish lesson given to her in crudely obvious
terms on the nature of the outer world and on the fate of any human
value in a subhuman age: Whatever the justice or the evil of bis
course, she thought, how could they ... no! she thought, his course
was just, and this was the honor of it, that there was no other course
(or justice to select, thal she could not condemn him, that she could
neither approve nor utter a word of reproach.

“. . and the names of my customers. Miss Taggart, were chosen

slowly, one by one 1 had to be certain ot the nature of their charac-
ter and career. On my list ot restitution, your name was one of
the first/'

She forced herself to keep hei face expressionlessly tight, and she
answered only, ‘ I see/’

'Your account is one of the last left unpaid. It is here, at the
Mulligan Bank, to be claimed by vou on the day when you join us/'
“l sec/'

“Your account, however, is not as large as some of the others,
even though huge sums weie extorted from you by force in the past
twelve years. You will find- -as it is marked on the copies of your
income-tax returns which Mulligan will hand over to you — that I
have refunded only those taxes which you paid on the salary you
earned as Operating Vice-President, but not the taxes you paid on
your income from your Taggart I ranscontinental stock. You de-
served every penny of that stock, and in the days of your father I
would have refunded every penny of your profit- but under your
brother's management, Taggart Transcontinental has taken its share
of the looting, it has made profits by force, by means of government
favors, subsidies, moratoriums, directives. You were not responsible
for it. you were, in fact, the greatest victim of that policy — but I
refunded only the money which was made by pure productive ability,
not the money any part of which was loot taken by force/’

“I see.”

They had finished their breaklast. Danneskjdld lighted a cigarette
and watched her for an instant through the first jet of smoke, as if
he knew the violence of the conflict in her mind- -then he grinned
at Galt and rose to his feet.

695

"FU run along/' he said, '‘My wife is wailing for me.”"

“ What ?" she gasped.

"My wife/' he repeated gaily, as if he had not understood the
reason of her shock.

"Who is your wife?”

“Kay Ludlow,”

The implications that struck her were more than she could bear
to consider. "When . . . when were you married?”

"Four years ago.”

“How could you show yourself anywhere long enough to go
through a wedding ceremony?”

"We were married here, by Judge Narragansett.”

"How can” — she tried to stop, but the words burst involuntarily,
in helpless indignant protest, whether against him, fate or the outer
world, she could not tell — "how can she live through eleven months
of thinking that you. at any moment, might be . . . ?” She did
not finish.

He was smiling, but she saw the enormous solemnity of that which
he and his wife had needed to earn their right to this kind of smile.
"She can live through it. Miss Taggart, because we do not hold the
belief that this earth is a realm of misety where man is doomed to
destruction. We do not think that tragedy is our natural fate and we
do not live in chronic dread of disaster. We do not expect disaster
until we have specific reason to expect it — and when we encounter
it, we are free to fight it. It is not happiness, but suffering that we
consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that we regard as
the abnormal exception in humaq lilt*.”

Gall accompanied him to the door, then came back, sat down at
the table and in a leisurely manner reached for another cup of coffee

She shot to her feet, as if flung by a jet of pressure breaking a
safety valve. “Do you think that 1 11 ever accept his money?”

He waited until the curving streak of coffee had filled his cup,
then glanced up at her and answered. "Yes. I think so.”

"Well, 1 won’t! I won't let him risk his life foi it!"

"You have no choice about that/’

"I have the choice never to claim it!”

"Yes, you have.”

"Then it will lie in that bank till doomsday!”

"No, it won’t. If you don’t claim it, some part of it- -a very small
part— will be turned over to me in your name.”

"In my name? Why?”

"To pay for your room and board.”

She stared at him, her look of anger switching to bewilderment,
then dropped slowly back on her chair. I

He smiled. "How long did you think >|du were going to stay here.
Miss Taggart?” He saw her startled Ipok of helplessness. "You
haven’t thought of it? I have. You're goifig to stay here for a month.
For the one month of our vacation, like the rest of us, I am i\ot
asking for your consent— you did not a$k for ours when you came
here. You broke our rules, so you’ll have to take the consequences
Nobody leaves the valley during this month. 1 could let you go. of

6%

course, but I won’t. There’s no rule demanding that I hold you, but
by forcing your way here, you’ve given me the right to any choice I
make — and Pm going to hold you simply because I want you here.
If, at the end of a month, you decide that you wish to go back, you
will be free to do so. Not until then.”

She sat straight, the planes of her face relaxed, the shape of her
mouth softened by the faint, purposeful suggestion of a smile; it was
the dangerous smile of an adversary, but her eyes were coldly bril-
liant and veiled at once, like the eyes of an adversary who fully
intends to fight, but hopes to lose.

’’Very well,” she said.

“I shall charge you for your room and board — it is against our
rules to provide the unearned sustenance of another human being.
Some of us have wives and children, but there is a mutual trade
involved in that, and a mutual payment” — he glanced at her — ”of a
kind I am not entitled to collect. So I shall charge you fifty cents a
day and you will pay me when you accept the account that lies in
your name at the Mulligan Bank. If you don't accept the account,
Mulligan will charge your debt against it and he will give me the
money when 1 ask for it.”

“I shall comply with your terms,” she answered; her voice K&d the
shrewd, confident, deliberating slowness of a trader. ’’But 1 shall not
permit the use of that money tor my debts.”

“How else do you propose to comply?”

”1 propose to earn my room and board.”

“By what means?”

“By working.”

“In what capacity?”

“In the capacity of your cook and housemaid.”

For the first time, she saw him take the shock of the unexpected,
m a manner and with a violence she had not foreseen. It was only
an explosion of laughter on his part— but he laughed as if he were
hit beyond his defenses, much beyond the immediate meaning of her
words; she felt that she had struck his past, tearing loose some mem-
ory and meaning of his own which she could not know. He laughed
as if he were seeing some distant image, as if he were laughing in
its face, as if this were his victory — and hers.

“If you will hire me,” she said, her face severely polite, her tone
harshly clear, impersonal and businesslike, “I shall cook your meals,
clean your house, do your laundry and perform such other duties as
are required of a servant — in exchange for my room, board and such
money as I will need for some items of clothing, I may be slightly
handicapped by my injuries for the next few days, but that will not
last and I will be able to do the job fully.*’

“Is that what you want to do?” he asked.

“That is what 1 want to do — ” she answered, and stopped before
she uttered the rest of the answer in her mind: more than anything
else in the world.

He was still smiling, it was a smile of amusement, but it was as if
amusement could be transmuted into some shining glory. “All right.
Miss Taggart,” he said, “I’ll hire you.”

697

She inclined her head in a dryly formal acknowledgment.
“Thank you.”

“1 will pay you ten dollars a month, in addition to your room
and board.”

“Very well.”

“I shall be the first man in this valley to hire a servant.” He got
up, reached into his pocket and threw a five-dollar gold piece down
on the table. “As advance on your wages,” he said.

She was startled to discover, as her hand reached for the gold
piece, that she felt the eager, desperate, tremulous hope of a young
girl on her first job: the hope that she would be able to deserve it.

“Yes, sir.” she said, her eyes lowered.

+ *

Owen Kellogg arrived on the afternoon of her third day m the
valley.

She did not know which shocked him most: the sight of her stand-
ing on the edge of the airfield as he descended from the plane — the
sight of her clothes: her delicate, transparent blouse, tailored by the
most expensive shop in New York, and the wide, cotton-print skirt
she had bought in the valley for sixty cents — her cane, her bandages
or the basket of groceries on her arm.

He descended among a group of men. he saw her. he stopped,
then ran to her as if hung forward by some emotion so strong that,
whatever its nature, it looked like terror.

“Miss Taggart . he whispered— and said nothing else, while
she laughed, trying to explain how she had come to beat him to
his destination.

He listened, as if it were irrelevant, and then he uttered the thing
from which he had to recover, “But we thought you were dead.”

“Who thought it?”

“All of us ... I mean, everybody in the outside world.”

Then she suddenly stopped smiling, while his voice began to recap
turc his story and his first sound of joy.

“Miss Taggart, don’t you remember? You told me to phone Win-
ston, Colorado, and to tell them f hat you'd be there by noon of the
next day. That was to be the day before yesterday. May thirty-first
But you did not reach Winston —and by late afternoon, the news
was on all the radios that you were lost in a plane crash some whoie
in the Rocky Mountains.”

She nodded slowly, grasping the events she had not thought ol
considering.

“I heard it aboard the Comet,” he saij. “At a small station in the
middle of New Mexico. The conductor held us there for an hour,
while I helped him to check the story long-distance phones. He
was hit by the news just as l was. They a31 were — the train crew, the
station agent, the switchmen. They huddfed around me while I called
the city rooms of newspapers in Denver and New York. We didn’t
learn much. Only that you had left th£ Afton airfield just before
dawn on May tmrty-fir&t, that you seemed to be following some
stranger’s plane, that the attendant had seen you go off southeast-

698

and that nobody had seen you since ... And that searching parties
were combing the Rockies for the wreckage of your plane/’

She asked involuntarily, “Did the Comet reach San Francisco?”

“I don’t know She was crawling north through Arizona, when 1
gave up. There were too many delays, too many things going wrong,
and a total confusion of orders. 1 got off and spent the night hitchhik-
ing my way to Colorado, bumming rides on trucks, on buggies, on
horse carts, to get there on time — to get to our meeting place, l
mean, where we gather for Midas’ ferry plane to pick us up and
bring us here.”

She started walking slowly up the path toward the car she had left
in front of Hammond’s Grocery Market. Kellogg followed, and when
he spoke again, his voice dropped a little, slowing down with their
steps, as if there were something they both wished to delay.

”1 got a job for Jelf Allen,” he said, his voice had the peculiarly
solemn tone proper for saying: 1 have carried out your hist will. “Your
agent at Laurel grabbed him and pul him to work the moment we got
there. The agent needed every able-bodied- -no, able-minded* —man he
could find.”

they had reached the car. but she did not get in.

“Miss Taggart, you weren’t hurt badly, were you? Did you say
you crashed, but it wasn’t serious?”

“No, not serious at all. I'll be able to gel along without Mr. Mulli-
gan’s car by tomorrow — and in a day or two I won’t need this thing,
eithci.” She swung her cane and tossed it contemptuously into the
car. They stood in silence, she was waiting.

“The last long-distance call 1 made from that station m New Mex-
ico,” he said slowly, "was to Pennsylvania. 1 spoke to Hank Rcarden.

I told him everything 1 knew. He listened, and then there was a
pause, and then he said. Thank you for calling me.’ ” Kellogg’s eyes
were lowered; he added, T never want to hear that kind of pause
again as long as 1 live.”

He raised his eyes to hers; there was no reproach in his glance,
only the knowledge of that which he had not suspected when he
hcaid her request, but had guessed since.

“Thank you,” she said, and threw the door of the car open. “Can
1 give you a lift? I have to get back and get dinner ready before my
employer comes home.”

It was in the first moment of returning to Galt’s house, of standing
alone in the silent, sun-filled room, that she faced the full meaning of
what she felt. She looked at the window, at the mountains barring
the sky m the east. She thought of Hank Rcarden as he sat at his
desk, now, two thousand miles away, his face tightened into a re-
taining wall against agony, as it had been tightened under all the
blows of all his years — and she felt a desperate wish to tight his
battle, to fight for him, for his past, for that tension of his face and
the courage that fed it — as she wanted to fight for the Comet that
crawled by a last effort across a desert on a crumbling track. She
shuddered* closing her eyes, feeling as if she were guilty of double
treason, feeling as if she were suspended in space "between this valley
and the rest of the earth, with no right to either.

699

The feeling vanished when she sat facing Galt across the dinner
table. He was watching her, openly and with an untroubled look, as
if her presence were normal — and as if the sight of her were all he
wished to allow into his consciousness.

She leaned back a little, as if complying with the meaning of his
glance, and said dryly, efficiently, m deliberate denial, “I have
checked your shirts and found one with two buttons missing, and
another with the left elbow worn through. Do you wish me to
mend them?”

“Why, yes- -if you can do it.”

“I can do it.”

It did not seem to alter the nature of his glance; it merely seemed
to stress its satisfaction, as il this were what he had wished her to
say — except that she was not certain whether satisfaction was the
name for the thing she saw in his eyes and fully certain that he had
not wished her to say anything.

Beyond the window, at the edge ot the table, storm clouds had
wiped out the last remnants of light in the eastern sky. She wondered
why she felt a sudden reluctance to look out. why she felt as if she
wanted to cling to the golden patches of light on the wood ot the
table, on the buttered ciust of the rolls, on the copper cotfec pot,
on Galt’s hair — to cling as to a small island on the edge of a void.

Then she heard her own voice asking suddenly, involuntarily, and
she knew that this was the treason she had wanted to escape, “Do
you permit any communication with the outside world?”

“No.”

“Not any? Not even a note without return address?”

“No.”

“Not even a message, if no secret of yours were given away?”

“Not from here. Not during this month. Not to outsiders at any
time.”

She noticed that she was avoiding his eyes, and she forced herself
to lift her head and face him. His glance had changed; it was watch-
ful, unmoving, implacably perceptive. He asked, looking at her as
if he knew the reason of hei query, “Do you wish to ask for a
special exception?”

“No,” she answered, holding his glance.

Next morning, after breakfast, when she sat in her room, carefully
placing a patch on the sleeve ot Galt’s shirt, with her door closed,
not to let him see her fumbling effort at an unfamiliar task, she
heard the sound of a car stopping in front of the house.

She heard Galt’s steps hurrying across the living room, she heard
him jerk the entrance door open and call out with the joyous anger
of relief: “It's about time!” I

She rose to her feet, but stopped; s He heard his voice, its tone
abruptly changed and grave, as if in artswer to the shock of some
sight confronting him: “What’s the matter?”

“Hello, John,” said a clear, quiet voifce that sounded steady, but
weighted with exhaustion.

She sat down on her bed, feeling suddenly drained of strength:
the voice was Francisco’s.

700

She heard Galt asking, his tone severe with concern* “What is it?*

‘Til tell you afterwards.”

“Why are you so late?”

”1 have to leave again in an hour.”

“To leaveT ’

“John, I just came to tell you that 1 won’t be able to stay here
this year.”

There was a pause, then Galt asked gravely, his voice low, “Is it
as bad as that — whatever it is?”

“Yes. 1 ... I might be back before the month is over. I don’t
know.” He added, with the sound of a desperate effort, “I don’t
know whether to hope to be done with it quickly or ... or not.”

“Francisco, could you stand a shock right now?”

“I? Nothing could shock me now.”

“There’s a person, here, in my guest room, whom you have to
see. It will be a shock to you, so I think I’d better warn you in
advance that this person is still a scab.”

“ What'l A scab? In your house?”

“Let me tell you how — ”

“That’s something I want to see for myself!”

She heard Francisco’s contemptuous chuckle and the rush of his
steps, she saw her door flung open, and she noticed dimly that it
was Galt who closed it, leaving them alone.

She did not know how long Francisco stood looking at her. be*
cause the first moment that she grasped fully was when she saw him
on his knees, holding onto her, his face pressed to her legs, the
moment when she felt as if the shudder that ran through his body
and left him still, had run into hers and made her able to move.

She saw, in astonishment, that her hand was moving gently over
his hair, while she was thinking that she had no right to do it and
feeling as if a current of serenity were flowing from her hand, envel-
oping them both, smoothing the past. He did not move, he made no
sound, as if the act of holding her said everything he had to say.

When he raised his head, he looked as she had felt when she had
opened her eyes m the valley: he looked as if no pain had ever
existed in the world. He was laughing.

“Dagny, Dagny, Dagny”— his voice sounded, not as if a confession
resisted for years were breaking out, but as if he were repeating the
long since known, laughing at the pretense that it had ever been
unsaid- -“of course I love you. Were you afraid when he made me
say it? I’ll say it as often as you wish — 1 love you, darling, I love
you, I always will — don’t be afraid for me, I don’t care if I’ll never
have you again, what does that matter? — you’re alive and you’re
here and you know everything now. And it’s so simple, isn’t it? Do
you see what it was and why I had to desert you?” His arm swept
out to point at the valley. “There it is-— it’s your earth, your kingdom,
your kind of world — Dagny, I’ve always loved you and that 1 de-
serted you, that was my love.”

He took her hands and pressed them to his lips and held them,
not moving, not as a kiss, but as a long moment of rest, as if the
effort ot speech were a distraction from the fact of her presence,

701

and as if he were tom by too many things to say, by the pressure
of all the words stored in the silence of years.

‘The women I chased — you didn’t believe that, did you? I’ve
never touched one of them — but I think you knew it, I think you've
known it all along. The playboy — it was a part that 1 had to play in
order not to let the looters suspect me while 1 was destroying d'An-
conia Copper in plain sight of the whole world. That’s the joker in
their system, they’re out to light any man of honor and ambition,
but let them see a worthless rotter and they think he’s a friend, they
think he’s safe — safe! — that’s their view of life, but are they learn-
ing! — are they learning whether evil is safe and incompetence
practical! . . . Dagny, it was the night when 1 knew, for the first time,
that I loved you — it was then that I knew 1 had to go. It was when
you entered my hotel room, that night, when I saw what you looked
like, what you were, what you meant to me — and what awaited you
in the future. Had you been less, you might have stopped me for a
while. But it was you. you who were the final argument that made
me leave you. I asked for your help, that night — against John Galt
But I knew that you were his best weapon against me, though neither
you nor he could know it. You were everything that lie was seeking,
everything he told us to live for or die, if necessary. ... 1 was ready
for him, when he called me suddenly to conic to New York, that
spring. 1 had not heard from him lor some time. He was fighting the
same problem l was. He solved it. . . . Do you remember? It was
the time when you did not hear fiom me for three years. Dagny.
when I took over my father’s business, when 1 began to deal with
the whole industrial system of the world, it was then that I began to
see the nature of the evil 1 had suspected, but thought loo monstious
to believe. 1 saw' the tax-collecting vermin that had grown for centu-
ries like mildew on d’Anconia Copper, draining us by no right that
anyone could name— I saw r the government regulations passed to
cripple me, because I was successful, and to help my competitors,
because they were loafing (allures — I saw the labor unions who won
every claim against me, by reason of my ability to make their liveli-
hood possible — I saw that any man’s desire for money he could not
earn was regarded as a righteous wish, but if he earned it, it was
damned as greed — l saw the politicians who winked at me, telling
me not to worry, because I could just work a little harder and out-
smart them all. I looked past the profits ol ihc moment, and 1 saw
that the harder I worked, the more 1 tightened the noose around
my throat, I saw that my energy was being poured down a sewer,
that the parasites who fed on me were being fed upon in theii turn,
that they were caught in their own trap — and that there was no
reason for it, no answer known to anyone, that the sewer pipers of
the world, draining its productive blood, led into some dank fog
nobody had dared to pierce, while people merely shrugged and said
that life on earth could be nothing but evil. And then 1 saw that the
whole industrial establishment of the wqrid, with all of its magnifi-
cent machinery, its thousand-ton furnaces, its transatlantic cables, its
mahogany offices, its stock exchanges, ifs blazing electric signs, its
power, its wealth — all of it was run, not by bankers and boards of

702

directors, but by any unshaved humanitarian in any basement beer
joint, by any face pudgy with malice, who preached that virtue must
be penalized for being virtue, that the purpose of ability is to serve
incompetence, that man has no right to exist except for the sake of
others. ... 1 knew it. 1 saw no way to fight it. John found the way.
There were just the two of us with him, the night when we came to
New York in answer to his call, Ragnar and f. He told us what we
had to do and what sort of men we had to reach. He had quit the
Twentieth Century. He was living in a garret in a slum neighborhood.
He stepped to the window and pointed at the skyscrapers of the city.
He said that we had to extinguish the lights of the world, and when
we would see the lights of New York go out, we would know that
our job was done. He did not ask us to join him at once. He told
us to think it over and to weigh everything it would do to our lives.

I gave him my answer on the morning of the second day. and Ragnar
a few hours later, in the afternoon. , . . Dagny, that was the morning
after our last night together. I had seen, in a manner of vision that
1 couldn’t escape, what it was that I had to fight for. It was for the
way you looked that night, for the way you talked about your rail-
road — for the way you had looked when we tried to see the skyline
of New York from the top of a rock over the Hudson — 1 had to
save you, to clear the way for you. to let you find your city— not to
let you stumble the years of your life away, struggling on through a
poisoned fog, with your eyes still held straight ahead, still looking
a.s they had looked in the sunlight, struggling on to find, at the end
of your road, not the towers of a city, but a fat, soggy, mindless
cripple performing his enjoyment of life by means of swallowing the
gin your life had gone to pay for! You — to know no joy in order
that he may know it? You — to serve as fodder for the pleasure of
others? You — as the means for the subhuman as the end? Dagny,
that was what I saw and that was what I couldn't let them do to
you! Not to you, not to any child who had your kind of look when
he faced the future, not to any man who had your spirit and was
able to experience a moment of being proudly, guiltlessly, confi-
dently, joyously alive. That was my love, that state of the human
spirit, and I left you to fight for it, and 1 knew that if I were to lose
you, it was still you that 1 would be winning with every year of the
battle. But you see it now, don't you? You’ve seen this valley. It's
the place we set out to reach when we were children, you and I,
We’ve reached it. What else can 1 ask for now? Just to see you
here— did John say you’re still a scab? — oh well, it’s only a matter
of time, but you’ll be one of us, because you’ve always been, if you
don't see it fully, we’ll wait, 1 don’t care — so long as you’re alive, so
long as I don’t have to go on flying over the Rockies, looking for
the wreckage of your plane!"

She gasped a little, realizing why he had not come to the valley
on time.

He laughed. "Don’t look like that. Don’t look at me as if 1 were
a wound that you’re afraid to touch."

"Francisco, I’ve hurt you in so many different ways—"

"No! No, you haven't hurl me— and he hasn’t either, don’t say

703

anything about it, it’s he who’s hurt, but we’U save him and he’ll
come here, too, where he belongs, and he’ll know, and then he, too,
will be able to laugh about it. Dagny, I didn’t expect you to wait, I
didn’t hope, I knew the chance I’d taken, and if it had to be anyone.
I’m glad it’s he.”

She closed her eyes, pressing her lips together not to moan.

“Darling, don’t! Don’t you see that I’ve accepted it?"

But it isn’t— she thought — it isn’t he, and 1 can’t tell you the truth,
because it’s a man who might never hear it from me and whom I
might never have.

“Francisco, 1 did love you — " she said, and caught her breath,
shocked, realizing that she had not intended to say it and, simultane-
ously, that this was not the tense she had wanted to use.

“But you do," he said calmly, smiling. “You still love me— even
if there’s one expression of it that you’ll always feel and want, but
will not give me any longer. I'm still what I was. and you'll always
see it, and you’ll always grant me the same response, even if there's
a greater one that you grant to another man. No matter what you
feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won’L
be treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it’s the
same payment in answer to the same values. No matter what happens
in the future, we’ll always be what we were to each other, you and
I, because you’ll always love me."

“Francisco," she whispered, “do you know that?"

“Of course. Don’t you understand it now? Dagny. every form of
happiness is one, every desire is driven by the same motor- -by our
love for a single value, lor the highest potentiality of our own exis-
tence — and every achievement is an expression of it. Look around
you. Do you see how much is open to us here, on an unobstructed
earth? Do you see how much 1 am (ree to do, to experience, to
achieve? Do you see that all of it is part of what you are to me —
as I am part of it for you? And if I’ll see you smile with admiration
at a new copper smelter that I built, it will be another torm of what
I felt when I lay in bed beside you. Will I want to sleep with you?
Desperately. Will I envy the man who does? Sure. But what does
that matter? It’s so much— just to have you here, to love you and
to be alive."

Her eyes lowered, her face stern, holding her head bowed as in
an act of reverence, she said slowly, as if fu Killing a solemn promise,
“Will you forgive me?"

He looked astonished, then chuckled gaily, remembering, and an-
swered, “Not yet. There’s nothing to forgive, but I’ll forgive it when
you join us." •

He rose, he drew her to her feet- and !when his arms closed about
her, their kiss was the summation of theif' past, its end and their seal
of acceptance.

Galt turned to them from across the living room, when they came
out. He had been standing at a window^ looking at the valley — and
she felt certain that he had stood there all that time. She saw his
eyes studying their faces, his glance moving slowly from one to the

704

other. His face relaxed a little at the sight of the change in
Francisco's.

Francisco smiled, asking him, “Why do you stare at me?"

“Do you know what you looked like when you came in?"

“Oh, did l? That's because 1 hadn't slept for three nights. John,
will you invite me to dinner? I want to know how this scab of yours,
got here, but I think that I might collapse sound asleep in the middle
of a sentence — even though right now l feel as if III never need any
sleep at all — so I think I'd better go home and stay there till
evening."

Galt was watching him with a faint smile. “But aren't you going
to leave the valley in an hour?"

“What? No . . he said mildly, in momentary astonishment.
“No!" he laughed exultantly. “I don’t have to! That's right, I haven't
told you what it was, have 1? I was searching for Dagny. For . . .
for the wreck of her plane. She’d been reported lost in a crash in
the Rockies."

“1 see," said Galt quietly.

“1 could have thought of anything, except that she would choose
to crash in Galt's Gulch," Francisco said happily; he had the tone
of that joyous relief which almost relishes the horror of the past,
defying it by means of the present. “I kept flying over the district
between Alton, Utah, and Winston, Colorado, over every peak and
crevice of it, over every remnant of a car in any gully below, and
whenever I saw one, 1 — " He stopped; it looked like a shudder.
“Then at night, we went out on foot--- the searching parties of rail-
road men from Winston — we went climbing at random, with no clues,
no plan, on and on, until it was daylight again, and — " He shrugged,
trying to dismiss it and to smile. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst — "

He stopped short; his smile vanished and a dim reflection of the
look he had worn for three days came back to his face, as if at the
sudden presence of an image he had forgotten.

After a long moment, he turned to Galt. “John," his voice sounded
peculiarly solemn, “could we notify those outside that Dagny is
alive ... in case there's somebody who . . . who'd feel as I did?"

Galt was looking straight at him. “Do you wish to give any out-
sider any relief from the consequences of remaining outside?"

Francisco dropped his eyes, but answered firmly, “No."

“Pity, Francisco? "

“Yes. Forget it. You’re right."

Galt turned away with a movement that seemed oddly out of char-
acter: it had the unrhythmical abruptness of the involuntary.

He did not turn back; Francisco watched him in astonishment,
then asked softly, “What's the matter?"

Galt turned and looked at him for a moment, not answering. She
could not identify the emotion that softened the lines of Galt’s face;
it had the quality of a smile, of gentleness, of pain, and of something
greater that seemed to make these concepts superfluous.

“Whatever any of us has paid for this battle," said Galt, “you're
the one who’s taken the hardest beating, aren’t you?"

“Who? 1?" Francisco grinned with shocked, incredulous amuse-

705

mcnt. “Certainly not! What’s the matter with you?” He chuckled
and added, “Pity, John?”

“No,” said Galt firmly.

She saw Francisco watching him with a laint, puzzled frown —
because Galt had said it, looking, not at him, but at her.

* *

The emotional sum that struck her as an immediate impression ot
Francisco’s house, when she entered it lor the first time, was not the
sum she had once drawn from the sight of its silent, locked exterior.
She felt, not a sense of- tragic loneliness, but of invigorating bright-
ness. The rooms were bare and crudely simple, the house seemed
built with the skill, the decisiveness and the impatience typical of
Francisco; it looked like a frontiersman's shanty thrown together to
serve as a mere springboard for a long flight into the future— a future
where so great a field of activity lay waiting that no time could be
wasted on the comfort of its start The place had the brightness, not
of a home, but of a fresh wooden scaffolding erected to shelter the
birth ol a skyscraper

Francisco, in shirt sleeves, stood in the middle of his twelve-foot-
square living room, with the look of a host in a palace. Of all the
places where she had ever seen him. this was the background that
seemed most properly his. Just as the simplicity of his clothes, added
to his bearing, gave him the air of a superlative aristocrat, so the
crudeness of the room gave it the appearance ol the most patrician
retreat; a single royal touch was added to the crudeness* two ancient
silver goblets stood in a small niche cut in a wall of bare logs; their
ornate design had required the luxury of some craftsman’s long and
costly labor, more labor than had gone to build the shanty, a design
dimmed by the polish of more centuries than had gone to grow the
log wall’s pines. In the midst of that room, Francisco’s easy, natural
manner had a touch of quiet pride, as if his smile were silently saying
to her; This is what I am and what I have been all these years.

She looked up at the silver goblets.

“Yes,” he said, in answer to her silent guess, “they belonged to
Sebastian d’Anconia and his wife. That’s the only thing I brought
here from my palace in Buenos Aires. That, and the crest over the
door. It’s all I wanted to save. Everything else will go, in a very few
months now.” He chuckled. “They'll seize it, all of it. the last dregs
of d’Anconia C opper, but they’ll be surprised. They won't find much
for their trouble. And as to that palace, they won’t be able to afford
even its heating bill.”

“And then?” she asked. “Where will you go from there?”

“f? 1 will go to work for d’Anconia Copper.”

“What do you mean?” j

“Do you remember that old slogan: ‘The king is dead, long live
the king*? When the carcass of my ancestors’ property is out of the
way, then my mine will become the youing new body of d’Anconia
Copper, the kind of property my ancestors had wanted, had worked
for, had deserved, but had never owned.”

“Kowr mine? What mine? Where?”

706

“Here/’ he said, pointing toward the mountain peaks. “Didn’t you
know it?”

“No.”

“I own a copper mine that the looters won’t reach, ft's here, in
these mountains. I did the prospecting, I discovered it, 1 broke the
first excavation. It was over eight years ago. I was the first man to
whom Midas sold land in this valley I bought that mine. I started
it with my own hands, as Sebastian d’Aneonia had started. I have a
superintendent in charge of it now, who used to be my best metallur-
gist in CTiilc. The mine produces all the copper we require. My profits
are deposited at the Mulligan Bank, rhat will be all 1 11 have, a few
months from now That will be all I’ll need.”

— to conquer the world, was the way his voice sounded on his last
sentence- -and she marveled at the difference between that sound
and the shameful, mawkish tone, half whine, halt -threat, the lone of
beggar and thug combined, which the men of their century had given
to the word “need.”

“Dagny,” he was saying, standing at (he window, as if looking out
at the peaks, not of mountains, but ot time, “the rebirth of d’Anconia
Copper — and of the world — has to start here, in the United States,
t his country was the only country in history born, not of chance and
blind tubal warfare, but as a lational product of man’s mind. This
country was built on the supremacy of reason — and, for one mag-
nificent century, it redeemed the world. It will have to do so again.
The first step of d’Anconm Copper, as of any other human value,
has to come from here — because the rest of the earth has reached
the consummation of the beliefs it has held through the ages: mystic
faith, the supremacy of the irrational, which has but two monuments
at the end of its course* the lunatic asylum and the graveyard. . . .
Sebastian d’Anconia committed one error: he accepted a system
which declared that the property he had earned by right, was to be
his, not by right, but by permission. His descendants paid for that
error. I have made the last payment. . . 1 think that 1 will see the

day when, growing out from their root in this soil, the mines, the
smelteis, the ore docks of d'Ancoma Copper will spread again
through the world and down to my native country, and l will be the
first to start my country’s rebuilding. I may see it, but I cannot be
certain. No man can predict the time when others will choose to
return to reason. It may be that at the end of my life, 1 shall have
established nothing but this single mine — d’Anconia Copper No. 1.
Galt’s Gulch, Colorado, IJ.S.A. But, Dagny, do you remember that
my ambition was to double my father’s production of copper?
Dagny, if at the end of my life, l produce but one pound of copper
a year, I will be richer than m\ father, richer than all my ancestors
with all their thousands of tons — because that one pound will be
mine by right and will be used to maintain a world that knows it!”

This was the Francisco of their childhood, in bearing, in manner,
in the unclouded brilliance of his eyes — and she found herself ques-
tioning him about his copper mine, as she had questioned him about
his industrial projects on their walks on the shore of the Hudson,
recapturing the sense ot an unobstiucted future.

707

4 T1I take you to see the mine,” he said, ‘‘as soon as* your ankle
recovers completely. We have to climb a steep trail to get there, just
a mule trail, there's no truck road as yet. Let me show you the new
smelter I'm designing. I’ve been working on it for some time, it’s
too complex for our present volume of production, but when the
mine’s output grows to justify it — just take a look at the time, labor
and money that it will save!"

They were sitting together on the floor, bending over the sheets
of paper he spread before her, studying the intricate sections of the
smelter — with the same joyous earnestness they had once brought
to the study of scraps in a junk yard.

She leaned forward just as he moved to reach for another sheet,
and she found herself leaning against his shoulder. Involuntarily, she
held still for one instant, no longer than for a small break in the
flow of a single motion, while her eyes rose to his. He was looking
down at her, neither hiding what he felt nor implying any further
demand. She drew back, knowing that she had felt the same desire
as his.

Then, still holding the recaptured sensation of what she had telt
for him m the past, she grasped a quality that had always been part
of it, now suddenly clear to her for the first time: if that desire was
a celebration of one's life, then what she had felt for Francisco had
always been a celebration of her future, like a moment of splendor
gained in part payment of an unknown total, affirming some promise
to come. In the instant when she grasped it. she knew also the only
desire she had ever experienced not in token ol the future but of
the full and final present. She knew it by means of an image — the
image of a man’s figure standing at the door of a small granite struc-
ture. The final form of the promise that had kept hei moving, she
thought, was the man who would, perhaps, remain a promise novel
to be reached.

But this — she thought in consternation — was that view of human
destiny which she had most passionately haled and rejected: the view
that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable
shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her file
and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had
never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never
found the possible to be beyond her reach. But she had come to it
and she could find no answer.

She could not give him up or give up the world - she thought,
looking at Galt, that evening. The answer seemed harder to find in
his presence. She telt that no problem existed, that nothing could
stand beside the fact ot seeing hitn and nothing would ever have the
power to make her leave — and, simultaneously, that she would have
no right to look at him if she were to, renounce her railroad. She
felt that she owned him, that the unnhmed had been understood
between them from the start — and, simultaneously, that he was able
to vanish from her life and, on some future street of the outside
world, to pass her by in unweighted indifference.

She noted that he did not question her about Francisco. When she
spoke of her visit, she could find no reaction in his face, neither of

708

approval nor of resentment. It seemed to her that she caught an
imperceptible shading in his gravely attentive expression: he looked
as if this were a matter about which he did not choose to feel

Her faint apprehension grew into a question mark, and the ques-
tion mark turned into a drill cutting deeper and deeper into her
mind through the evenings that followed — when Galt left the house
and she remained alone. He went out every other night, after dinner,
not telling her where he went, returning at midnight or later. She
tried not to allow herself fully to discover with what tension and
restlessness she waited for his return. She did not ask him where he
spent his evenings. The reluctance that stopped her was her too
urgent desire to know; she kept silent in some dimly intentional form
of defiance, half in defiance of him, half of her own anxiety.

She would not acknowledge the things she feared or give them
the solid shape of words, she knew them only by the ugly, nagging
pull of an unadmitted emotion. Part of it was a savage resentment,
of a kind she had never experienced before, which was her answer
to the dread that there might be a woman in his life; yet the resent-
ment was softened by some quality of health in the thing she feared,
as if the threat could be fought and even, if need be, accepted. But
there was another, uglier dread; the sordid shape of self-sacnfice, the
suspicion, not to be uttered about him, that he wished to remove
himself from her path and let its emptiness force her back to the
man who was his best-loved friend.

Days passed before she spoke of it. Then, at dinner, on an evening
when he was to leave, she became suddenly aware of the peculiar
pleasure she experienced while watching him eat the food she had
prepared — and suddenly, involuntarily, as if that pleasure gave her
a right she dared not identify, as if enjoyment, not pain, broke her
resistance, she heard herself asking him, “What is it you’re doing
every' other evening?”

He answered simply, as if he had taken for granted that she knew
it, “Lecturing.”

“What?”

“Giving a course of lectures on physics, as I do every year during
this month. It's my . . . What are you laughing at?” he asked, seeing
the look of relief, of silent laughter that did not seem to be directed
at his words — and then, before she answered, he smiled suddenly, as
if he had guessed the answer, she saw some particular, intensely
personat quality in his smile, which was almost a quality of insolent
intimacy— in contrast to the calmly impersonal, casual manner with
which he went on. “You know that this is the month when we all
trade the achievements of our real professions. Richard Halley is to
give concerts, Kay Ludlow is to appear in two plays written by au-
thors who do not write for the outside world — and 1 give lectures,
reporting on the work Pvc done during the year.”

“Free lectures?”

“Certainly not. It's ten dollars per person for the course.”

“I want to hear you.”

He shook his head. “No. You’ll be allowed to attend the concerts,
the plays or any form of presentation for your own enjoyment, but

m

not my lectures or any other sale of ideas which you might carry out
of this valley. Besides, my customers, or students, are only those
who have a practical purpose in taking my course: Dwight Sanders,
Lawrence Hammond, Dick McNamara, Owen Kellogg, a few others.
I’ve added one beginner this year: Quentin Daniels.”

‘"Really?” she said, almost with a touch of jealousy. “How can he
afford anything that expensive?”

“On credit. I’ve given him a time-payment plan. He’s worth it.”

“Where do you lecture?”

“In the hangar, on Dwight Sanders’ farm.”

“And where do you work during the year'*”

“In my laboratory.”

She asked cautiously, “Where is your laboratory? Here, in the
valley?”

He held her eyes for a moment, letting her see that his glance was
amused and that he knew her purpose, then answered, “No.”

“You’ve lived in the outside world for all of these twelve Years?”

“Yes.”

“Do you”— the thought seemed unbearable— “do you hold some
such job as the others?”

“Oh yes.” The amusement in his eyes seemed stressed by some
special meaning.

“Don't tell me that you’re a second assistant bookkeeper!”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then what do you do?”

“I hold the kind o( job that the world wishes me to hold.”

“Where?”

He shook his head. “No, Miss Taggart. It you decide to leave the
valley, this is one of the things that you are not to know.”

He smiled again with that insolently personal quality which now
seemed to say that he knew the threat contained in his answer and
what it meant to her, then he rose from the table.

When he had gone, she felt as if the motion of time were an
oppressive weight in the stillness of the house, like a stationary, half-
solid mass slithering slowly into some faint elongation by a tempo
that left her no measure to know whether minutes had passed or
hours. She lay half-stretched in an armchair of the living room, crum-
pled by that heavy, indifferent lassitude which is not the will to
laziness, but the frustration of the will to a secret violence that no
lesser action can satisfy.

That special pleasure she had felt in watching him eat the food
she had prepared — she thought, lying still, her eyes closed, her mind
moving, like time, through some realm of veiled slowness- -it had
been the pleasure of knowing that .sh£ had provided him with a
sensual enjoyment, that one form of his foody’s satisfaction had come
from her. . . . There is reason, she thought, why a woman, would
wish to cook for a man . . . oh, not as a duty, not as a chronic career,
only as a rare and special rite in symbol of . . . but what have
they made of it, the preachers of woman’s duty? . . . The castrated
performance of a sickening drudgery was held to be a woman’s
proper virtue — while that which gave it meaning and sanction was

710

held as a shameful sin . . . the work of dealing with grease, steam
and slimy peelings in a recking kitchen was held to be a spiritual
matter, an act of compliance with her moral duty — while the meeting
of two bodies in a bedroom was held to be a physical indulgence,
an act of surrender to an animal instinct, with no glory, meaning or
pride of spirit to be claimed by the animals involved.

She leaped abruptly to her feet. She did not want to think of the
outer world or of its moral code. But she knew that that was not
the subject of her thoughts. And she did not want to think of the
subject her mind was intent on pursuing, the subject to which it kept
returning against her will, by some will of its own. . . .

She paced the room, hating the ugly, jerky, uncontrolled looseness
of her movements — torn between the need to let her motion break
the stillness, and the knowledge that this was not the form of break
she wanted. She lighted cigarettes, for an instant’s illusion of pur*
poseful action — and discarded them within another instant, feeling
the weary distaste of a substitute purpose. She looked at the room
like a restless beggar, pleading with physical objects to give her a
motive, wishing she could find something to dean, to mend, to pol-
ish-while knowing that no task was worth the effort. When nothing
seems worth the effort — said some stern voice in her mind — it’s a
screen to hide a wish that’s worth too much; what do you want? . . .
She snapped a match, viciously jerking the flame to the tip of a
cigarette she noticed hanging, unlighted, in the corner of her
mouth. . . . What do you want? — repeated the voice that sounded
severe as a judge. I want him to come back! — she answered, throwing
the words, as a soundless cry, at some accuser within her. almost as
one would throw a bone to a pursuing beast, in the hope of dis-
tt acting it from pouncing upon the rest.

I want him back— she said softly, in answer to the accusation that
there was no reason lor so great an impatience. . . I want him
back — she said pleadingly, in answer to the cold reminder that her
answer did not balance the judge’s scale. ... I want him back! — she
cried defiantly, lighting not to drop the one superfluous, protective
word in that sentence.

She felt her head drooping with exhaustion, as after a prolonged
beating. The cigarette she saw between her fingers had burned the
mere length of half an inch. She ground it out and fell into the
armchair again.

I'm not evading it — she thought — I’m not evading it, it’s jast that
1 can see no way to any answer. . . . That which you want — said the
voice, while she stumbled through a thickening fog — is yours for the
taking, but anything less than your full acceptance, anything less than
your full conviction, is a betrayal of everything he is. . . . Then let
him damn me — she thought, as if the voice were now lost in the fog
and would not hear her — let him damn me tomorrow. ... 1 want
him . . . back. . . . She heard no answer, because her head had
fallen softly against the chair; she was asleep.

When she opened her eyes, she saw him standing three feet away,
looking down at her, as if he had been watching her for some time.

She saw his face and, with the clarity of undivided perception, she

711

saw the meaning of the expression on his face: it was the meaning
she had fought for hours. She saw it without astonishment, because
she had not yet regained her awareness of any reason why it should
astonish her.

“This is the way you look,” he said softly, “when you fall asleep
in your office/' and she knew that he, too, was not fully aware of
letting her hear it: the way he said it told her how often he had
thought of it and for what reason. “You look as if you would awaken
in a world where you had nothing to hide or to fear,” and she knew
that the first movement of her face had been a smile, she knew it
in the moment when it vanished, when she grasped that they were
both awake. He added quietly, with full awareness, “But here, it’s
true.”

Her first emotion of the realm of reality was a sense of power.
She sat up with a flowing, leisurely movement of confidence, feeling
the flow of the motion from muscle to muscle through her body. She
asked, and it was the slowness, the sound of casual curiosity, the
tone of taking the implications for granted, that gave to her voice
the faintest sound of disdain, “How did you know what I look like
in . . . my office?”

“I told you that I've watched you for years.”

“How were you able to watch me that thoroughly? From where?”

“I will not answer you now,” he said, simply, without defiance.

The slight movement of her shoulder leaning back, the pause, then
the lower, huskier tone of her voice, left a hint of smiling triumph
to trail behind her words: “When did you see me for the first time?”

“Ten years ago,” he answered, looking straight at her, letting her
see that he was answering the full, unnamed meaning of her question.

“Where?” The word was almost a command.

He hesitated, then she saw a faint smile that touched only his lips,
not his eyes, the kind of smile from which one contemplates— with
longing, bitterness and pride — a possession purchased at an excruci-
ating cost; his eyes seemed directed, not at her, but at the girl of
that time. “Underground, in the Taggart Terminal,” he answered.

She became suddenly conscious of her posture: she had let her
shoulder blades slide down against the chair, carelessly, half-lying,
one leg stretched forward — and with her sternly tailored, transparent
blouse, her wide peasant skirt hand-printed in violent colors, her
thin stocking and high-heeled pump, she did not look like a railroad
executive — the consciousness of it struck her in answer to his eyes
that seemed to be seeing the unattainable — she looked like that
which she was: his servant girl. She knew the moment when some
faintest stress of the brilliance in his dark green eyes removed the
veil of distance, replacing the vision of the past by the act of seeing
her immediate person. She met his ey$s with that insolent glance
which is a smile without movement of facial muscles.

He turned away, but as he moved across the room his steps were
as eloquent as the sound of a voice. Slhe knew that he wanted to
leave the room, as he always left it, he*had never stayed for longer
than a brief good night when he came home. She watched the course
of his struggle, whether by means of his steps, begun in one direction

712

and swerving in another, or by means of her certainty that her body
had become an instrument for the direct perception of his, like a
screen reflecting both movements and motives — she could not tell.
She knew only that he who had never started or lost a battle against
himself, now had no power to leave this room.

His manner seemed to show no sign of strain. He took off his
coat, throwing it aside, remaining in shirt sleeves, and sat down,
facing her, at the window across the room. But he sat down on the
arm of a chair, as if he were neither leaving nor staying.

She felt the light-headed, the easy, the almost frivolous sensation
of triumph in the knowledge that she was holding him as surely as
by a physical touch; for the length of a moment, brief and dangerous
to endure, it was a more satisfying form of contact.

Then she felt a sudden, blinding shock, which was half blow, half-
scream within her, and she groped, stunned, for its cause — only to
realize that he had leaned a little to one side and it had been no
more than the sight of an accidental posture, of the long line running
from his shoulder to the angle of his waist, to his hips, down his
legs. She looked away, not to let him see that she was trembling —
and she dropped all thoughts of triumph and of whose was the
power.

“I’ve seen you many times since.’* he said, quietly, steadily, but a
little more slowly than usual, as if he could control everything except
his need to speak.

“Where have you seen me?”

“Many places ”

“But you made certain to remain unseen?” She knew that his was
a face she could not have failed to notice. ,

“Yes.”

“Why? Were you afiaid?"

“Yes.”

He said it simply, and it took her a moment to realize that he was
admitting he knew what the sight ol his person would have meant to
her. “Did you know who l was, when you saw me for the first time?”

“Oh yes. My worst enemy but one.”

“What?” She had not expected it; she added, more quietly.
“Who’s the worst one?”

“Dr. Robert Stadler ”

“Did you have me classified with him?”

“No. He’s my conscious enemy. He’s the man who sold his soul.
We don’t intend to reclaim him. You — you were one of us. I knew
it, long before 1 saw you, I knew also that you would be the last to
join us and the hardest one to deteat.”

“Who told you that?”

“Francisco.”

She let a moment pass, then asked, “What did he say?”

“He said that of all the names on our list, you'd be the one most
difficult to win. That was when I heard of you for the first time. It
was Francisco who put your name on our list. He told me that you
were the sole hope and future of Taggart Transcontinental, that
you’d stand against us for a long time, that you'd fight a desperate

713

battle for your railroad — because you had too much endurance, cour-
age and consecration to your work.” He glanced at her. “He told
me nothing else. He spoke of you as if he were merely discussing
one of our future strikers. I knew that you and he had been child-
hood friends, that was all.”

“When did you see me?”

“Two years later,”

“How?”

“By chance. It was late at night ... on a passenger platform of
the Taggart Terminal.” She knew that this was a form of surrender,
he did not want to say it, yet he had to speak, she heard both the
muted intensity and the pull of resistance in his voice — he had to
speak, because he had to give himself and her this one form of
contact. “You wore an evening gown. You had a cape half-slipping
off your body — I saw, at first, only your bare shoulders, your back
and your profile — it looked for a moment as if the cape would slip
further and you would stand there naked. Then 1 saw that you wore
a long gown, the color of ice, like the tunic of a Grecian goddess,
but you had the short hair and the imperious profile of an American
woman. You looked preposterously out of place on a railroad plat-
form — and it was not on a railroad platform that 1 was seeing you,
I was seeing a setting that had never haunted me before — but then,
suddenly, 1 knew that you did belong among the rails, the soot and
the girders, that that was the proper setting for a flowing gown and
naked shoulders and a face as aiive as yours — a railroad platform,
not a curtained apartment — you looked like a symbol of luxury and
you belonged in the place that was its source —you seemed to bring
wealth, grace, extravagance and the enjoyment of life back to their
rightful owners, to the men who created railroads and factories —
you had a look of energy and of its reward, together, a look of
competence and luxury combined — and 1 was the first man who had
ever stated in what manner these two were inseparable — and 1
thought that if our age gave form to its proper gods and erected a
statue to the meaning of an American railroad, yours would be that
statue. . . . Then I saw what you were doing — and I knew who you
were. You were giving orders to three Terminal officials. I could not
hear your words, but your voice sounded swift, clear-cut and confi-
dent. 1 knew that you were Dagny Taggart. I came closer, close
enough to hear two sentences. ‘Who said so?' asked one of the men.
‘I did,’ you answered. That was all I heard. That was enough.”

“And then?”

He raised his eyes slowly to hold hers across the room, and the
submerged intensity that pulled his voice down, blurring its tone to
softness, gave it a sound of self-mockery that was desperate and
almost gentle: “Then I knew that abandoning my motor was not the
hardest price I would have to pay for this strike.”

She wondered which anonymous shapow — among the passengers
who had hurried past her, as insubstantial as the steam of the engines
and as ignored — which shadow and fac<$ had been his; she wondered
how close she had come to him for the length of that unknown
moment. “Ob, why didn't you speak to me, then or later?”

714

“Do you happen to remember what you were doing in the Termi-
nal that night?”

“I remember vaguely a night when they called me from some
party l was attending. My father was out of town and the new Tcrmi*
nal manager had made some sort of error that tied up all traffic in the
tunnels. The old manager had quit unexpectedly the week before.”

‘it was I who made him quit.”

“I see . . .”

Her voice trailed off, as if abandoning sound, as her eyelids
dropped, abandoning sight. If he had not withstood it then — she
thought — if he had come to claim her, then or later, what sort of
tragedy would they have had to reach? . . . She remembered what
she had felt when she had cried that she would shoot the destroyer
on sight. . I would have — the thought was not in words, she knew
it only as a trembling pressure in her stomach —I would have shot
him, afterward, if I discovered his role . . . and 1 would have had to
discover it . . . and yet— she shuddered, because she knew she still
wished he had come to her, because the thought not to be admitted
into her mind, but flowing as a dark warmth through her body, was:

1 would have shot him, but not before —

She raised her eyelids — and she knew that that thought was as
naked to him in her eyes, as it was to her in his. She saw his veiled
glance and the tautness of his mouth, she saw him reduced to agony,
she felt herself drowned by the exultant wish to cause him pain, to
see it, to watch it, to watch it beyond her own endurance and his,
then to reduce him to the helplessness oi pleasure.

He got up, he looked away, and she could not tell whether it was
the slight lilt of his head or the tension of his features that made his
face look oddly calm and clear, as if it were stripped of emotion
down to the naked purity of its structure.

"Every man that youi railroad needed and lost in the past ten
years,” he said, “it was l who made you lose him.” His voice had
the singlctoned Hal ness and the luminous simplicity of an accountant
who reminds a reckless purchaser that cost is an absolute which
cannot be escaped, i have pulled cveiy girder from under Taggart
Transcontinental and, if you choose to go back, I will see it collapse
upon your head.”

He turned to leave the room. She stopped him. It was her voice,
more than her words, that made him stop* her voice was low, it had
no quality of emotion, only of a sinking weight, and its sole color was
some dragging undertone, like an inner echo, resembling a threat; it
was the voice of the pica of a person who still retains a concept of
honor, but is long past caring for it:

"You want to hold me here, don't you?”

“More than anything else in the world.”

“You could hold me.”

“I know it.”

His voice had said it with the same sound as hers. He waited, to
regain his breath. When he spoke, his voice was low and clear, with
some stressed quality of awareness, which was almost the quality of
a smile of understanding:

715

“It’s your acceptance of this place that I want, Whatjjood would
it do me, to have your physical presence without any meaning?
That’s the kind of faked reality by which most people cheat them-
selves of their lives. Tm not capable of it.’* He turned to go. “And
neither are you. Good night, Miss Taggart.”

He walked out, into his bedroom, closing the door.

She was past the realm of thought — as she lay in bed in the dark-
ness of her room, unable to think or to sleep — and the moaning
violence that filled her mind seemed only a sensation of her muscles,
but its tone and its twisting shades were like a pleading cry, which
she knew, not as words, but as pain: Let him come here, let him
break — let it be damned, all of it, my railroad and his strike and
everything we’ve lived by! — let it be damned, everything we’ve been
and are! — he would, if tomorrow 1 were to die — then let me die, but
tomorrow — let him come here, be it any price he names, I have
nothing left that’s not for sale to him any longer— is this what it
means to be an animal? — it does and I am. . . . She lay on her back,
her palms pressed to the sheet at her sides, to stop herself from
rising and walking into his room, knowing that she was capable even
of that. . . . It's not f, it’s a body l can neither endure nor control . . .
But somewhere within her, not as words, but as a radiant point of
stillness, there was the presence of the judge who seemed to observe
her, not in stern condemnation any longer, but in approval and
amusement, as if saying: Your body? — if he were not what you know
him to be, would your body bring you to this? — why is it his body
that you want, and no other? — do you think that you are damning
them, the things you both have lived by? — are you damning that
which you are honoring in this very moment, by your very desire? . . .
She did not have to hear the words, she knew them, she had always
known them. . . . After a while, she lost the glow of that knowledge,
and there was nothing left but pain and the palms that were pressed
to the sheet — and the almost indifferent wonder whether he, too,
was awake and fighting the same torture.

She heard no sound in the house and saw no light from his window
on the tree trunks outside. After a long while she heard, from the
darkness of bis room, two sounds that gave her a full answer: she knew
that he was awake and that he Would not come: it was the sound of
a step and the click of a ctgarelte lighter.

* *

Richard Halley stopped playing, turned away from the piano and
glanced at Dagny. He saw her drop her face with the involuntary
movement of hiding too strong an emotion, he rose, smiled and said
softly, “Thank you.’’

“Oh no . . .'* she whispered, knowing that the gratitude was heis
and that it was futile to express it. She was thinking of the years
when the works he had just played for ijer were being written, here,
in his small cottage on a ledge of the valley, when all this prodigal
magnificence of sound was being shaped by him as a flowing menu
ment to a concept which equates the sdnse of life with the sease of
beauty — while she had walked through the streets of New York in
a hopeless quest for some form of enjoyment, with the screeches of

716

a modern symphony running after her, as if spit by the infected
throat of a loud-speaker coughing its malicious hatred of existence.

“But 1 mean it,” said Richard Halley, smiling. ‘Tm a businessman
and I never do anything without payment. You’ve paid me. Do you
see why 1 wanted to play for you tonight?”

She raised her head. He stood in the middle of his living room,
they were alone, with the window open to the summer night, to the
dark trees on a long sweep of ledges descending toward the glitter
of the valley’s distant lights.

“Miss Taggart, how many people are there to whom my work
means as much as it does to you?”

“Not many.” she answered simply, neither as boast nor flattery,
hut as an impersonal tribute to the exacting values involved.

“That is the payment I demand. Not many can afford it. 1 don’t
mean your enjoyment, I don’t mean your emotion — emotions be
damned’- mean your understanding and the fact that your enjoy-
ment was ot the same nature as mine, that it came from the same
souice: from your intelligence, from the conscious judgment of a
mind able to judge my work by the standard of the same values that
went to write it — 1 mean, not the fact that you felt, but that you felt
what / wished you to feel, not the fact that you admire my work,
but that you admire it for the things / wished to be admired.” He
chuckled. “There's only one passion in most artists more violent than
their desire lot admiration: their fear ot identifying the nature of
such admiration as they do receive. But it's a fear I’ve never shared.

I do not tool myself about my work or the response I seek — 1 value
both too highly. I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally,
intuitively, instinctively —or blindly. I do not care for blindness in
any form, 1 have too much to show— or for deafness, I have too
much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone’s heart — only
bv someone’s head . And when 1 find a customer with that invaluable
capacity, ihen my performance is a mutual trade to mutual profit.
An artist is a trader. Miss Taggart, the hardest and most exacting of
all traders. Now do you understand me?”

“Yes,” she said incredulously, “1 do,” incredulously because she
was hearing her own symbol of moral pride, chosen by a man she
had least expected to choose it.

“If you do. why did you look quite so tragic just a moment ago?
What is it that you regret ?”

“The years when your work has remained unheard.”

“But it hasn’t. I’ve given two or three concerts every year. Here,
in Galt's Gulch. I am giving one next week. I hope you'll come. The
price of admission is twenty-live cents.”

She could not help laughing. He smiled, then his face slipped
slowly into earnestness, as under the tide of some unspoken contem-
plation of his own. He looked at the darkness beyond the window,
at a spot where, in a clearing of the branches, with the moonlight
draining its color, leaving only its metallic luster, the sign of the
dollar hung like a curve of shining steel engraved on the sky,

“Miss Taggart, do you see why I’d give three dozen modem artists
for one real businessman? Why I have much more in common with

717

Ellis Wyatt or Ken Da nagger — who happens to be tone deaf— -than
with men like Mort Liddy and Balph Eubank? Whether it’s a sym-
phony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from
the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own
eyes — which means: the capacity to perform a rational identifica-
tion — which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what
had not been seen, connected and made before. Thai shining vision
which they talk about as belonging to the authors of symphonies and
novels — what do they think is the driving faculty of men who discov-
ered how to use oil, how to run a mine, how to build an electric
motor? That sacred fire which is said to bum within musicians and
poets — what do they suppose moves an industrialist to defy the
whole world for the sake of his new metal, as the inventors of the
airplane, the builders ot the railroads, the discoverers of new germs
or new continents have done through all the ages? ... An intransi-
gent devotion to the pursuit of ttuth, Miss Taggart? Have you heard
the moralists and the art lovers of the centuries talk about the artist’s
intransigent devotion to the pursuit of truth? Name me a greater
example of such devotion than the act of a man who says that the
earth does turn, or the act of a man who says that an alloy of steel
and copper has certain properties which enable it to do certain
things, and it is and does — and let the world rack him or ruin him.
he will not bear false witness to the evidence ot his mind’ This, Miss
Taggart, this sort of spirit, courage and love for truth — as against a
sloppy bum who goes around proudly assuring you that he has almost
reached the perfection of a lunatic, because he’s an artist who hasn’t
the faintest idea what his art work is or means, he's not restrained
by such crude concepts as ‘being’ or ‘meaning,’ he's the vehicle ol
higher mysteries, he doesn’t know how he created his work or whv,
it just came out of him spontaneously, like vomit out of a drunkard,
he did not think, he wouldn’t stoop to thinking, he just fell it, all he
has to do is feel — be feels , the flabby, loose -mouthed, shifty -eyed,
drooling, shivering, uncongealed bastard! I, who know what disci-
pline, what effort, what tension of mind, what unrelenting strain
upon one’s power of clarity are needed to produce a work of art--
I, who know that it requires a labor which makes a chain gang look
like rest and a severity no army-drilling sadist could impose — I’ll
take the operator of a coal mine over any walking vehicle of higher
mysteries. The operator knows that it’s not his feelings that keep the
coal carts moving under the earth — and he knows what does keep
them moving. Feelings? Oh yes, we do feel, he, you and 1 — we are,
in fact, the only people capable of feeling — and we know where our
feelings come from. But what we did not know and have delayed
learning for loo long is the nature qjf those who claim that the\
cannot account for their feelings. We * did not know what it is that
they feel. We are learning it now. It ^as a costly error. And those
most guilty of it, will pay the hardest f|rice — as, in justice, they must.
Those most guilty of it were the real ^artists, who will now see that
they are first to be exterminated an<J that they had prepared, the
triumph of their own exterminators by helping to destroy their only
protectors. For if there is more tragic a fool than the businessman

718

who doesn’t know that he’s an exponent of man’s highest creative
spirit — it’s the artist who thinks that the businessman is his enemy.”

It was true — she thought, when she walked through the streets of
the valley, looking with a child’s excitement at the shop windows
sparkling in the sun — that the businesses here had the purposeful
selectiveness ot art — and that the art — she thought, when she sat in
the darkness of a clapboard concert hall, listening to the controlled
violence and the mathematical precision of Halley’s music— had the
stern discipline of business.

Both had the radiance of engineering -she thought, when she sat
among rows of benches under the open sky, watching Kay Ludlow
on the stage. It was an experience she had not known since child-
hood— the experience of being held for three hours by a play that
told a story she had not seen before, in lines she had not heard,
uttering a theme that had not been picked from the hand-me-downs
of the centuries. It was the forgotten delight of being held in rapt
attention by the rents of the ingenious, the unexpected, the logical,
the purposeful, the new -and of seeing it embodied in a performance
of superlative artistry by a woman playing a character whose beauty
of spirit matched her own physical perfection.

“That's why I’m here. Miss Taggart,” said Kay Ludlow, smiling in
answer to her comment, alter the performance. “Whatever quality
ol human greatness 1 have the talent to portray — that was the quality
the outer world sought to degrade. They let me play nothing but
symbols of depravity, nothing but harlots, dissipation-chasers and
home-wreckers, always to be beaten at the end by the little girl next
door, personifying the virtue of mediocrity. They used my talent —
lor the defamation of itself. That was why I quit.”

Not since childhood, thought Dagny, had she felt that sense of
exhilaiatiun after witnessing the performance of a play— the sense
that life held things worth reaching, not the sense of having studied
some aspect of a sewer there had been no reason to see. As the
audience tiled away into the darkness from the lighted rows of
benches, she noticed Ellis Wyatt, Judge Narragansett, Ken Danagger,
men who had once been said to despise all forms of art.

The last image she caught, that evening, was the sight of two tall,
straight, slender figures walking away together down a Hail among
the rocks, with the beam of a spotlight gashing once on the gold of
their hair. They were Kay Ludlow and Ragnar Danneskjdld— and
she wondered whether she could bear to return to a world where
these were the two doomed to destruction.

The recaptured sense of her own childhood kept coming back to
her whenever she met the two sons of the young woman who owned
the bakery shop. She often saw them wandeiing down the trails of
the valley — two fearless beings, aged seven and four. They seemed
to lace life as she had laced it. They did not have the look she had
seen m the children of the outer world — a look of fear, half-secretive,
half-sneering, the look of a child’s defense against an adult, the look
of a being in the process of discovering that he is hearing lies and of
learning to feel hatred. The two boys had the open, joyous, friendly
confidence of kittens who do not expect to get hurt, they had an

719

innocently natural, non-ooastrut sense or tneir own varne ana as in-
nocent a trust in any stranger’s ability to recognize it, they had the
eager curiosity that would venture anywhere with the certainty that
life held nothing unworthy of or closed to discovery, and they looked
as if, should they encounter malevolence, they would reject it con-
temptuously, not as dangerous,, but as stupid, they would not accept
it in bruised resignation as the law of existence.

“They represent my particular career. Miss Taggart,” said the
young mother in answer to her comment, wrapping a loaf of fresh
bread and smiling at her across the counter. “They’re the profession
I’ve chosen to practice, which, in spite ot all the guff about mother-
hood, one can’t practice successfully in the outer world. I believe
you’ve met my husband, he's the teacher of economics who works
as linesman for Dick McNamara. You know, of course, that there
can be no collective commitments in this valley and that families or
relatives are not allowed to come here, unless each person takes the
striker’s oath by his own independent conviction. 1 came here, not
merely for the sake of my husband’s profession, but for the sake of
my own. I came here in order to bring up my sons as human beings.
I would not surrender them to the educational systems devised to
stunt a child’s brain, to convince him that reason is impotent, that
existence is an irrational chaos with which he’s unable to deal, and
thus reduce him to a state of chronic terror. You marvel at the
difference between my children and those outside. Miss Taggart?
Yet the cause is so simple. The cause is that here, in Galt’s Gulch,
there’s no person who would not consider it monstrous ever to con-
front a child with the slightest suggestion of the irrational.”

She thought of the teachers whom the schools of the world had
lost — when she looked at the three pupils of Dr, Akston, on the
evening of their yearly reunion.

The only other guest he had invited was Kay Ludlow. The six of
them sal in the back yard of his house, with the light of the sunset
on their faces, and the floor of the valley condensing into a soft blue
vapor far below.

She looked at his pupils, at the three pliant, agile figures half-
stretched on canvas chairs in poses of relaxed contentment, dressed
in slacks, windbreakers and open-collared shirts: John Galt, Fran-
cisco d’Anconia, Ragnar DanneskjOld.

“Don’t be astonished, Miss Taggart,” said Dr. Akston, smiling,
“and don’t make the mistake of thinking that these three pupils of
mine are some sort of superhuman creatures. They’re something
much greater and more astounding thaq that: they’re normal men —
a thing the world has never seen — and tljjeir feat is that they managed
to survive as such, it does take an exceptional mind and a still more
exceptional integrity to remain untoueped by the brain-destroying
influences of the world's doctrines, thd accumulated evil of centu-
ries — to remain human , since the humajjn is the rational.”

She felt some new quality in Dr. Alton’s attitude, some change
in the sternness of his usual reserve; he seemed to include her in
their circle, as if she were more than a guest. Francisco acted as if
her presence at their reunion were natural and to be taken gaily for

720

granted. Galt’s face gave no hint of any reaction; his manner was
that of a courteous escort who had brought her here at Dr. Aks-
ton’s request.

She noticed that Dr. Akston’s eyes kept coming back to her, as if
with the quiet pride of displaying his students to an appreciative
observer. His conversation kept returning to a single theme, in the
manner of a father who has found a listener interested in his most
cherished subject:

“You should have seen them, when they were in college. Miss
Taggart. You couldn’t have found three boys ‘conditioned’ to such
different backgrounds, but— conditioners be damned! — they must
have picked one another at first sight, among the thousands on that
campus. Francisco, the richest heir in the world — Ragnar, the Euro-
pean aristocrat— and John, the self-made man, self-made in every
sense, out of nowhere, penniless, parentless, tie-less. Actually, he was
the son of a gas-station mechanic at some forsaken crossroads in
Ohio, and he had left home at the age of twelve to make his own
way — but I’ve always thought of him as if he had come into the
world like Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, who sprang forth from
Jupiter’s head, fully grown and fully armed. . . . I remember the day
when I saw the three of them for the first time. They were sitting
at the back of the classroom — 1 was giving a special course for post-
graduate students, so difficult a course that few outsiders ever ven-
tured to attend these particular lectures. Those three looked too
young even for freshmen —they were sixteen at the time, as f learned
later. At the end of that lecture, John got up to ask me a question.
It was a question which, as a teacher, 1 would have been proud to
hear from a student who’d taken six years of philosophy. It was a
question pertaining to Plato’s metaphysics, which Plato hadn’t had
the sense to ask of himself. I answeied— and I asked John to come
to my office after the lecture. He came — all three of them came — I
saw the two others in my anteroom and let them in. I talked to them
for an hour — then I cancelled all my appointments and talked to
them for the rest of the day. Alter which, I arranged to let them
take that course and receive their credits for it. They took the course.
Fhey got the highest grades in the class. . . .They were majoring in
two subjects: physics and philosophy. Their choice amazed everybody
but me: modem thinkers considered it unnecessary to perceive real-
ity, and modern physicists considered it unnecessary to think. I knew
better; what amazed me was that these children knew it, too. . . .
Robert Stadler was head of the Department of Physics, as l was
head of the Department of Philosophy. He and 1 suspended all rules
and restrictions for these three students, we spared them all the
routine, unessential courses, we loaded them with nothing but the
hardest tasks, and wc cleared their way to major in our two subjects
within their four years. They worked for it. And, during those four
years, they worked for their living, besides. Francisco and Ragnar
were receiving allowances from their parents, John had nothing, but
all three of them held part-time jobs to cam their own experience
and money, Francisco worked in a copper foundry, John worked in
a railroad roundhouse, and Ragnar — no. Miss Taggart, Ragnar was

721

not the least, but the most studiously sedate of the three — he worked
as clerk in the university library. They had time for everything they
wanted, but no time for people or for any communal campus activi-
ties. They . . . Ragnar!” he interrupted himself suddenly, sharply.
“Don’t sit on the ground!”

Danneskjbld had slipped down and was now sitting on the grass,
with his head leaning against Kay Ludlow’s knees. He rose obedi-
ently, chuckling. Dr. Akston smiled with a touch of apology.

'it’s an old habit of mine,” he explained to Dagny. “A ‘condi-
tioned’ reflex, I guess. I used to tell him that in those college years,
when Fd catch him sitting on the ground in my back yard, on cold,
foggy evenings — he was reckless that way, he made me worry, he
should have known it was dangerous and — ”

He stopped abruptly; he read in Dagny’s startled eyes the same
thought as his own: the thought of the kind of dangers the adult
Ragnar had chosen to face. Dr. Akston shrugged, spreading his
hands in a gesture of helpless self-mockery. Kay Ludlow smiled at
him in understanding.

”My house stood just outside the campus,” he continued, sighing,
“on a tall bluff over Lake Erie. Wc spent many evenings together,
the four of us. We would sit just like this, in my back yard, on
the nights of early fall or in the spring, only instead of this granite
mountainside, we had the spread of the lake before us, stretching
off into a peacefully unlimited distance. I had to work harder on
those nights than in any classroom, answering all the questions they'd
ask me, discussing the kind of issues they’d raise. About midnight,
I would fix some hot chocolate and force them to drink it — the one
thing I suspected was that they never took time to eat properly —
and then we’d go on talking, while the lake vanished into solid dark-
ness and the sky seemed lighter than the earth. There were a tew
times when we stayed there till I noticed suddenly that the sky was
turning darker and the lake was growing pale and we were within a
few sentences of daylight. I should have known better, 1 knew that
they weren’t getting enough sleep as it was, but I forgot it occasion-
ally, 1 lost my sense of time — you see, when they were there, I always
felt as if it were early morning and a long, inexhaustible day were
stretching ahead before us. They never spoke of what they wished
they might do in the future, they never wondered whether some
mysterious omnipotence had favored them with some unknowable
talent to achieve the things they wanted — they spoke of what they
would do. Does affection tend to make one a coward? I know that
the only times I felt fear were occasional moments when 1 listened
to them and thought of what the world was becoming and what they
would have to encounter in the future; Fear? Yes - but it was more
than fear. It was the kind of emotion 2 that makes men capable ol
killing — when 1 thought that the purpose of the world’s trend was
to destroy these children, that these th^ee sons of mine were marked
for immolation. Oh yes, I would navef killed — but whom was there
to kill? It was everyone and no one, tjtere was no single enemy* no
center and no villain, it was not the simpering social worker incapa-
ble of earning a penny or the thieving bureaucrat scared of his own

122

shadow, it was the whole of the earth rolling into an obscenity of
horror, pushed by the hand of every would-be decent man who be-
lieved that need is holier than ability, and pity is holier than justice.
But these were only occasional moments. It was not my constant
feeling. I listened to my children and l knew that nothing would
defeat them. I looked at them, as they sat in my back yard, and
beyond my house there were the tall, dark buildings of what was
still a monument to unenslaved thought— the Patrick Henry Univer-
sity — and farther in the distance there were the lights of Cleveland,
the orange glow of steel mills behind batteries of smokestacks, the
twinkling red dots of radio towers, the long white rays of airports
on the black edge of the sky — and I thought that in the name of any
greatness that had ever existed and moved this world, the greatness
of which they were the last descendants, they would win. ... I
remember one night when 1 noticed that John had been silent for a
long time — and I saw that he had fallen asleep, stretched there on
the ground. The two others confessed that he had not slept for three
days. I sent the two of them home at once, but I didn’t have the
heart to disturb him. It was a warm spring night, I brought a blanket
to cover him, and I let him sleep where he was. I sat there beside
hitn till morning— -and as I watched his face in the starlight, then the
first ray of the sun on his untroubled forehead and closed eyelids,
what I experienced was not a prayer, 1 do not pray, but that state
of spirit at which a prayer is a misguided attempt: a full, confident,
affirming self-dedication to my love of the right, to the certainty that
the right would win and that this boy would have the kind of future
he deserved.'’ He moved his arm. pointing to the valley, “1 did not
expect it to be as great as this— or as hard.”

It had grown dark and the mountains had blended with the sky.
Hanging detached in space, there were the lights of the valley below
them, the red breath of Stockton’s foundry above, and the lighted
string of windows of Mulligan’s house, like a railroad car imbedded
in the sky

i did have a rival.” said Dr. Akston slowly. “‘It was Robert Stadler

Don’t frown, John — it’s past. . . . John did love him, once. Well, so
did 1 — no, not quite, but what one tell for a mind like Stadler’s was
painfully close to love, it was that rarest of pleasures: admiration.
No, I did not love him, but he and I had always felt as if we were
fellow survivors from some vanishing age or land, in the gibbering
swamp of mediocrity around us. The mortal sin of Robert Stadler
was that he never identified his proper homeland. ... He hated
stupidity. It was the only emotion l had ever seen him display toward
people — a biting, bitter, weary hatred for any ineptitude that dared
to oppose him. He wanted his own way, he wanted to be left alone
to pursue it, he wanted to brush people out of his path — and he
never identified the means to it or the nature of his path and of his
enemies. He took a short cut. Are you smiling. Miss Taggart? You
hate him, don’t you? Yes, you know the kind of short cut he took. . . ,
He told you that we were rivals for these three students. That was
true — or rather, that was not the way I thought of it, but I knew
that he did. Well, if we were rivals, I had one advantage: 1 knew

723

why they needed both our professions; he never understood their
interest in mine. He never understood its importance to himself —
which, incidentally, is what destroyed him. But in those years he was
still alive enough to grasp at these three students. ‘Grasp’ was the
word for it. Intelligence being the only value he worshipped, he
clutched them as if they were a private treasure of his own. He had
always been a very lonely man. I think that in the whole of his life,
Francisco and Ragnar were his only love, and John was his only
passion. It was John whom he regarded as his particular heir, as his
future, as his own immortality. John intended to be an inventor,
which meant that he was to be a physicist; he was to take his post-
graduate course under Robert Stadier. Francisco intended to leave
after graduation and go to work; he was to be the perfect blend of
both of us, his two intellectual fathers: an industrialist. And Ragnar —
you didn’t know what profession Ragnar had chosen. Miss Taggart?
No, it wasn't stunt pilot, or jungle explorer, or deep-sea diver. It was
something much more courageous than these. Ragnar intended to
be a philosopher. An abstract, theoretical, academic, cloistered,
ivory-tower philosopher. . . . Yes, Robert Stadlcr loved them. And
yet — I have said that 1 would have killed to protect them, only there
was no one to kill. If that were the solution — which, of course, it
isn’t — the man to kill was Robert Stadier. Of any one person, of any
single guilt for the evil which is now destroying the world — his was
the heaviest guilt He had the mind to know better. His was the only
name of honor and achievement, used to sanction the rule of the
looters. He was the man who delivered science into the power ol
the looters' guns. John did not expect it. Neither did l. . . . John
came back for his postgraduate course in physics. But he did not
finish it. He left, on the day when Robert Stadier endorsed the estab-
lishment of a State Science Institute. I met Stadlcr by chance in a
corridor of the university, as he came out of his office after his last
conversation with John, lie looked changed. I hope that I shall never
have to see again a change of that kind in a man’s face. He saw me
approaching— -and he did not know, but I knew, what made him
whirl upon me and cry, ‘I’m so sick of all of you impractical idealists! '
I turned away. I knew that I had heard a man pronounce a death
sentence upon himself. . . . Miss Taggart, do you remember the
question you asked me about my three pupils?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I could gather, from your question, the nature of what Robert
Stadier had said to you about them. Tell me, why did he speak of
them at all?”

He saw the faint movement of her better smile. “He told me their
story as a justification for his belief iri the futility of human intelli-
gence. He told it to me as an example of his disillusioned hope.
‘Theirs was the kind of ability,’ he sa|d, ‘one expects to see, in the
future, changing the course of the wofld.' ”

“Well, haven’t they done so?”

She nodded, slowly, holding her hesfd inclined for a long moment
in acquiescence and in homage.

“What I want you to understand. Miss Taggart, is the full evil of

724

those who claim to have become convinced that this earth, by its
nature, is a realm of malevolence where the good has no chance to
win. Let them check their premises. Let them check their standards
of value. Let them check — before they grant themselves the unspeak-
able license of cvil-as-necesstty — whether they know what is the
good and what are the conditions it requires. Robert Stadler now
believes that intelligence is futile and that human life can be nothing
but irrational. Did he expect John Galt to become a great scientist,
willing to work under the orders of Dr. Floyd Feriis? Did he expect
Francisco d’Anconia to become a great industrialist, willing to pro-
duce under the orders and for the benefit of Wesley Mouch? Did he
expect Ragnar Darmeskjold to become a great philosopher, willing to
preach, under the orders of Dr. Simon Pritchett, that there is no
mind and that might is right? Would that have been a future which
Robert Stadler would have considered rational 7 I want you to ob-
serve, Miss Taggart, that those who cry the loudest about their disil-
lusionment, about the failure of virtue, the futility of reason, the
impotence of logic— are those who have achieved the full, exact,
logical result of the ideas they preached, so mercilessly logical that
they dare not identify it. In a world that proclaims the non-existence
of the mind, the moral righteousness of rule by brute force, the
penalizing of the competent in favor of the incompetent, the sacrifice
of the best to the worst- -in such a world, the best have to turn
against society and have to become its deadliest enemies. In such a
world John Galt, the man of incalculable intellectual power, will
remain an unskilled laborer-— Francisco d’Anconia, the miraculous
producer of wealth, will become a wastiel— and Ragnar Danncskjdld,
the man of enlightenment, will become the man of violence. Soci-
ety — and Dr Robert Stadler — have achieved everything they advo-
cated. What complaint do they now have to make? That the universe
is irrational? Is it?”

He smiled; his smile had the pitiless gentleness of certainty

“Every man builds his world in his own image,” he said. “He has
the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.
If he abdicates his power, he abdicates the status of man, and the
grinding chaos of the irrational is what he achieves as his sphere ot
existence — by his own choice. Whoever preserves a single thought
uncorrupted by any concession to the will of others, whoever brings
into reality a r.ialehslick or a patch of garden made in the image of
his thought— he, and to that extent, is a man and that extent is the
sole measure of his virtue. They” — he pointed at his pupils — “made
no concessions. This”— he pointed at the valley “is the measure of
what they preserved and of what they are. . . . Now I can repeat my
answer to the question you asked me, knowing that you will under-
stand it fully. You asked me whether 1 was proud of the way my
three sons had turned out. 1 am more proud than I had ever hoped
In be. I am proud of their every action, of their every goal — and of
every value they’ve chosen. And thus, Dagny, is my full answer.”

The sudden sound of her first name was pronounced in the tone
°f a father; he spoke his last two sentences, looking, not at her, but
at Galt. She saw Galt answering him by an open glance held steady

725

for an instant, like a signal of affirmation. Then Galt’s eyes moved
to hers. She saw him looking at her as if she bore the unspoken title
that hung in the silence between them, the title Dr. Akstbn had
granted her, but had not pronounced and none of the others had
caught — she saw, in Galt’s eyes, a glance of amusement at her shock,
of support and, incredibly, of tenderness.

* *

D’Anconia Copper No. 1 was a small cut on the face of the moun-
tain, that looked as if a knife had made a tew angular slashes, leaving
shelves of rock, red as a wound, on the reddish-brown flank. The
sun beat down upon it. Dagny stood at the edge ot a path, holding
on to Galt's arm on one side and to Francisco's on the other, the
wind blowing against their faces and out over the valley, two thou-
sand feet below.

This —she thought, looking at the mine — was the story of human
wealth written across the mountains: a tew pine trees hung over the
cut, contorted by the storms that had raged through the wilderness
for centuries, six men worked on the shelves, and an inordinate
amount of complex machinery traced delicate lines against the sky;
the machinery did most of the work.

She noticed that Francisco was displaying his domain to Galt as
much as to her, as much or more. “You haven't seen it since last
year, John. . . . John, wait till you see it a year from now. FI! be
through, outside, in just a few months -and then this will be my full-
time job.”

“Hell, no. John!” he said, laughing, in answer to a question— but
she caught suddenly the particular quality of his glance whenever it
rested on Galt: it was the quality she had seen in his eyes when he
had stood in her room, clutching the edge of a table to outlive an
unlivable moment; he had looked as it he were seeing someone be-
fore him; it was Galt, she thought; it was Galt's image that had
carried him through.

Some part of her felt a dim dread: the effort which Francisco had
made in that moment to accept her loss and his rival, as the payment
demanded of him tor his battle, had cost him so much that he was
now unable to suspect the truth Dr. Akslon had guessed. What will
it do to him when he learns? — she wondered, and felt a bitter voice
reminding her that there would, perhaps, never be any truth of this
kind to learn.

Some part of her felt a dim tension as she watched the way Gall
looked at Francisco: it was an open, simple, unreserved glance ot
surrender to an unreserved feeling. .She felt the anxious wonder she
had never fully named or dismissed? wonder whether this feeling
would bring him down to the uglinesfc of renunciation.

But most of her mind seemed swept by some enormous sense ot
release, as if she were laughing at alb doubts. Her glance kept going
back over the path they had traveled to get here, over the two ex-
hausting miles of a twisted trail that rfcn, like a precarious corkscrew,
from the tip of her feet down to th* floor of the valley. Her eyes
kept studying it, her mind racing with some purpose of its own.

Brush, pines and a clinging carpet df moss went climbing from the

726

green slopes far below, up the granite ledges. The moss and the
brush vanished gradually, but the pines went on, struggling upward
in thinning strands, till only a few dots of single trees were left, rising
up the naked rock toward the white sunbursts oi snow in the crevices
at the peaks. She looked at the spectacle of the most ingenious min-
ing machinery she had ever seen, then at the trail where the plodding
hoots and swaying shapes of mules provided the most ancient form
of transportation.

“Francisco,’' she asked, pointing, “who designed the machines?”

“They're just adaptations of standard equipment.”

“Who designed them‘ > ”

i did. We don’t have many men to spare. We had to make up
for it.”

“You're wasting an unconscionable amount of manpower and
time, carting your ore on muleback. You ought to build a railroad
down to the valley ”

She was looking down and did not notice the sudden, eager shot
oi his glance to her face or the sound oi caution m his voice: ‘i
know it, but it’s such a difficult job that the mine’s output won’t
justify it at present ”

“Nonsense! It’s much simpler than it looks. There’s a pass to the
east where there’s an easier grade and softer stone. I watched it on
the way up, it wouldn’t take so many curves, three miles of rail or
less would do it.”

She was pointing east, she did not notice the intensity with which
the two men were watching her face.

“Just a nai row-gauge track is all you’ll need . . like the first
railroads . . . that’s where the first railroads started — at mines, only
they were coal mines. . Look, do you see that ridge? There’s
plenty of clearance for a three-loot gauge, you wouldn’t need to do
any blasting or widening. Do you see where there’s a slow rise for
a stretch of almost half a mile? That would be no worse than a four
per cent grade, any engine could manage it." She was speaking with
a swift, bright certainty, conscious of nothing but the joy of per*
torming her natural function in her natural world where nothing
could take precedence over the act of offering a solution to a prob-
lem. “The road will pay for itself within three years. I think, at a
rough glance, that the costliest part of the job will be a couple of
steel trestles — and there’s one spot where I might have to blast a
tunnel, but it’s only for a hundred feet or less. I'll need a steel trestle
to throw the track across that gorge and bring it here, but it’s not as*
hard as it looks— let me show you, have you got a piece of paper?"

She did not notice with what speed Galt produced a notebook and
a pencil and thrust them into her hands— she seized them, as if she
expected them to be there, as if she were giving orders on a construc-
tion site where details of this kind were not to delay her.

“Let me give you a rough idea of what I mean. If we drive diago-
nal piles into the rock" — she was sketching rapidly — “the actual steel
span would be only six hundred feet long— it would cut off this last
half-mile of your corkscrew turns — I could have the rail laid in three
months and—"

111

She stopped. When she looked up at their faces, the "fire had gone
out of hers. She crumpled her sketch and flung it aside into the red
dust of the gravel. “Oh, what for?” she cried, the despair breaking
out for the first time. ‘To build three miles of railroad and abandon
a transcontinental system!”

The two men were looking at her, she saw no reproach in their
faces, only a look of understanding which was almost compassion.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, dropping her eyes.

“If you change your mind,” said Francisco, ‘Til hire you on the
spot — or Midas will give you a loan in five minutes to finance that
railroad, if you want to own it yourself.”

She shook her head. “I can't . . .” she whispered, “not yet . . .”

She raised her eyes, knowing that they knew the nature of her
despair and that it was useless to hide her struggle. ‘Tve tried it
once,” she said. “I’ve tried to give it up ... I know what it will
mean . . . I'll think of it with every crosstie I’ll see laid here, with
every spike driven . . . 1*11 think of that other tunnel and . . . and of
Nat Taggart’s bridge. . . . Oh, if only 1 didn’t have to hear about it!
If only I could stay here and never know what they’re doing to the
railroad, and never learn when it goes!”

“You’ll have to hear about it, 5 ” said Galt; it was that ruthless tone,
peculiarly his, which sounded implacable by being simple, devoid of
any emotional value, save the quality of respect for facts. “You’ll
hear the whole course of the last agony of Taggart Transcontinental.
You’ll hear about every wreck. You’ll hear about every discontinued
train. You’ll hear about every abandoned line. You’ll hear about the
collapse of the Taggart Bridge. Nobody stays in this valley excepi
by a full, conscious choice based on a full, conscious knowledge of
every fact involved in his decision. Nobody stays here by faking
reality in any manner whatever.”

She looked at him, her head lifted, knowing what chance he was
rejecting. She thought that no man of the outer world would have
said this to her at this moment — she thought of the world's code
that worshipped white lies as an act of mercy — she felt a stab of a
revulsion against that code, suddenly seeing its full ugliness for the
first time — she felt an enormous pride for the tight, clean face of the
man before her — he saw the shape of her mouth drawn firm in self-
control, yet softened by some tremulous emotion, while she answered
quietly, “Thank you. You're right.”

“You don’t have to answer me now,” he said. “You'll tell me
twhen you’ve decided. There’s still a week left.”

“Yes,” she said calmly, “just one more week.”

He turned, picked up her crumpled vsketch, folded it neatly and
slipped it into his pocket. }

“Dagny,” said Francisco, “when you ieigh your decision, consider
the first time you quit, if you wish, but Consider everything about it.
In this valley, you won’t have to torture yourself by shingling roofs
and building paths that lead nowhere.’!

“Tell me,” she asked suddenly, “how did you find out where I
was, that time?” *

He smiled, “It was John who told me. The destroyer, remember?

728

You wondered why the destroyer had not sent anyone after you.
But he had. It was he who sent me there.”

“He sent you?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Nothing much. Why?”

“What did he say? Do you remember the exact words?”

“Yes, I do remember. He said, if you want your chance, take it.
You’ve earned it.’ I remember, because — ” He turned to Galt with
the untroubled frown of a slight, casual puzzle. “John, 1 never quite
understood why you said it. Why that? Why — my chance?”

“Do you mind if 1 don’t answer you now?”

“No, but — ”

Someone hailed him from the ledges of the mine, and he went off
swiftly, as if the subject required no further attention.

She was conscious of the long span of moments she took while
turning her head to Galt. She knew that she would find him looking
at her. She could read nothing in his eyes, except a hint of derision,
as if he knew what answer she was seeking and that she would not
find it in his face.

“You gave him a chance that you wanted?”

“I could have no chance till he'd had every chance possible to
him.”

“How did you know what he had earned?”

“I had been questioning him about you for ten years, every time
1 could, m every way, from every angle. No, he did not tell me— it
svas the way he spoke of you that did. He didn't want to speak, but
he spoke loo eagerly, eagerly and reluctantly together — and then I
knew that it had not been just a childhood friendship. I knew' how
much he had given up lor the strike and how desperately he hoped
he hadn’t given it up forever. I? I was merely questioning him about
one of our most important future strikers— as 1 questioned him about
many others.”

The hint of derision remained in his eyes; he knew that she had
wanted to hear this, but that this was not the answer to the one
question she feared.

She looked from his face to Francisco’s approaching figure, not
hiding from herself any longer that her sudden, heavy, desolate anxi-
ety was the fear that Galt might throw' the three of them into the
hopeless waste of self-sacrifice.

Francisco approached, looking at her thoughtfully, as if weighing
some question of his own, but some question that gave a sparkle of
reckless gaiety to his eyes.

“Dagny, there’s only one week left,” he said. “If you decide to
go back, it will be the last, for a long time.” There was no reproach
and no sadness in his voice, only some softened quality as sole evi*
dencc of emotion. “If you leave now — oh yes, you’ll still come
back — but it won’t be soon. And I — in a few months, I’ll come to
live here permanently, so if you go, l won’t see you again, perhaps
for years. I’d like you to spend this last week with me. I’d like you

729

to move to my house. As my guest, nothing else, for no reason,
except that I'd like you to."

He said it simply, as if nothing were or could be hidden among
the three of them. She saw no sign of astonishment in Galt’s face.
She felt some swift tightening in her chest, something hard, reckless
and almost vicious that had the quality of a dark excitement driving
her blindly into action.

“But I'm an employee," she said, with an odd smile, looking at
Galt, “I have a job to finish."

“I won't hold you to it," said Galt, and she felt anger at the
tone oi his voice, a tone that granted her no hidden significance and
answered nothing but the literal meaning of her words. “You can
quit the job any time you wish. It’s up to you "

“No, it isn't. I’m a prisoner here. Don’t you remember 0 I'm to
take orders. I have no preferences to follow, no wishes to express,
no decisions to make. I want the decision to be yours.”

“You want it to be mine?"

“Yes!”

“You’ve expressed a wish."

The mockery of his voice was in its seriousness — and she threw at
him defiantly, not smiling, as if daring him to continue pretending
that he did not understand “All right That's what I wish!"

He smiled, as at a child’s complex scheming which he had long
since seen through. “Very well." But he did not smile, as he said,
turning to Francisco, “Then —no."

The defiance toward an adversary who was the sternest ot teach-
ers, was all that Francisco had read in her face. He shrugged, regret
fully, but gaily. “You're probably right. If you can’t prevent her Irorn
going back -nobody can."

She was not hearing Francisco's words. She was stunned hv the
magnitude of the relief that hit her at the sound of Galt's answer, a
relief that told her the magnitude of the fear it swept away. She
knew, only after it was over, what had hung for her on his decision,
she knew that had his answer been different, it would have destroyed
the valley in her eyes.

vShe wanted to laugh, she wanted to embrace them both and laugh
with them in celebration, it did not seem to matter whether she
would stay here or return to the world, a week was like an endless
span of time, either course seemed flooded by an unchanging sun-
light — and no struggle was hard, she thought, if this was the nature
of existence. The relief did not come from the knowledge that he
would not renounce her, nor from afiy assurance that she would
win — the relief came from the certainty that he would always remain
what he was.

“I don’t know whether I’ll go back fo the world or not," she said
soberly, but her voice was trembling with subdued violence, which
was pure gaiety. ‘Tip sorry that I’m stjll unable to make a decision.
Tm certain of only one thing: that I wfan’t be afraid to decide."

Francisco took the sudden brightness of her face as proof that the
incident had been of no significance. But Galt understood; he glanced

730

at her and the glance was part amusement, part contemptuous
reproach.

He said nothing, until they were alone, walking down the trail to
the valley. Then he glanced at her again, the amusement sharper in
his eyes, and said, “You had to put me to a test in order to learn
whether I’d fall to the lowest possible stage of altruism?”

She did not answer, but looked at him in open, undefensive
admission.

He chuckled and looked away, and a few steps later said slowly,
in the tone of a quotation. “Nobody stays here by faking reality in
any manner whatever. '

Part of the intensity of her relief — she thought, as she walked
silently by Ins side — was the shock of a contrast: she had seen, with
the sudden, immediate vividness of sensory perception, an exact pic-
ture of what the code of self-sacrifice would have meant, if enacted
by the three ot them. Galt, giving up the woman he wanted, for the
sake of his triend. faking his greatest feeling out of existence and
himself out of her iile, no rriattci what the cost to him and to her,
then dragging the rest ol his years through the waste of the un-
leached and unfulfilled -she, turning for consolation to a second
choice, faking a love she did not feci, being willing to fake, since
her will to self-deceit was the essential required for Galt’s self-
sacrifice, then living out hei years in hopeless longing, accepting, as
relief for an unhealing wound, some moments of weary affection,
plus the tenet that love is futile and happiness is not to be found on
earth -Francisco, struggling in the elusive tog of a counterfeit reality,
his life a fraud staged by the two who were dearest to him and most
trusted, struggling to grasp what was missing from his happiness,
struggling down the brittle scaffold of a lie over the abyss of the
discovery that he was not the man she loved, but only a resented
substitute, half-charity-patient, half-crutch, his perceptiveness becom-
ing his danger and only his surrender to lethargic stupidity protecting
the shoddy structure of his joy, struggling and giving up and settling
into the dreary routine of the conviction that fulfillment is impossible
to man — the three of them, who had had all the gifts of existence
spread out before them, ending up as embittered hulks, who cry in
despair that life is frustration — the frustration of not being able to
make unreality real.

But i his— -2, he thought — was men s moral code in the outer word,
a code that told them to act on the premise of one another’s weak-
ness. deceit and stupidity, and this was the pattern of their lives, this
struggle through a fog of the pretended and unacknowledged, this
belief that facts are not solid or final, this state where, denying any
form to reality, men stumble through life, unreal and unformed, and
die having never been born. Here — she thought, looking down
through green branches at the glittering roofs of the valley — one
dealt with men as clear and firm as sun and rocks, and the immense
light-heartedness of her relief came from the knowledge that no bat-
tle was hard, no decision was dangerous where there was no soggy
uncertainty, no shapeless evasion to encounter.

“Did it ever occur to you. Miss Taggart,” said Galt, in the casual

731

tone of an abstract discussion, but as if he had known 'her thoughts,
“that there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business
nor in trade nor in their most personal desires — if they omit the
irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their
view of the practical? There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice,
and no man is a threat to the aims of another- -if men understand
that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work,
that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be
given, that the destruction of a value which is, will not bring value
to that which isn't. The businessman who wishes to gain a market
by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share
of his employer’s wealth, the artist who envies a rival’s higher tal-
ent — theyTe all wishing facts out of existence, and destruction is the
only means of their wish. If they pursue it, they will not achieve a
market, a fortune or an immortal lame — they will merely destroy
production, employment and art. A wish for the irrational is not to
be achieved, whether the sacrificial victims are willing or not. But
men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their
longing to destroy — so long as sell -destruction and self-sacrifice are
preached to them as the practical means of achieving the happiness
of the recipients.”

He glanced at her and added slowly, a slight emphasis as sole
change in the impersonal tone of his voice, “No one’s happiness but
my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy. You should have
had more respect for him and for me than to tear what you had
feared.”

She did not answer, she felt as if a word would overfill the fullness
of this moment, she merely turned to him with a look of acquies-
cence that was disarmed, childishly humble and would have been an
apology but lor its shining joy.

He smiled — in amusement, in understanding, almost in comrade-
ship of the things they shared and in sanction of the things she felt.

They went on in silence, and it seemed to her that this was a
summer day out of a carefree youth she had never lived, it was just
a walk through the country by two people who were free for the
pleasure of motion and sunlight, with no unsolved burdens left to
carry. Her sense of lightness blended with the weightless sense of
walking downhill, as if she needed no effort to walk, only to restrain
herself from flying, and she walked, fighting the speed of the down
ward pull, her body leaning back, the wind blowing her skirl like a
sail to brake her motion.

They parted at the bottom of the trail; he went to keep an appoint-
ment with Midas Mulligan, while she Went to Hammond’s Market
with a list of items for the evening’s tanner as the sole concern of
her world.

His wife — she thought, letting hersejf hear consciously the word
Dr. Akston had not pronounced, the ^ord she had long since lelt,
but never named — for three weeks sh<$ had been his wife in every
sense but one, and that final one was still to be earned, but this
much was real and today she could permit herself to know it, to feel
it, to live with that one thought for this one day.

732

The groceries, which Lawrence Hammond was lining up at her
order on the polished counter of his store, had never appeared to
her as such shining objects — and, intent upon them, she was only
half-conscious of some disturbing element, of something that was
wrong but that her mind was too full to notice. She noticed it only
when she saw Hammond pause, frown and stare upward, at the sky
beyond his open store front.

In time with his words: “I think somebody’s trying to repeat your
stunt. Miss Taggart,” she realized that it was the sound of an airplane
overhead and that it had been there for some time, a sound which
was not to be heard in the valley after the first of this month.

They rushed out to the street. The small silver cross of a plane
was circling above the ring of mountains, like a sparkling dragonfly
about to brush the peaks with its wings.

‘What does he think he’s doing?” said Lawrence Hammond.

There were people at the doors of the shops and standing still all
down the street, looking up.

“Is ... is anyone expected?” she asked and was astonished by the
anxiety of her own voice.

“No,” said Hammond. “Everyone who’s got any business here is
here.” He did not sound disturbed, but grimly curious.

The plane was now a small dash, like a silver cigarette, streaking
against the tlanks of the mountains: it had dropped lower.

“Looks like a private monoplane.” said Hammond, squinting
against the sun. “Not an army model.”

“Will the ray screen hold out?” she asked tensely, in a tone of
defensive resentment against the approach of an enemy.

He chuckled. “Hold out?”

“Will he see us 9 ”

“That screen is safer than an underground vault. Miss Taggart. As
>ou ought to know.”

The plane rose, and for a moment it was only a bright speck, like
a bit of paper blown by the wind — it hovered uncertainly, then
dropped down again into another circling spiral.

“What m hell is he after?” said Hammond.

Her eyes shot suddenly to his face.

“He’s looking for something,” said Hammond. “What?”

“Is there a telescope somewhere?”

“Why — yes, at the airfield, but — ” Ho was about to ask what was
the matter with her voice- but she was running across the road,
down the path to the airfield, not knowing that she was running,
driven by a reason she had no time and no courage to name.

She found Dwight Sanders at the small telescope of the control
tower; he was watching the plane attentively, with a puzzled frown.

“Let me see it!” she snapped.

She clutched the metal tube, she pressed her eye to the tens, her
hand guiding the tube slowly to follow the plane — then he saw that
her hand had stopped, but her fingers did not open and her face
remained bent over the telescope, pressed to the lens, until he looked
closer and saw that the lens was pressed to her forehead.

“What’s the matter. Miss Taggart?”

733

She raised her head slowly,

“Is it anyone you know, Miss Taggart?”

She did not answer. She hurried away, her steps rushing with the
zigzagging aimlessness of uncertainty — she dared not run, but she
had to escape, she had to hide, she did not know whether she was
afraid to be seen by the men around her or by the plane above —
the plane whose silver wings bore the number that belonged to
Hank Rearden.

She stopped when she stumbled over a rock and fell and noticed
that she had been running. She was on a small ledge in the cliffs
above the airfield, hidden from the sight of the town, open to the
view of the sky. She rose, her hands groping for support along a
granite wall, feeling the warmth of the sun on the rock under her
palms — she stood, her back pressed to the wall, unable to move or
to take her eyes off the plane.

The plane was circling slowly, dipping down, then rising again,
struggling — she thought — as she had struggled, to distinguish the
sight of a wreck in a hopeless spread of crevices and boulders, an
elusive spread neither clear enough to abandon nor to survey. He
was searching lor the wreck of her plane, he had not given up, and
whatever the three weeks of it had cost him, whatever he felt, the
only evidence he would give to the world and his only answer was
this steady, insistent, monotonous drone of a motor carrying a fragile
craft over every deadly foot of an inaccessible chain ol mountains.

Through the brilliant purity of the summer air, the plane seemed
intimately close, she could see it rock on precarious currents and
bank under the thrusts of wind. She could see, and it seemed impossi-
ble that so clear a sight was closed to his eyes. The whole of the
valley lay below him, flooded by sunlight, flaming with glass panes
and green lawns, screaming to be seen — the end of his tortured quest,
the fulfillment of more than his wishes, not the wreck of her plane
and her body, but her living presence and his freedom — all that he
was seeking or had ever sought was now spread open before him.
open and waiting, his to be reached by a straight-line dive through
the pure, clear air — his and asking nothing of him but the capacity
to see. “Hank!” she screamed, waving her arms in desperate sig-
nal. “Hank!”

She fell back against the rock, knowing that she had no way to
reach him, that she had no power to give him sight, that no power
on earth could pierce that screen except his own mind and vision.
Suddenly and for the first time, she felt the screen, not as the most
intangible, but as the most grimly absolute barrier in the world.

Slumped against the rock, she watched, in silent resignation, the
hopeless circles of the plane’s struggle and its motor’s uncomplaining
cry for help, a cry she had no way to ^answer. The plane swooped
down abruptly, but it was only the start? of its final rise, it cut a swift
diagonal across the mountains and shot into the open sky. Then, as
if caught in the spread of a lake with np shores and no exit, it went
sinking slowly and drowning out of sigftt.

She thought, in bitter compassion, of how much he had failed to
see. And 1? — she thought. If she left the valley, the screen would

734

dose for her as tightly, Atlantis would descend under a vault of rays
more impregnable than the bottom of the ocean, and she, too, would
be left to struggle for the things she had not known how to see, she,
too, would be left to fight a mirage of primordial savagery, while
the reality of all that she desired would never come again within
her reach.

But the pull of the outer world, the pull that drew her to follow
the plane, was not the image of Hank Rcarden — she knew that she
could not return to him, even if she returned to the world— the pull
was the vision of Hank Rearden’s courage and the courage of all
those still fighting to stay alive. He would not give up the search for
her plane, when all others had long since despaired, as he would not
give up his mills, as he would not give up any goal he had chosen
if a single chance was left. Was she certain that no chance remained
for the world of Taggart Transcontinental? Was she certain that the
terms of the battle were such that she could not care to win? They
were right, the men of Atlantis, they were right to vanish if they
knew that they left no value behind them — but until and unless she
saw that no chance was untaken and no battle unfought, she had no
riglu to remain among them. This was the question that had lashed
her for weeks, but had not driven her to a glimpse of the answer.

She lay awake through the hours of that night, quietly motionless,
following — like an engineer and like Hank Rcarden-— a process of
dispassionate, piecise. almost mathematical consideration, with no
regard for cost or feeling. The agony which he lived in his plane,
she lived it in a soundless cube of darkness, searching, but finding
no answer She looked at the inscriptions on the walls of her room,
faintly visible in patches of starlight, hut the help those men had
called in their darkest hour was not hers to call.

* +

‘ Yes or no, Miss Taggart?”

She looked at the faces of the four men in the soft twilight of
Mulligan's living room: Galt, whose face had the serene, impersonal
attentiveness of a scientist — Francisco, whose face was made expres-
sionless by the hint of a smile, the kind of smile that would fit either
answer — Hugh Akston who looked compassionately gentle — Midas
Mulligan, who had asked the question with no touch of rancor in
his voice. Somewhere two thousand miles away, at this sunset hour,
the page of a calendar was springing into light over the roofs of New
York, saying: June 28 — and it seemed to her suddenly that she was
seeing it, as if it were hanging over the heads of these men.

“I have one more day,” she said steadily, “Will you let me have
it? I think I’ve reached my decision, but f am not fully certain of it
and I’ll need all the certainty possible to me.”

“Of course,” said Mulligan. “You have, in fact, until morning of
the day after tomorrow. We’ll wait.”

“We’ll wait after that as well,” said Hugh Akston, “though in your
absence, if that be necessary.”

She stood by the window, facing them, and she felt a moment’s
satisfaction in the knowledge that she stood straight, that her hands
did not tremble, that her voice sounded as controlled, uncomplaining

735

and unpitying as theirs; it gave her a moment’s feeling of a bond
to them.

“If any part of your uncertainty,” said Galt, “is a conflict between
your heart and your mind — follow your mind.”

“Consider the reasons which make us certain that we are right,”
said Hugh Akston, “but not the fact that we arc certain. If you are
not convinced, ignore our certainty. Don’t be tempted to substitute
our judgment for your own.”

“Don’t rely on our knowledge of what’s best for your future,”
said Mulligan. “Wc do know, but it can’t be best until you know it.”

“Don’t consider our interests or desires,” said Francisco. “You
have no duty to anyone but yourself.”

She smiled, neither sadly nor gaily, thinking that none of it was
the sort of advice she would have been given in the ouler world.
And knowing how desperately they wished to help her where no
help was possible, she felt it was her part to give them reassurance.

“1 forced my way here,” she said quietly, “and I was to bear
responsibility for the consequences. I’m bearing it.”

Her reward was to see Galt smile: the smile was like a military
decoration bestowed upon her.

Looking away, she remembered suddenly Jeff Allen, the tramp
aboard the Comet, in the moment when she had admired him for
attempting to tell her that he knew where he was going, to spare
her the burden of his aimlessness. She smiled faintly, thinking that
she had now experienced it in both roles and knew that no action
could be lower or more futile than for one person to throw upon
another the burden of his abdication of choice. She felt an odd calm,
almost a confident repose, she knew that it was tension, but the
tension of a great clarity. She caught herself thinking; She’s function-
ing well in an emergency. I'll be all right with her— and realized that
she was thinking of herself.

“Let it go till day after tomorrow. Miss Taggart,” said Midas Mulli-
gan. “Tonight you’re still here.”

“Thank you,” she said.

She remained by the window, while they went on discussing the
valley’s business; it was their closing conference of the month. They
had just finished dinner — and she thought of her first dinner in this
house a month ago; she was wearing, as she had then worn, the gray
suit that belonged in her office, not the peasant skirt that had been
so easy to wear in the sun. I’m still here tonight, she thought, hei
hand pressed possessively to the window sill.

The sun had not yet vanished beyond the mountains, but the sky
was an even, deep, deceptively clear blue that blended with the blue
of invisible clouds into a single spread, hiding the sun; only the edges
of the clouds were outlined by a thin thread of flame, and it looked
like a glowing, twisted net of neon tubing, she thought . . . like a
chart of winding rivers . . . like . . , like! the map of a railroad traced
in white fire on the sky.

She heard Mulligan giving Galt the flames of those who were not
returning to the outer world. “We have jobs for all of them,” said
Mulligan. “In fact, there’s only ten or twelve men who’re going back

736

this year— mostly to finish off, convert whatever they own and come
here permanently. I think this was our last vacation month, because
before another year is over well all be living in this valley/'

“Good/* said Galt,

“Well have to, from the way things are going outside/’

“Yes.”

“Francisco,” said Mulligan, “you’ll come back in a few months?”

“In November at the latest/’ said Francisco. “I’ll send you word
by short wave, when I’m ready to come back — will you turn the
furnace on in my house?”

“I will,” said Hugh Akston. “And I’ll have your supper ready for
you when you arrive.”

“John, I take it for granted,” said Mulligan, “that you’re not re-
turning to New York this time.”

Galt took a moment to glance at him, then answered evenly, “I
have not decided it yet.”

She noticed the shocked swiftness with which Francisco and Mulli-
gan bent forward to stare at him — and the slowness with which Hugh
Akston’s glance moved to his face; Akston did not seem to he
astonished.

“You’re not thinking of going back to that hell for another year,
are you?” said Mulligan.

“1 am.”

“But — good God, John! —what for?”

“I’ll tell you, when I’ve decided.”

“But there’s nothing left there for you to do. We got everybody
we knew of or can hope to know ot. Our list is completed, except
for Hank Rearden— and we’ll get him before the year is over — and
Miss Taggart, if she so chooses That’s all Your job is done. There’s
nothing to look for, out there — except the final crash, when the roof
comes down on their heads.”

“I know it.”

“John, yours is the one head I don’t want to be there w'hen it
happens.”

“You’ve never had to worry about me.”

“But don’t you realize what stage they’re coming to? They’re only
one step away from open violence — hell, they’ve taken the step and
sealed and declared it long ago! — but in one more moment they'll
see the full reality of what they’ve taken, exploding in their damned
faces— plain, open, blind, arbitrary, bloodshedding violence, running
amuck, hitting anything and anyone at random. That’s what I don’t
want to see you in the midst of.”

“I can take care of myself,”

“John, there’s no reason for you to take the risk,” said Francisco.

“What risk?”

“The looters are worried about the men who’ve disappeared.
They’re suspecting something. You, of all people* shouldn’t stay
there any longer. There’s always a chance that they might discover
just who and what you are.”

'There’s some chance. Not much.”

737

“But there’s no reason whatever to take it. There's nothing left
that Ragnar and I can’t finish.”

Hugh Akston was watching them silently, leaning hack in his chair;
his face had that look of intensity, neither quite bitterness nor quite
a smile, with which a man watches a progression that interests him,
but that lags a few steps behind his vision,

“If I go back,” said Galt, “it won’t be for oui work. It will be to
win the only thing I want lrom the world for myself, now that the
work is done. I’ve taken nothing from the world and I've wanted
nothing. But there’s one thing which it’s still holding and which is
mine and which I won’t let it have. No, 1 don’t intend to break my
oath, I won’t deal with the looters, 1 won’t be of any value or help
to anyone out there, neither to looters nor neutrals— nor scabs. If I
go. it won’t be for anyone’s sake but mine — and I don’t think I'm
risking my life, but if l am — well. I’m now Iree to risk it.”

He was not looking at her, but she had to turn away and stand
pressed against the window frame, because her hands were trem-
bling.

“But, John!” cried Mulligan, waving his arm at the valley, “if
anything happens to you, what would we—” He stopped abruptly
and guiltily.

Galt chuckled. “What were you about to say?” Mulligan waved
his hand sheepishly, in a gesture of dismissal. “Wcie you about to
say that if anything happens to me. I’ll die as the worst failure m
the world?”

“All right," said Mulligan guiltily, “I won't say it. I won't say that
we couldn’t get along without you— we can I won’t beg you to stay
here for our sake — I didn't think I'd ever revert to that rotten old
plea, but, boy!— what a temptation it was, I can almost see why
people do it. 1 know that whatever it is you want, it you wish to risk
your life, that’s all there is to it— but I’m thinking only that it's
oh God, John, it’s such a valuable life!”

Galt smiled. “1 know it That’s why 1 don’t think I'm risking it- -
1 think I’ll win.”

Francisco was now silent, he was watching Galt intently, with a
frown of wonder, not as if he had found an answer, but as ii he had
suddenly glimpsed a question

“Look, John,” said Mulligan, “since you haven’t decided whether
you’ll go — you haven’t decided it yet, have you?”

“No, not yet.”

“Since you haven’t, would you let me remind you of a few things,
just for you to consider?”

“Go ahead.”

“It's the chance dangers that I’m afraid of —the senseless, unpre-
dictable dangers of a world falling apart. Consider the physical risks
of complex machinery in the hands of blind fools and fear-crazed
cowards. Just think of their railreads-fyou’d be taking a chance on
some such horror as that Winston tifrmel incident every time you
stepped aboard a train — and there will be more incidents of that
kind, coming faster and faster, lliey ’ll reach the stage where no day
will pass without a major wreck.”

738

“i know it.”

“And the same will be happening in every other industry* wher-
ever machines are used— the machines which they thought could
replace our minds. Plane crashes, oil tank explosions, blast-furnace
break-outs, high-tension wire electrocutions, subway cave-ins and
trestle collapses — they’ll see them all. The very machines that had
made their life so safe, will now make it a continuous peril.”

“J know it.”

“I know that you know it, but have you considered it in every
specific detail? Have you allowed yourself to visualize it 7 I want you
to sec the exact picture of what it is that you propose to enter —
before you decide whether anything can justify your entering it. You
know that the cities will be hit worst ot all. The cities were made
by the railroads and will go with them.”

“That’s right.”

“When the rails are cut, the city of New' York will starve in two
days. That’s all the supply of food it's got. It's fed by a continent
three thousand miles long. How will they carry food to New York?
By directive and oxcart? Hut first, before it happens, they’ll go
through the whole of the agony - through the shrinking, the short-
ages, the hunger riots, the stampeding violence in the midst of the
growing stillness.”

‘They will.”

“They'll lose their airplanes first, then their automobiles, then their
trucks, then their horsecarts.”

“They will.”

“Their factories will stop, then their furnaces and their radios.
Then their electric light system will go."

“It will.'’

“There’s only a worn thread holding that continent together.
I here will be one tram a day, then one train a week — then the
Taggart Bridge will collapse and — ”

“No, it won’t!”

It was her voice and they whirled to her. Her face was white, but
calmer than it had been when she had answered them last.

Slowly, Galt rose to his feet and inclined his head, as in acceptance
of a verdict. “You ha\e made your decision,” he said.

“I have.”

“Dagny,” said Hugh Akston, “I'm sorry.” He spoke softly, with
eflort, as if his words were struggling and failing to fill the silence
of the room. “1 wish it were possible not to see this happen, I would
have preferred anything — except to see you stay here by default of
the courage of your convictions.”

She spread her hands, paims out, her arms at her sides, in a gesture
ot simple frankness, and said, addressing them all, her manner so
calm that she could afford to show emotion, “I want you to know
this: 1 have wished it were possible for me to die in one more month,
so that 1 could spend it in this valley. This is how much I’ve wanted
to remain. But so long as 1 choose to go on living, I can’t desert a
battle which I think is mine to fight,”

“Of course,” said Mulligan respectfully, “if you still think it.”

739

“If you want to know the one reason that’s taking me hack, I'll
tell you: 1 cannot bring myself to abandon to destruction all the
greatness of the world, all that which was mine and yours, which
was made by us and is still ours by tight — because l cannot believe
that men can refuse to see, that they can remain blind and deaf to
us forever, when the truth is ours and their lives depend on accepting
it. They xStill love their lives — and that is the uncorrupted remnant ol
their minds. So long as men desire to live, 1 cannot lose my battle/'

“Do they?'’ said Hugh Akston softly. “Do they desire it? No.
don’t answer me now. I know that the answer was the hardest thing
for any of us to grasp and to accept. Just take that question back
with you. as the last premise left tor you to check.”

“You’re leaving as our friend,” said Midas Mulligan, “and well
be fighting everything you’ll do, because we know you’re wrong, bul
it’s not you that we’ll be damning.”

“You'll come back.” said Hugh Akston, "because yours is an error
of knowledge, not a moral failure, not an act ol surrender to evil,
but only the last act of being victim to your own virtue. We’ll wait
for you — and, Dagny, when you come back, you will have discovered
that there need never be any conflict among your desires, nor so
tragic a clash of values as the one you’ve borne so well ”

“Thank you,” she said, closing her eyes.

“We must discuss the conditions ot your departure,” said Galt; he
spoke in the dispassionate manner of an executive “First, you must
give us your word that you will not disclose our secret or any part
of it — neither our cause nor our existence not this valley nor your
whereabouts for the past month- -to anyone in the outer world, not
at any time or for any purpose whatsoever.”

“I give you my word.”

“Second, you must never attempt to find this valley again. You
are not to come here uninvited. Should you break the first condition,
it will not place us in serious danger. Should you break the second—
it will. It is not our policy ever to be at the arbitrary mercy of the
good faith of another person, or at the mercy of a promise that
cannot be enforced. Nor can we expect you to place our interests
above your own. Since you believe that your course is right, the day
may corne when you may find it necessary to lead our enemies to
this valley. We shall, therefore, leave you no means to do it. You
will be taken out of the valley by plane, blindfolded, and you will
be flown a distance sufficient to make it impossible for you ever to
retrace the course.”

She inclined her head. “You are right.”

“Your plane has been repaired. Do you wish to reclaim it by
signing a draft on your account at the Mulligan Bank?”

“No.”

“Then we shall hold it, until such time as you choose to pay lor
it. Day after tomorrow, I will take you In my plane to a point outside
the valley and leave you within reach fof further transportation.”

She inclined her head. “Very well.”"

It had grown dark, when they left Midas Mulligan’s. The trail back
to Galt’s house led across the valley, past Francisco’s cabin, and the

740

three of them walked home together, A few squares of lighted win-
dows hung scattered through the darkness, and the first streams of
mist were weaving slowly across the panes, like shadows cast by a
distant sea. They walked in silence, but the sound of their steps,
blending into a single, steady beat, was like a speech to be grasped
and not to be uttered in any other form.

After a while, Francisco said, “It changes nothing, it only makes
the span a little longer, and the last stretch is always the hardest —
but it’s the last.”

“I will hope so,” she said. In a moment, she repeated quietly, “The
last is the hardest.” She turned to Galt. “May I make one request?”

“Yes.”

“Will you let me go tomorrow?”

“If you wish.”

When Francisco spoke again, moments later, it was as if he were
addressing the unnamed wonder in her mind; his voice had the tone
of answering a question: “Dagny, all three of us are in love’" — she
jerked her head to him — “with the same thing, no matter what its
forms. Don't wonder why you feel no breach among us. You’ll be
one of us, so long as you’ll remain in love with your rails and your
engines — and they’ll lead you back to us, no matter how many times
you lose your way. The only man never to be redeemed is the man
without passion.”

“Thank you.” she said softly.

“For what?”

“For . . . for the way you sound.”

“Mow do I sound? Name it, Dagny.”

“You sound ... as if you're happy.”

“1 am— in exactly the same way you arc. Don’t tell me what you
teel. I know it. But, you see, the measure of the hell you’re able to
endure is the measure ol your love. The hell 1 couldn’t bear to
witness would be to see you being indifferent.”

She nodded silently, unable to name as joy any part of the things
she felt, yet feeling that he was right.

Clots of mist were drifting, like smoke, across the moon, and in
the diffused glow she could not distinguish the expressions of their
faces, as she walked between them: the only expressions to perceive
were the straight silhouettes of their bodies, the unbroken sound of
their steps and her own feeling that she wished to walk on and
on, a feeling she could not define, except that it was neither doubt
noi pain.

When they approached his cabin, Francisco stopped, the gesture
of his hand embracing them both as he pointed to his door. “Will
you come in — since it’s to be our last night together for some time?
Let’s have a drink to the future of which all three of us are certain.”

“Are we?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Gall, “we are.”

She looked at their faces when Francisco switched on the light in
his house. She could not define their expressions, it was not happi-
ness or any emotion pertaining to joy, their faces were taut and
solemn, but it was a glowing solemnity — she thought — if this were

741

possible, and the odd glow she felt within her, told her that her own
face had the same look.

Francisco reached for three glasses from a cupboard, but slopped,
as at a sudden thought. He placed one glass on the table, then
reached for the two silver goblets of Sebastian d’Anconia and placed
them beside it.

“Are you going straight to New York, Dagny?" he asked, in the
calm, unstrained tone of a host, bringing out a bottle of old wine.

“Yes," she answered as calmly.

“I’m flying to Buenos Aires day after tomorrow," he said, un-
corking the bottle. “I’m not sure whether 1 11 be back in New York
later, but if I am, it will be dangerous for you to see me."

“I won’t car e about that," .she said, “unless you feel that I’m not
entitled to see you any longer."

“True, Dagny. You're not. Not in New York "

He was pouring the wine and he glanced up at Galt. “John, when
will you decide whether you’re going back or staying here 7 ”

Galt looked straight at him. then said slowly, in the tone of a
man who knows all the consequences of his words, “I have decided,
Francisco. I’m going back."

Francisco’s hand stopped. For a long moment, he was seeing noth-
ing, but Galt’s face. Then his eyes moved to hers. He put the bottle
down and he did not step back, bin it was as il his glance drew back
to a wider range, to include them both.

“But of course," he said.

He looked as il ho had moved still farther and were now seeing
the whole spread of their years: his voice had an even, uninflected
sound, a quality that matched the si/e ol the vision.

“I knew it twelve years ago," he said. ‘1 knew it before you could
have known, and it’s I who should have seen that you would see
That night, when you called us to New York, I thought of it then
as” — he was speaking to Galt, but his eyes moved to Dagny — “as
everything that you were seeking . . everything you told us to live
for or die, if necessary. I should have seen that you would think it,
too. It could not have been otherwise. It is as it had and ought -
to be. It was set then, twelve years ago." He looked at Galt and
chuckled softly. “And you say that it’s / who’ve taken the haidest
beating?"

He turned with too swift a movement - then, too slowly, as it in
deliberate emphasis, he completed the task ol pouring the wine, till-
ing the three vessels on the table. He picked up the two silver gob-
lets, looked down at them for the pause of an instant, then extended
one to Dagny, the other to Galt.

“ fake it," he said. “You’ve earned it — and it wasn’t chance."

Galt took the goblet from his hand, t>ut it was as if the acceptance
was done by their eyes as they lookecj at each other.

“I would have given anything to lei it be otherwise." said Galt,
“except that which is beyond giving.";

She held her goblet, she looked at francisco and she let him, see
her eyes glance at Galt. “Yes," she said m the tone of an answer
“But I have not earned it — and what you’ve paid, I’m paying it now.

742

and I don’t know whether HI ever earn enough to hold dear title,
but if hell is the price — and the measure — then let me be the greedi-
est of the three of us/’

As they drank, as she stood, her eyes dosed, feeling the liquid
motion of the wine inside her throat, she knew that lor all three of
them this was the most tortured — and the most exultant — moment
they had ever reached.

She did not speak to Galt, as they walked down the last stretch
of the trail to his house. She did not turn her head to him, feeling
that even a glance would be too dangerous. She felt, in their silence,
both the calm of a total understanding and the tension of the knowl-
edge that they were not to name the things they understood.

But she faced him, when they were in his living room, with full
confidence and as if in sudden certainty of a right — the certainty that
she would not break and that it was now safe to speak. She said
evenly, neither as plea nor as triumph, merely as the statement of a
fact, “You are going back to the outer world because 1 will be there.”

“Yes.”

“I do not want you to go.”

“You have no choice about it.”

“You are going for my sake.”

“No, for mine.”

“Will you allow me to see you there?”

‘No.”

“I am not to sec you 7 ”

“No.”

“1 am not to know where you are or what you do?"

“You’re not ”

“Will you be watching me, as you did before^”

“More so.”

“Is vour puipose to protect me?”

“No”

“What is it, then?”

“To be there on the day when you decide to join us,”

She looked at him attentively, permitting herself no other reaction,
but as if groping tor an answer to the first point she had not fully
understood.

“All the rest of us will be gone,” he explained. “It will become
too dangerous to remain. I will remain as your last key, before the
door of this valley closes altogether.”

“Oh!” She choked it off before it became a moan. Then, regaining
the manner of impersonal detachment, she asked, “Suppose I were
to tell you that my decision is final and that I am never to join you?”

“It would be a lie.”

“Suppose 1 were now to decide that I wish to make it final and
to stand by it, no matter what the future?”

“No matter whal future evidence you observe and what convic-
tions you form?”

“Yes.”

“That would be worse than a He,”

“You are certain that I have made the wrong decision?”

743

“I am.”

“Do you believe that one must be responsible for one’s own
errors?”

“1 do.”

“Then why aren’t you letting me bear the consequences of mine?”

“I am and you will.”

“If I find, when it is too late, that 1 want to return to this valley - -
why should you have to bear the risk of keeping that door open
to me?”

“I don't have to. I wouldn’t do it if I had no selfish end to gain.”

“What selfish end?”

“1 want you here.”

She closed her eyes and inclined her head in open admission of
defeat — defeat in the argument and in her attempt to face calmly
the full meaning of that which she was leaving.

Then she raised her head and, as if she had absorbed his kind of
frankness, she looked at him, hiding neither her suffering nor her
longing nor her calm, knowing that all three were in her glance.

His face was as it had been in the sunlight of the moment when
she had seen it for the first time- a lace of merciless serenity and
unflinching perceptiveness, without pain or fear or guilt. She thought
that were it possible for her to stand looking at him, at the straight
lines of his eyebrows over the dark green eyes, at the curve ol the
shadow underscoring the shape of his mouth, at the poured-meial
planes of his skin in the open collar of his shirt and the casually
immovable posture of his legs — she would wish to spend the rest ol
her life on this spot and in this manner. And in the next instant she
knew that if her wish were granted, the contemplation would lose
all meaning, because she would have betrayed all the things that
gave it value.

Then, not as memory, but as an experience of the present, she lelt
herself reliving the moment when she had stood at the window ot
her room in New York, looking at a fogbound city, at the unattain-
able shape of Atlantis sinking out of reach— and she knew that she
was now seeing the answer to that moment She felt, not the words
she had then addressed to the city, but that untranslated sensation
from which the words had come: You, whom 1 have always loved
and never found, you whom I expected to see at the end of the rails
beyond the horizon —

Aloud, she said, “I want you to know this. I started my life with
a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image ot
my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no
matter how long or hard the struggle” — you whose presence l had
always felt in the streets of the city, the wordless voice within her
was saying, and whose world I had wpnted to build — ‘‘Now I know
that I was fighting for this valley ” — k is my love for you that had
kept me moving — “It was this valley t&at I saw as possible an(J would
exchange for nothing less and would not give up to a mindless
evil” — my love and my hope to reach !you and my wish to be worthy
of you on the day when I would stand before you face to face— “1
am going back to fight for this valley — to release it from its under-

744

ground, to regain for it its full and rightful realm, to let the earth
belong to you in fact, as it does in spirit — and to meet you again on
the day when I’m able to deliver to you the whole of the world —
ur, if 1 fail, to remain in exile from this valley to the end of my
life” — but what is left of my life will still be yours, and I will go on
in your name, even though it is a name I'm never to pronounce, I
will go on serving you, even though I’m never to win, I will go on,
to be worthy of you on the day when I would have met you, even
though I won’t — “1 will fight for it, even if I have to fight against
you, even if you damn me as a traitor . . . even if I am never to sec
you again.”

He had stood without moving, he had listened with no change in
his face, only his eyes had looked at her as if he were hearing every
word, even the words she had not pronounced. He answered, with
the same look, as if the look were holding some circuit not yet to
be broken, his voice catching some tone of hers, as if in signal of
the same code, a voice with no sign of emotion except in the spacing
of the words:

“If you fail, as men have failed in their quest for a vision that
should have been possible, yet has remained forever beyond their
reach — if, like them, you come to think that ones highest values are
not to be attained and one's greatest vision is not to be made real —
don't damn this earth, as they did, don’t damn existence. You have
seen the Atlantis they were seeking, it is here, it exists — but one
must entei it naked and alone, with no rags from the falsehoods of
centuries, with the purest clarity of mind — not an innocent heart, but
that which is much rarer: an intransigent mind— as one's only posses-
sion and key. You will not enter it until you learn that you do not
need to convince or to conquer the world. When you learn it, you
will see that through all the years of your struggle, nothing had
haired you from Atlantis and there weie no chains to hold you,
except the chains you were willing to wear. Through all those years,
lhat which you most wished to win was waiting for you”— he looked
at her as if he were speaking to the unspoken words in her mind—
“waiting as unremittingly as you were lighting, as passionately, as
desperately — but with a greater ceitainty than yours. Go out to con-
linue your struggle. Go on carrying unchosen burdens, taking unde-
served punishment and believing that justice can be served by the
offer of your own spirit to the most unjust of tortures. But in your
worst and darkest moments remember that you have seen another
kind of world. Remember that you can reach it whenever you choose
to see. Remember that it will be waiting and that it’s real, it's possi-
ble — it’s yours.”

Then, turning his head a little, his voice as clear, but his eyes
breaking the circuit, he asked, “What time do you wish to leave
tomorrow?”

“Oh . . . ! As early as it will be convenient for you.”

“Then have breakfast ready at seven and we’ll take off at eight.”

“1 will.”

He reached into his pocket and extended to her a small, shining

745

disk which she could not distinguish at first. He dropped it on the
palm of her hand: it was a five^iollar gold piece.

“The last of your wages for the month,” he said.

Her fingers snapped dosed over the coin too tightly, hut she an-
swered calmly and tonelessly, “Thank you.”

“Good night, Miss Taggart.”

“Good night.”

She did not sleep in the hours that were still left to her. She sat
on the floor of her room, her face pressed to the bed, feeling nothing
but the sense of his presence beyond the wall. At times, she felt as
if he were before her, as if she were sitting at his feet. She spent
her last night with him in this manner.

* *

She left the valley as she had come, carrying away nothing that
belonged to it. She left the few possessions she had acquired -her
peasant skirt, a blouse, an apron, a few pieces of underwear — folded
neatly in a drawer of the chest in her room. She looked at them for
a moment, before she closed the drawer, thinking that if she came
back, she would, perhaps, still find them there. She took nothing
with her but the five-dollar gold piece and the band of tape still
wound about her ribs.

The sun touched the peaks of the mountains, drawing a shining
circle as a frontier of the valley when she climbed aboard the plane
She leaned back in the seat beside him and looked at Galt's face
bent over her, as it had been bent when she had opened her eyes
oh the first morning. Then she closed her eyes and felt his hands
tying the blindfold across her face.

She heard the blast of the motor, not as sound, but as the shuddei
of an explosion inside her body; only it felt like a distant shudder, as
if the person feeling it would have been hurt if she were not so far away

She did not know when the wheels left the ground or when the
plane crossed the circle of the peaks. She lay still, with the pounding
beat of the motor as her only perception of space, as if she were
earned inside a current of sound that rocked once in a while. The
sound came from his engine, from the control of his hands on the
wheel; she held onto that; the rest was to be endured, not resisted

She lay still, her legs stretched forward, her hands on the arms of
the seat, with no sense of motion, not even her own, to give her a
sense of time, with no space, no sight, no future, with the night ot
dosed eyelids under the pressure of the cloth — and with the knowl-
edge of his presence beside her as her single, unchanging reality.

They did not speak. Once, she said suddenly, “Mr. Galt.”

“Yes?”

“No. Nothing, 1 just wanted lo knovy whether you were still there ”

“I will always be there.” ’

She did not know for how many rdiles the memory of the sound
of words seemed like a small landmark rolling away into the distance,
then vanishing. Then there was nothing but the stillness of aii indivis-
ible present.

She did not know whether a day h^d passed or an hour, whert she
felt the downward, plunging motion which meant that they were

746

about to land or to crash; the two possibilities seemed equal to her
mind.

She felt the jolt of the wheels against the ground as an oddly
delayed sensation: as if some fraction of time had gone to make her
believe it.

She felt the running streak of jerky motion, then the jar of the
stop and of silence, then the touch of his hands on her hair, removing
the blindfold.

She saw a glaring sunlight, a stretch of scorched weeds going off
into the sky, with no mountains to stop it, a deserted highway and
the hazy outline of a town about a mile away. She glanced at her
watch: forty-seven minutes ago, she had still been in the valley.

‘You’ll find a Taggart station there,” he said, pointing at the town,
“and you’ll be able to take a train.”

She nodded, as if she understood.

He did not follow her as she descended to the ground. He leaned
acioss the wheel toward the open door of the plane, and they looked
at each other. She stood, her face raised to him, a faint wind stirring
her hair, the straight line of her shoulders sculptured by the trim suit
of a business executive amidst the fiat immensity of an empty prairie.

The movement of his hand pointed east, towaid some invisible
cities. “Don’t look lor me out there,” he said. “You will not find
me- -until you want me for what I am. And when you’ll want me,
I'll be the easiest man to find.”

She heard the sound of the door falling dosed upon him; it seemed
louder than the blast of the propeller that followed She watched the
lun of the plane's wheels and the trail of weeds left flattened behind
them. Then she saw a strip of sky between wheels and weeds.

She looked around her. A reddish ha/e of heat hung over the
shapes of the town in the distance, and the shapes seemed to sag
under a rusty tinge: above their roofs, she saw the remnant of a
crumbled smokestack. She saw a dry, yellow scrap rustling faintly in
the weeds beside her: it was a piece of newspaper. She looked at
these objects blankly, unable to make them real.

She raised her eyes to the plane. She watched the spread of its
wings grow smaller in the sky, draining away m its wake the sound
ol as motor. It kept rising, wings first, like a long silver cross; then
the curve of its motion went following the sky, dropping slowly closer
to the earth; them it seemed not to move any longer, but only to
shrink. She watched it like a star in the process of extinction, while
it shrank from cross to dot to a burning spark which she was no
longer certain of seeing. When she saw that the spread of the sky was
strewn wuth such sparks all over, she knew that the plane was gone.

Chapter 111 ANTI-GREED

"What am 1 doing here?” asked Dr. Robert Stadler. “Why was l
asked to come here? I demand an explanation. I'm m»i accustomed
t0 being dragged halfway across a continent without rhyme, reason
°r notice.”

747

Dr. Floyd Ferris smiled. “Which makes me appreciate it all the
more that you did come, Dr. Stadler.” It was impossible to tell
whether his voice had a tone of gratitude — or of gloating.

The sun was beating down upon them and Dr. Stadler felt a streak
of perspiration oozing along his temple. He could not hold an angrily,
embarrassingly private discussion in the middle of a crowd streaming
to fill the benches of the grandstand around them — the discussion
which he had tried and failed to obtain for the last three days. It
occurred to him that that was precisely the reason why his meeting
with Dr. Ferris had been delayed to this moment; but he brushed
the thought aside, just as he brushed some insect buzzing to reach
his wet temple.

“Why was 1 unable to get in touch with you?’' he asked. The fraudu-
lent weapon of sarcasm now seemed to sound less effective than ever,
but it was Dr. Stadler’s only weapon: “Why did you find it necessary
to send me messages on official stationery worded in a style proper,
Fm sure, for Army' 1 — orders, he was about to say, but didn’t — “com-
munications. but certainly not for scientific correspondence? 1 ’

“It is a government matter,” said Dr. Ferns gently.

“Do you realize that I was much too busy and that this meant an
interruption of my work?”

“Oh yes,” said Dr. Ferris noncommittally.

“Do you realize that I could have refused to come?”

“But you didn’t,” said Dr. Ferris softly.

“Why was I given no explanation? Why didn't you come for me in
person, instead of sending those incredible young hooligans with their
mysterious gibberish that sounded hall -science, half-pulp-magazine?"

“I was too busy,” said Dr. Ferns blandly.

“Then would you mind telling me what you’re doing in the middle
of a plain in Iowa — and what I’m doing here, for that matter?” He
waved contemptuously at the dusty horizon of an empty prairie and
at the three wooden grandstands. The stands were newly erected,
and the wood, too, seemed to perspire; he could see drops of resin
sparkling in the sun.

“We are about to witness an historical event. Dr. Stadler. An
occasion which will become a milestone on the road of science, civil]
zation, social welfare and political adaptability.” Dr. Ferris’ voice
had the tone of a public relations man’s memorized handout. “The
turning point of a new era.”

“What event? What new era?”

“As you will observe, only the most distinguished citizens, the
cream of our intellectual elite, have been chosen for the special privi-
lege of witnessing this occasion. We cpuld not omit your name, could
we? — and we feel certain, of coursfe, that we can count on your
loyalty and cooperation.” f

He could not catch Dr. Ferris’ eyef The grandstands were rapidly
filling with people, and Dr. Ferris jkept interrupting himself con-
stantly to wave to nondescript newcomers, whom Dr. Stadler had
never seen before, but who were personages, as he could tell by the
particular shade of gaily informal deference in Ferris' waving. They

748

all seemed to know Dr. Ferris and to seek him out, as if he were
the master of ceremonies —or the star — of the occasion.

“If you would kindly be specific for a moment,' ” said Dr. Stadler,
“and tell me what — ”

“Hi, Spud!” called Dr. Ferris, waving to a portly, white-haired
man who filled the full-dress uniform of a general.

Dr. Stadler raised his voice: “I said, if you would kindly concen-
trate long enough to explain to me what in hell is going on — "

“But it’s veiy simple. It’s the final triumph of . . You’ll have to
excuse me a minute. Dr. Stadler/' said Dr. Ferris hastily, tearing
forward, like an overtrained lackey at the sound of a bell, in the
direction of what looked like a group of aging rowdies; he turned
hack long enough to add two words which he seemed reverently to
consider as a full explanation: “The press!”

Dr. Stadler sat down on the wooden bench, feeling unaccountably
reluctant to brush against anything around him. The three grand-
stands were spaced at intervals m a semi-curve, like the tiers of a
small, private circus, with room for some three hundred people; they
seemed built lor the viewing of some spectacle — but they faced the
emptiness of a fiat prairie stretching off to the horizon, with nothing
m sight but the dark blotch of a tarmhouse miles awa>

There were radio microphones in front of one stand, which seemed
icscrvcd for the press. I here was a contraption resembling a portable
switchboard in front of the stand reserved fur officials; a few levers
on polished metal sparkled in the sun on the face of the switchboaid.
In an improvised parking lot behind the stands, the glitter of luxuri-
ous new cars seemed a biightly reassuring sight. But it was the build-
ing that stood on a knoll some thousand feet away that gave Dr.
Stadler a vague sense of uneasiness. It was a small, squat structure
of unknown purpose, with massive stone walls, no windows except
a few slits protected by stout iron bars, and a large dome, grotesquely
too heavy lor the rest, that seemed to press the structure down into
the soil. A few outlets protruded from the base of the dome, in
loose, irregular shapes, resembling badly poured clay funnels; they
did not seem to belong to an industrial age or to any known usage
The building had an air of silent malevolence, like a puffed, venom-
ous mushroom; it was obviously modern, but its sloppy, rounded,
ineptly unspecific lines made it look like a primitive structure un-
earthed in the heart of the jungle, devoted to some secret rites of
savagery.

Dr. Stadler sighed with irritation; he was tired of secrets. “Confi-
dential" and “'Fop Confidential" had been the words stamped on
the invitation which had demanded that he travel to Iowa on a two-
day notice and for an unspecified purpose. Two young men. who
called themselves physicists, had appeared at the Institute to escort
hint; his calls to Ferris’ office in Washington had remained unan-
swered. The young men had talked- - through an exhausting trip by
government plane, then a clammy ride in a government car — about
science, emergencies, social equilibriums and the need of secrecy, till
he knew less than he had known at the start; he noticed only that
two words kept recut ring in their jabber, which had also appeared

749

in the text of the invitation, two words that had an ominous sounc
when involving an unknown issue: the demands f6r his ‘‘loyalty’
and "cooperation.”

The young men had deposited him on a bench in the front rou
of the grandstand and had vanished, like the folding gear of a mecha
nism, leaving hint to the sudden presence of Dr, Ferris in person
Now, watching the scene around him, watching Dr. Ferris’ vague
excited, loosely casual gestures in the midst of a group of newsmen
he had an impression of bewildering confusion, of senseless, chaotic
inefficiency — and of a smooth machine working to produce the exaci
degree of that impression needed at the exact moment.

He felt a single, sudden flash of panic, in which, as in a flash ol
lightning, he permitted himself to know that he felt a despeiale de-
sire to escape. But he slammed his mind shut against it. He knew
that the darkest secret of the occasion — more crucial, more untouch
able, more deadly than whatever was hidden in the mushroom build
ing — was that which had made him agree to come.

He would never have to learn his own motive, he thought; he
thought it, not by means of woids, but by means of the brief, viciou;'
spasm of an emotion that resembled irritation and felt like acid. The
words that stood in his mind, as they had stood when he had agreed
to come were like a voodoo formula which one recites when it n
needed and beyond which one must not look: What ran you do when
you have to deal with people?

He noticed that the stand reserved for those whom Ferris hae
called the intellectual elite was larger than the stand prepared foi
government officials. He caught himself feeling a swift little sneai
of pleasure at the thought that he had been placed in the Iron
row. He turned to glance at the tiers behind him. The sensation he
experienced was like a small, gray shock: that random, faded, shop
worn assembly was not his conception of an intellectual elite. Hi
saw defensively belligerent men and tastelessly dressed women — hi
saw mean, rancorous, suspicious faces that bore the one mark incam
patible with a standard bearer of the intellect: the mark of uncer
tainty. He could find no face he knew, no face to recognize as famou!
and none likely ever to achieve such recognition. He wondered b>
what standard these people had been selected.

Then he noticed a gangling figure in the second row, the figure o
an elderly man with a long, stack face that seemed faintly familial
to him, though he could recall nothing about it, except a vague mem
ory, as of a photograph seen in some unsavory publication. Hi
leaned toward a woman and asked, pointing, "Could you tell me ihi
name of that gentleman?” The won^an answered in a whisper o
awed respect, "That is Dr. Simon ^ritchett!” Dr. Stadler turnci
away, wishing no one would see hiifi, wishing no one would evci
learn that he had been a member of jthat group.

He raised his eyes and saw that Feiyis was leading the whole pres?
gang toward him. He saw Ferris sweeping his arm at him, in thi
manner of a tourist guide, and declaring, when they were dost
enough to be heard, "But why should you waste your time on me

750

when (here is the source of today’s achievement, the man who made
it all possible — Dr. Robert Stadler!”

K seemed to him for an instant that he saw an incongruous look
on the worn, cynical faces of the newsmen, a look that was not quite
respect, expectation or hope, but more like an echo of these, like a
faint reflection of the look they might have worn in their youth on
hearing the name of Robeit Stadler. In that instant, he felt an im-
pulse which he would not acknowledge: the impulse to tell them that
he knew nothing about today's event, that his power counted for
less than theirs, that he had been brought here as a pawn in some
confidence game, almost as . . . as a prisoner.

Instead, he heard himself answering their questions in the smug,
condescending tone of a man who shares all the secrets of the highest
authorities- “Yes, the Stale Science Institute is proud of its record
of public service. . . . The State Science Institute is not the tool of
any private interests or personal greed, if is devoted to the welfare
of mankind, to the good of humanity as a whole — ” spouting, like a
dictaphone, the sickening generalities he had hcaid from Dr. Ferris.

He would not permit himself to know that what he felt was self-
loathing; he identified the emotion, but not its object; it was loathing
for the men around him, he thought; it was they who were forcing
him to go through this shameful performance. What can you do—
he thought — when you have to deal with people?

lhe newsmen were making brief notes of his answers. Their faces
now had the look of automatons acting out the routine of pretending
that they were hearing news in the empty utterances of another
automaton.

“Dr. Stadler," asked one of them, pointing at the building on the
knoll, “is it true that you consider Project X the greatest achievement
of the State Science Institute''”

There was a dead drop of silence.

“Project . . . X . . ?” said Dr Stadler.

He knew that something was ominously wrong tn the tone of his
voice, because he saw the heads of the newsmen go up, as at the
sound of an alarm; he saw them wailing, their pencils poised.

For one instant, while he felt the muscles of his face cracking into
the fraud of a smile, he felt a formless, an almost supernatural terror,
as if lie sensed again the silent working of some smooth machine, as
if he were caught in it, part of it and doing its irrevocable will.

Project X?" he said softly, in the mysterious tone of a conspirator.
“Well, gentlemen, the value — and the motive— of any achievement
of the State Science Institute are not to be doubted, since it is a
nonprofit venture— need I say more?”

He raised his head and noticed that Dr. Ferris had stood on the
edge of the group through the whole of the interview. He wondered
whether he imagined that the look on Dr. Ferris’ lace now seemed
•css tense — and more impertinent.

Two resplendent cars came shooting at full speed into the parking
•ot and stopped with a flourish of screeching brakes. The newsmen
deserted him in the middle of a sentence and went running to meet
•he group alighting from the cars.

75 i

Dr. Stadlcr turned to Ferris. " What is Project X?” + he asked
sternly.

Dr. Ferris smiled in a manner of innocence and insolence together.
“A non-profit venture,” he answered — and went running off to meet
the newcomers.

From the respectful whispers of the crowd, Dr. Stadler learned
that the little man in a wilted linen suit, who looked like a shyster,
striding briskly in the center of the new group, was Mr. Thompson,
the Head of the State. Mr. Thompson was smiling, frowning and
barking answers to the newsmen. Dr. Ferris was weaving through
the group, with the grace of a cat rubbing against sundry legs.

The group came closer and he saw Ferris steering them in his
direction. "Mr. Thompson,” said Dr. Ferris sonorously, as they ap-
proached, "may 1 present Dr. Robert Stadler?”

Dr. Stadler saw the little shyster’s eyes studying him for the frac-
tion of a second: the eyes had a touch of superstitious awe, as at the
sight of a phenomenon from a mystical realm forever incomprehensi-
ble to Mr. Thompson— and they had the piercing, calculating shrewd-
ness of a ward heeler who feels certain that nothing is immune from
his standards, a glance like the visual equivalent of the words; What's
your angle?

"It’s an honor. Doctor, an honor. I'm sure,” said Mr. Thompson
briskly, shaking his hand.

He learned that the tall, stoop-shouldered man with a crew haircut
was Mr. Wesley Mouch. He did not catch the names of the others,
whose hands he shook. As the group proceeded toward the officials'
grandstand, he was left with the burning sensation of a discovery he
dared not face: the discovery that he had felt anxiously pleased by
the little shyster's nod of approval.

A party of young attendants, who looked like movie theater ush-
ers, appeared from somewhere with handcarts of glittering objects,
which they proceeded to distribute to the assembly. The objects were
field glasses. Dr. Ferris took his place at the microphone of a public-
address system by the officials’ stand. At a signal from Wesley
Mouch, his voice boomed suddenly over the prairie, an unctuous,
fraudulently solemn voice magnified by the microphone inventor's
ingenuity into the sound and power of a giant:

"Ladies and gentlemen . . . !”

The crowd was struck into silence, all heads jerking unanimously
toward the graceful figure of Dr. Floyd Ferris.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you have been chosen — in recognition of
your distinguished public service and social loyalty — to witness the
unveiling of a scientific achievement of such tremendous importance,
such staggering scope, such epoch-making |K)ssibilities that up to this
moment it has been known only to a very few and only as Project X.”

Dr. Stadler focused his field glasses onflhe only thing in sight-
on the blotch of the distant farm. )

He saw that it was the deserted ruin of a farmhouse, which had ob-
viously been abandoned years ago. Thedightof the sky showed through
the naked ribs of the roof, and jagged bits* of glass framed the dark-
ness of empty windows. He saw a sagging barn, the rusted tower of

752

a water wheel, and the remnant of a tractor lying upturned with its
treads in the air.

Dr. Ferris was talking about the crusaders of science and about
the years of selfless devotion, unremitting toil and persevering re-
search that had gone into Project X.

It was odd — thought Dr. Stadler, studying the ruins of the farm —
that there should be a herd of goats in the midst of such desolation.
There were six or seven of them, some drowsing, some munching
lethargically at whatever grass they could find among the sun-
scorched weeds.

“Project X,” Dr. Ferris was saying, “was devoted to some special
research in the field of sound. The science of sound has astonishing
aspects, which laymen would scarcely suspect. . . .”

Some fifty feet away from the farmhouse, Dr. Stadler saw a struc-
ture, obviously new and of no possible purpose whatever: it looked
like a few spans of a steel trestle, rising into empty space, supporting
nothing, leading nowhere.

Dr. Ferris was now talking about the nature of sound vibrations.

Dr. Stadler aimed his field glasses at the horizon beyond the farm,
but there was nothing else to be seen for dozens of miles. The sud-
den, straining motion of one of the goats brought his eyes back to
the herd. He noticed that the goats were chained to stakes driven
at intervals into the ground.

. . And it was discovered,” said Dr. Ferris, “that there arc
certain Irequendcs of sound vibration which no structure, organic or
inorganic, can withstand. . . .”

Dr Stadler noticed a silvery spot bouncing over the weeds among
the herd. It was a kid that had not been chained: it kept leaping and
weaving about its mother.

“. . . T he sound ray is controlled by a panel inside the giant under-
ground laboratory,” said Dr. Ferris, pointing at the building on the
knoll. “That panel is known to us affectionately as the ‘Xylophone' —
because one must be darn careful to strike the right keys, or, rather,
to pull the right levers. Foi this special occasion, an extension Xylo-
phone, connected to the one inside, has been erected here”— he
pointed to the switchboard in front of the officials' stand — “so that
you may witness the entire operation and see the simplicity of the
whole procedure. . .”

Dr. Stadler found pleasure in watching the kid. a soothing, reassur-
ing kind of pleasure. The little creature seemed barely a week old,
it looked like a ball of white fur with graceful long legs, it kept
bounding in a manner of deliberate, gaily ferocious awkwardness, all
foui of its legs held stiff and straight. It seemed to be leaping at the
sunrays, at the summer air, at the joy of discovering its own exis-
tence.

“. . . The sound ray is invisible, inaudible and fully controllable in
respect to target, direction and range. Its first public test, which you
are about to witness, has been set to cover a small sector, a mere
two miles, in perfect safety, with all space cleared for twenty miles
beyond. The present generating equipment in our laboratory is capa-
ble of producing rays to cover — through the outlets which you may

753

observe under the dome — the entire countryside within 'a radius of
a hundred miles, a circle with a periphery extending from the shore
of the Mississippi, roughly from the bridge of the Taggart Transconti-
nental Railroad, to Des Moines and Fort Dodge, Iowa, to Austin,
Minnesota, to Woodman, Wisconsin, to Rock Island, Illinois. This is
only a modest beginning. We possess the technical knowledge to
build generators with a range of two and three hundred miles— but
due to the fact that wc were unable to obtain in time a sufficient
quantity of a highly heat-resistant metal, such as Rearden Metal, we
had to be satisfied with our present equipment and radius of control.
In honor of our great executive, Mr. Thompson, under whose farsighted
administration the State Science Institute was granted the funds without
which Project X would not have been possible, this great invention will
henceforth be known as the Thompson Harmonizer!”

The crowd applauded. Mr. Thompson sat motionless, with his face
held self-consciously stiff. Dr. Stadlcr felt certain that this small-time
shyster had had as little to do with the Project as any of the movie-
usher attendants, that he possessed neither the mind nor the initia-
tive nor even the sufficient degree of malice to cause a new gopher
trap to be brought into the world, that he, too, was only the pawn
of a silent machine — a machine that had no center, no leader, no
direction, a machine that had not been set m motion by Dr. Ferris
or Wesley Mouch, or any of the cowed creatures in the grandstands,
or any of the creatures behind the scenes— -an impersonal, unthink-
ing, unembodied machine, of which nunc was the driver and all were
the pawns, each to the degree of his evil. Dr. Stadlei gripped the
edge of the bench: he felt a desire to leap to his feet and run.

. . As to the function and the purpose of the sound ray, 1 shall
say nothing. I shall let it speak for itself. You will now see it work.
When Dr. Blodgett pulls the levers of the Xylophone, I suggest that
you keep your eyes on the target — which is that farmhouse two miles
away. There will be nothing else to see. The ray itself is invisible. It
has long been conceded by all progressive thinkers that there are no
entities, only actions — and no values, only consequences. Now, ladies
and gentlemen, you will see the action and the consequences of the
Thompson Harmonize r.”

Dr. Ferris bowed, walked slowly away from the microphone and
came to take his seat on the bench beside Dr. Stadler.

A youngish, fattish kind of man took his stand by the switch-
board — and raised his eyes expectantly toward Mr. Thompson. Mr.
Thompson looked blankly bewildered for an instant, as if something
had slipped his mind, until Wesley Mouch leaned over and whispered
some word into his ear. “Contact!” said Mr. Thompson loudly.

Dr. Stadler could not bear to watch lh£ graceful, undulating, ef-
feminate motion of Dr. Blodgett’s hand as it pulled the first lever of
the switchboard, then the next. He raised nis field glasses and looked
at the farmhouse.

In the instant when he focused his len^, a goat was pulling at its
chain, reaching placidly for a tall, dry thistle. In the next instant, the
goat rose into the air, upturned, its legs Stretching upward and jer-
king, then fell into a gray pile made of seven goats in convulsions.

754

By the time Dr. Stadler believed it, the pile was motionless, except
for one beast’s leg sticking out of the mass, stiff as a rod and shaking
as in a strong wind. The farmhouse tore into strips of clapboard and
went down, followed by a geyser of the bricks of its chimney. The
tractor vanished into a pancake. 'Hie water tower cracked and its
shreds hit the ground while its wheel was still describing a long curve
through the air, as if ot its own leisurely volition. The steel beams
and girders of the solid new trestle collapsed like a structure of
matchsticks under the breath of a sigh. It was so swift, so uncon-
tested, so simple, that Dr. Stadler felt no horror, he felt nothing, it
was not the reality he had known, it was the realm of a child’s
nightmare where material objects could be dissolved by means of a
single malevolent wish.

He moved the field glasses from his eyes. He was looking at an
empty prairie. There was no tarm, there was nothing in the distance
except a darkish strip that looked like the shadow of a cloud.

A single, high, thin scream rose from the tiers behind him, as some
woman fainted. He wondered why she should scream so long after
the fact — and then he realized that the time elapsed since the touch
of the first lever was not a full minute

He raised his held glasses again, almost as if he were suddenly
hoping that the cloud shadow would be all he would see. But the
material objects were still there; they were a mount ot refuse. He
moved his glasses over the wreckage, in a moment, he realized that
he was looking for the kid. He could not find it; there was nothing
but a pile of gray lur.

When he lowered the glasses and turned, he found Dr. Ferris
looking at him. He felt certain that through the whole of the test, it
was not the target, it was his lace that Ferris had watched, as if to
see whether he, Robert Stadler, could withstand the ray.

“I hat’s all there is to it,” the laltish Dr. Blodgett announced
through the microphone, m the ingratiating sales tone of a department-
store floorwalker. “There is no nail or rivet remaining in the frame
of the structures and there is no blood vessel left unbroken in the
bodies of the animals.”

The crowd was rustling with jerky movements and high-pitched
whispers People were looking at one another, rising uncertainly and
dropping down again, restlessly demanding anything but this pause.
There was a sound of submerged hysteria in the whispers. They
seemed to be waiting to be told what to think.

Dr. Stadler saw a woman being escorted down the steps from the
back row, her head bent, a handkerchief pressed to her mouth: she
was sick to her stomach.

He turned away and saw that Dr. Ferris was still watching him.
Dr. Stadler leaned back a little, his face austere and scornful, the
face of the nation’s greatest scientist, and asked. “Who invented that
ghastly thing?”

“You did,”

Dr. Stadler looked at him, not moving.

“It is merely a practical appliance,” said Dr, Ferns pleasantly*
“based upon your theoretical discoveries. U was derived from your

755

invaluable research into the nature of cosmic rays and of the spatial
transmission of energy.”

“Who worked on the Project?”

“A few third-raters, as you would call them. Really, there was
very little difficulty. None of them could have begun to conceive of
the first step toward the concept of your energy-transmission for-
mula, but given that — the rest Was easy.”

“What is the practical purpose of this invention? What are the
‘epoch-making possibilities”?”

“Oh, but don't you see? It is an invaluable instrument of public
security. No enemy would attack the possessor of such a weapon. It
will set the country free from the fear of aggression and permit it
to plan its future in undisturbed safety.” His voice had an odd care-
lessness. a note of offhand improvisation, as if he were neither ex-
pecting nor attempting to be believed. “It will relieve social frictions.
It will promote peace, stability and— as we have indicated — harmony.
It will eliminate all danger of war/’

“What war? What aggression? With the whole world starving and
all those People's vStates barely subsisting on handouts from this
country — where do you sec any danger of war ? Do you expect those
ragged savages to attack you?”

Dr. Ferris looked straight into his eyes. “Internal enemies can be
as great a danger to the people as external ones.” he answered.
“Perhaps greater.” This time his voice sounded as if he expected
and was certain to be understood. “Social systems are so precarious.
But think of what stability could be achieved by a few scientific
installations at strategic key points. It would guarantee a state of
permanent peace — don't you think so?”

Dr. Stadler did not move or answer; as the seconds clicked past
and his face still held an unchanged expression, it began to look
paralyzed. His eyes had the stare of a man who suddenly sees that
which he had known, had known from the first, had spent years
trying not to see, and who is now engaged in a contest between the
sight and his power to deny its existence. “1 don’t know what you’re
talking about!” he snapped at last.

Dr. Ferris smiled. “No private businessman or greedy industrialist
would have financed Project X,” he said softly, in the tone of an idle,
informal discussion. “He couldn’t have afforded it. It’s an enormous
investment, with no prospect of material gain. What profit could he
expect from it? There are no profits henceforth to be derived from
that farm.” He pointed at the dark strip in the distance. “But, as
you have so well observed. Project X had to be a non-profit venture.
Contrary to a business firm, the State Science Institute had no trou-
ble in obtaining funds for the Project. Yi>u have not heard of the
Institute having any financial difficulties the past two years, have
you? And it used to be such a problem -(-getting them to vote the
funds necessary for the advancement off science. They always de-
manded gadgets for their cash, as you usefd to say. Well, here was a
gadget which some people in power cou!d| fully appreciate. They got
the others to vote for it it wasn’t difficult. In fact, a great many of
those others felt safe in voting money for a project that was secret —

756

they fell certain it was important, since they were not considered
important enough to be let in on it. There were, of course, a few
skeptics and doubters. But they gave in when they were reminded
that the head of the State Science Institute was Dr. Robert Stadler —
whose judgment and integrity they could not doubt.”

Or. Stadler was looking down at his fingernails.

The sudden screech of the microphone jerked the crowd into an
instantaneous attentiveness; people seemed to be a second’s worth
of sdf-control away from panic. An announce!, with a voice like a
machine gun spitting smiles, barked cheerily that they were now to
witness the radio broadcast that would break the news of the great
discovery to the whole nation. Then, with a glance at his watch, his
script and the signaling arm of Wesley Mouch. he veiled into the
spaikling snake-head of the microphone — into the living rooms, the
offices, the studies, the nurseries of the country. ‘Ladies and gentle-
men! Project X!”

Dr. Ferris leaned toward Dr. Stadler- through the staccato hoof-
beats of the announcer’s voice galloping across the continent with a
description of the new invention— and said in the tone of a casual
remark. “It is vitally important that there be no criticism of the
Project in the country at this precarious time,” then added semi-
accidentally, as a semi-joke, “that there be no criticism of anything
at any time. '

* * and the nation’s political, cultural, intellectual and moral lead
ers,” the announcer was yelling into the microphone, “who have
witnessed this great event, as your lepresentatives and in your name,
will now tell you their views of it in person!”

Mr. Ihompson was the first to mount the wooden steps to the
platform of the microphone lie snapped his way through a brief
speech, hailing a new era and declaring — in the belligerent tone of
a challenge to unidentified enemies— that science belonged to the
people and that every man on the face of the globe had a right to
a share of the advantages created bv technological progress.

Wesley Mouch came next. He spoke about social planning and the
necessity of unanimous rallying in support of the planners. He spoke
about discipline, unity, austerity and the patriotic duty of bearing
temporary hardships. “We have mobilized the best brains of the
country to work tor your welfare. This great invention was the prod-
uct of the genms of a man whose devotion to the cause of humanity
is not to be questioned, a man acknowledged by all as the greatest
mind of the century — Dr. Robert Stadler!”

“ What ?" gasped Dr. Stadler, whirling toward Ferris.

Dr. Ferris looked at him with a glance of patient mildness.

“He didn’t ask my permission to say that!” Dr. Stadler half-
snapped, half-whispered.

Dr. Ferris spread out his hands in a gesture of reproachful help-
lessness. “Now you see. Dr. Stadler, how unfortunate it is if you
allow yourself to be disturbed by political matters, which you have
always considered unworthy of your attention and knowledge. You
see, it is not Mr. Mouch ’s function to ask permissions.”

The figure now slouching against the sky on the speakers’ plat-

757

form, coiling itself about the microphone, talking in the bored, con-
temptuous tone of an off-color story, was Dr. Simon Pritchett. He
was declaring that the new invention was an instrument of social
welfare, which guaranteed general prosperity, and that anyone who
doubted this self-evident fact was an enemy of society, to be treated
accordingly. “This invention, the product of Dr. Robert Sladler, the
pre-eminent lover of freedom — *'

Dr. Ferris opened a briefcase, produced some pages ol neatly
typed copy and turned to Dr. Stadler. ‘You are to be the climax of
the broadcast,” he said. “You will speak last, at the end of the hour.”
He extended the pages. “Here's the speech you’ll make.” His eyes
said the rest: they said that his choice of words had not been
accidental.

Dr. Stadler took the pages, but held them between the tips of two
straight fingers, as one might hold a scrap of waste paper about to
be tossed aside. “I haven’t asked you to appoint yourself as my ghost
writer,” he said. The sarcasm of the voice gave Ferris his clue: this
was not a moment for sarcasm.

“I couldn't have allowed your invaluable time to be taken up by
the writing of radio speeches,” said Dr. Fern's. “1 felt certain that
you would appreciate it.” He said it in a tone of spurious politeness
intended to be recognized as spurious, the tone of tossing to a beggar
the alms of face-saving.

Dr Stadlcr’s answer disturbed him: Dr. Stadler did not choose to
answer or to glance down at the manuscript.

“Lack of faith.” a beefy speaker was snarling an the platform, in
the tone of a street brawl, “lack of faith is the only thing we got to
fear! If we have faith in the plans of our leaders, why, the plans will
work and we’ll all have prosperity and ease and plenty. It’s the fel-
lows who go around doubting and destroying our morale, it's they
who’re keeping us in shortages and misery. But we're not going to
let them do it much longer, we’re here to protect the people— and
if any of those doubting smarties come around, believe you me, we’ll
take care of them!”

“It would be unfortunate,” said Dr. Ferris in a soft voice, “to
arouse popular resentment against the State Science Institute at an
explosive time like the present. There’s a great deal of dissatisfaction
and unrest in the country — and il people should misunderstand the
nature of the new invention, they’re liable to vent their rage on all
scientists. Scientists have never been popular with the masses.”

“Peace,” a tall, willowy woman was sighing into the microphone,
“this invention is a great, new instrument of peace. It will protect
us from the aggressive designs of selfish enemies, it will allow us to
breathe freely and to learn to love our fellow men.” She had a bony
face w'ith a mouth embittered at cocktail parties, and wore a flowing
pale blue gown, suggesting the concert garment of a harpist. “It may
well be considered as that miracle whichlwas thought impossible in
history — the dream of the ages — the linitl synthesis of science and
love!”

Dr. Stadler looked at the faces in the grandstands. They were
sitting quietly now, they were listening, bat their eyes had an ebbing

758

look of twilight, a look of fear in the process of being accepted as
permanent, the look of raw wounds being dimmed by the veil of
infection. They knew, as he knew it, that they were the targets of
the shapeless funnels protruding from the mushroom building’s
dome — and he wondered in what manner they were now extinguish-
ing their minds and escaping that knowledge; he knew that the words
they were eager to absorb and believe were the chains slipping in
to hold them, like the goats, securely within the range of those fun-
nels. They were eager to believe; he saw the tightening lines of their
lips, he saw the occasional glances of suspicion they threw at their
neighbors— as if the horror that threatened them was not the sound
ray, but the men who would make them acknowledge it as horror.
Their eyes were veiling over, but the remnant look of a wound was
a cry for help.

"Why do you think they think?" said Dr. Ferris softly. "Reason
is the scientist’s only weapon-- and reason has no power over men,
has it? At a time like ours, with the country falling apart, with the
mob driven by blind desperation to the edge of open riots and vio-
lence-order must be maintained by any means available. What can
we do when w r e have to deal with people?"

Di. Stadicr did not answer.

A fat, jellied woman, with an inadequate brassiere under a dark,
peispiration-stained dress, was saying into the microphone — Dr.
Stadicr could not believe it at first — that the new invention was to
be greeted with particular gratitude by the mothers of the country.

Dr. Stadlei turned away; watching him, Ferris could see nothing
but the noble line ol the high forehead and the deep cut of bitterness
at the corner of the mouth.

Suddenly, without context or warning. Robert Stadler whirled to
face him. It was like a spurt of blood from a sudden crack in a
wound that had almost closed: Stadlei 's face was open, open in pain,
m horror, in sincerity, as it, for that moment, both he and Ferris
were human beings, while he moaned with incredulous despair:

‘in a civili/cd century. Ferris, in a civilized century!"

Dr. Ferris took his time to produce and prolong a soft chuckle. "1
don't know what you're talking about." he answered in the tone of
a quotation.

Dr. Stadler lowered his eyes.

When Ferris spoke again, his voice had the faintest edge of a tone
which Stadler could not define, except that it did not belong in any
civilized discussion: "It would be unfortunate if anything were to
happen to jeopardize the State Science Institute. It would be mast
unfortunate if the Institute were to be closed —or if any one of us
were to be forced to leave it. Where would we go? Scientists are
an inordinate luxury these days — and there aren’t many people or
establishments left who’re able to afford necessities, let alone luxu-
ries. There are no doors left open to us. We wouldn’t be welcome
in the research department of an industrial concern, such as — let us
say — Rearden Steel. Resides, if we should happen to make enemies,
the same enemies would be feared by any person tempted to employ
our talents. A man like Rearden would have fought for us. Would

759

a man tike Orren Boyle? But this is purely theoretical speculation,
because, as a matter of practical fact, all private establishments of
scientific research have been dosed by law — by Directive 10-289,
issued, as you might not realize, by Mr Wesley Mouch. Are you
.thinking, perhaps, of universities? They are in the same position.
They can't afford to make enemies. Who would speak up for us? I
believe that some such man as Hugh Akston would have come to
our defense — but to think of that is to be guilty of an anachronism.
He belonged to a different age. The conditions set up in our social
and economic reality have long since made his continued existence
impossible. And l don't think that Dr, Simon Pritchett, or the gener-
ation reared under his guidance, would be able or willing to defend
us. I have never believed in the efficacy of idealists — have you? — and
this is no age for impractical idealism. If anyone wished to oppose a
government policy, how would he make himself heard? Through
these gentlemen of the press, Dr. Stadler? Through this microphone?
Is there an independent newspaper left in the country? An uncon-
trolled radio station? A private piece of property, for that matter —
or a personal opinion?” The tone of the voice was obvious now: it
was the tone of a thug. “A personal opinion is the one luxury that
nobody can afford today.”

Dr. Stadler's lips moved stiffly, as stiffly as the muscles of the
goats. “You are speaking to Robert Stadler.”

“I have not forgotten that. It is precisely because 1 have not forgot-
ten it that I am speaking, ‘Robert Stadler’ is an illustrious name,
which 1 would hate lo see destroyed. But what is an illustrious name
nowadays? In whose eyes?” His arm swept over the grandstands.
“In the eyes of people such as you see around you? If they will
* believe, when so told, that an instrument of death is a tool of pros-
perity — would they not believe it if they were told that Robert
Stadler is a traitor and an enemy of the State? Would you then rely
on the fact that this is not true? Are you thinking of truth, Dr.
Stadler? Questions of truth do not enter into social issues. Principles
have no influence on public affairs. Reason has no power over
human beings. Logic is impotent. Morality is superfluous. Do not
answer me now, Dr. Stadler. You will answer me over the micro-
phone. You’re the next speaker.”

Looking off at the dark strip of the farm in the distance. Dr.
Stadler knew that what he felt was terror, but he would not permit
himself to know its nature. He, who had been able to study the
particles and subparticles of cosmic space, would not permit himself
to examine his feeling and to know that it was made of three parts:
one part was terror of a vision that seemed to stand before his eyes,
the vision of the inscription cut, in his hoiior, over the door of the
Institute: “To the fearless mind, to the inviclatc truth” — another part
was plain, brute, animal fear of physical destruction, a humiliating
fear which, in the civilized world of his yojuth, he had not expected
ever to experience — and the third was thd terror of the knowledge
that by betraying the first, one delivers dneself into the realm of
the second.

He walked toward the speaker's scaffold, his steps firm and slow,

760

his head lifted, the manuscript of the speech held crumpled in his
fingers. It looked like a walk to mount either a pedestal or a guillo-
tine. As the whole of a man’s life flashes before him in his dying
moment, so he walked to the sound of the announcer’s voice reading
to the country the list of Robert Stadler’s achievements and career.
A faint convulsion ran over Robert Stadler's face at the words:
“ — former head of the Department of Physics of the Patrick Henry
University.” He knew, distantly, not as if the knowledge were within
him, but as if it were within some person he was leaving behind,
that the crowd was about to witness an act of destruction more
terrible than the destruction of the farm.

He had mounted the first three steps of the scaffold, when a young
newsman tore forward, ran to him and, from below, seized the railing
to stop him. “Dr. Stadler!” he cried in a desperate whisper. “Tell
them the truth! Tell them that you had nothing to do with it! Tell
them what sort of infernal machine it is and for what purpose it’s
intended to be used! Tell the country what sort of people are trying
to rule it! Nobody can doubt your word! Tell them the truth! Save
us! You’re the only one who can!”

Dr. Stadler looked down at him. He was young: his movements
and voice had that swift, sharp clarity which belongs to competence;
among his aged, corrupt, favor-ridden and pull-created colleagues,
he had managed to achieve the rank of elite of the political press,
by means and in the role of a last, irresistible spark of ability. His
eyes had the look of an eager, unfrightened intelligence; they were
the kind of eyes Dr Stadler had seen looking up at him from the
benches of classrooms. He noticed that this boy's eyes were hazel;
they had a tinge of green.

Dr. Stadler turned his head and saw that Ferris had come rushing
to his side, like a servant or a jailer. “I do not expect to be insulted
by disloyal young punks with treasonable motives.” said Dr. Stadler
loudly.

Dr. Ferris whirled upon the young man and snapped, his face out
of control, distorted by rage at the unexpected and unplanned, “Give
me your press card and your work permit r ’

“1 am proud,” Dr. Stadler read into the microphone and into the
attentive silence of a nation, “that my years of work in the service
of science have brought me the honor of placing into the hands of
our great leader. Mr. Thompson, a new instrument with an incalcula-
ble potential for a civilizing and liberating influence upon the mind
of man. . .

* *

The sky had the stagnant breath of a furnace and the streets of
New York were like pipes running, not with air and light, but with
melted dust. Dagny stood on a street corner, where the airport bus
had left her, looking at the city in passive astonishment. The build-
ings seemed worn by weeks of summer heat, but the people seemed
worn by centuries of anguish. She stood watching them, disarmed by
an enormous sense of unreality.

That sense of unreality had been her only feeling since the early
hours of the morning — since the moment when, at the end of an

761

empty highway, she had walked into an unknown town and stopped
the first passer-by to ask where she was,

“Watsonville,” he answered. “What state, please?” she asked. The
man glanced at her, said, “Nebraska," and walked hastily away. She
smiled mirthlessly, knowing that he wondered where she had come
from and that no explanation he could imagine would be as fantastic
as the truth. Yet it was Watsonville that seemed fantastic to her, as
she walked through its streets to the railroad station. She had lost
the habit of observing despair as the normal and dominant aspect
of human existence, so normal as to become unnoticed— and the
sight of it struck her in all of its senseless futility. She was seeing
the brand of pain and fear on the faces of people, and the look of
evasion that refuses to know it — they seemed to be going through
the motions of some enormous pretense, acting out a ritual to ward
off reality, letting the earth remain unseen and their lives unlived,
in dread of something namelessly forbidden— yet the forbidden was
the simple act of looking at the nature of their pain and questioning
their duty to bear it. She was seeing it so clearly that she kept want-
ing to approach strangers, to shake them, to laugh in their faces and
to cry, “Snap out of it!”

There was no reason for people to be as unhappy as that, she
thought, no reason whatever . . . and then she remembered that
reason was the one power they had banished from their existence

She boarded a Taggart train for the nearest aii field; she did not
identify herself to anyone: it seemed irrelevant. She sat at the win-
dow o! a coach, like a stranger who has to learn the incomprehensi-
ble language of those around her. She picked up a discarded
newspaper; she managed, with ellort, to understand what was writ-
ten, but not why it should ever have been written: it ail seemed so
childishly senseless. She stared in astonishment at a paragiaph in a
syndicated column from New York, which stated overemphatically
that Mr. James Taggart wished it to be known that his sister had
died in an airplane ctash, any unpatriotic rumors to the contrary
notwithstanding. Slowly, she remembered Directive 10-289 and real-
ized that Jim was embarrassed by the public suspicion that she had
vanished as a deserter.

The wording of the paragraph suggested that her disappearance
had been a prominent public issue, not yet dropped. There wete
other suggestions of it: a mention of Miss Taggart’s tragic death, in
a story about the growing number of plane crashes — and, on the
back page, an ad, offering a $100,000 reward to the person who
would find the wreckage of her plane, signed by Henry Reardon.

The last gave her a stab of urgency; the test seemed meaningless.
Then, slowly, she realized that her return v^as a public event which
would be taken as big news. She felt a lethargic weariness at the
prospect of a dramatic homecoming, of facing Jim and the press, of
witnessing the excitement. She wished the^ would get it over with
in her absence.

At the airfield, she saw a small-town reporter interviewing some
departing officials. She waited till he had finished, then she ap-
proached him, extended her credentials and said quietly, to the gap-

762

ing stare of his eyes, ‘Tm Dagny Taggart. Would you make it known,
please, that I'm alive and that I’ll he in New York this afternoon?’'
The plane was about to take oft and she escaped the necessity of
answering questions.

She watched the prairies, the rivers, the towns slipping past at
an untouchable distance below — and she noted that the sense of
detachment one lecls when looking at the earth from a plane was
the same sense she felt when looking at people: only her distance
from people seemed longer.

The passengers were listening to some radio broadcast, which ap-
peared to be important; judging by their earnest attentiveness. She
caught brief snatches ot fraudulent voices talking about some sort
oi new invention that was to bring some undefined benefits to some
undefined public’s welfare. The words were obviously chosen to con-
vey no specific meaning whatever; she wondered how one could pre-
tend that one was hearing a speech; yet that was what the passengers
were doing: They were going through the performance of a child
who, not yet able to read, holds a book open and spells out anything
he wishes to spell, pretending that it is contained m the incomprehen-
sible black lines But the child, she thought, knows that he is playing
a game; these people pretend to themselves that they are not pre-
tending; they know no other state of existence.

The sense of unreality remained as her only feeling, when she
landed, when she escaped a crowd of reporters without being seen --
by avoiding the taxi stands and leaping into the airport bus — when
she rode on the bus, then stood on a street coiner, looking at New
York She felt as if she were seeing an abandoned city.

She felt no sense of homecoming, when she entered her apartment;
the place seemed to be a convenient machine that she could use for
some purpose of no significance whatever.

But she felt a quickened touch of energy, like the first break in a
log— -a touch of meaning -when she picked up the telephone re-
ceiver and called Rearden's office in Pennsylvania.

“Oh, Miss Taggart . . Miss Taggart!" said, in a joyous moan, the
voice of the severe, unemotional Miss Ives.

“Hello. Miss Ives, I haven’t startled you. have I? You knew that
l was alive?"

“Oh yes! I heard it on the radio this morning."

“Is Mr. Ren den in his office 0 "

“No, Miss Taggart. He . . . he’s m the Rocky Mountains, seaiching
for . . . that is , .

“Yes, I know. Do you know where we can reach him?"

“I expect to hear from him at any moment. He’s stopping in Los
Gatos, Colorado, right now. I phoned him. the moment 1 heard the
news, but he was out and 1 left a message for him to call me. You
see, he’s out flying, most of the day . . . but he’ll call me when he
comes back to the hotel."

"What hotel is it?"

"The Eldorado Hotel, in Los Gatos."

"Thank you. Miss Ives." She was about to hang up.

"Oh, Miss Taggart!"

763

"Yes?”

“What was it that happened to you? Where were you?”

“I , . . HI teJI you when I see you. I'm in New York now. When
Mr. Rcarden calls, tell him please that I'll be in my office.”

“Yes, Miss Taggart.”

She hung up, but her hand remained on the receiver, clinging to
her first contact with a matter that had importance. She looked at
her apartment and at the city in the window, feeling reluctant to
sink again into the dead fog of the meaningless.

She raised the receiver and called Los Gatos.

“Eldorado Hotel,” said a woman's drowsily resentful voice,

“Would you take a message for Mr. Henry Rearden? Ask him,
when he comes in, to—”

“Just a minute, please,” drawled the voice, in the impatient tone
that resents any effort as an imposition.

She heard the clicking of switches, some buzzing, some breaks of
silence and then a man’s clear, firm voice answering: “Hello?” It
was Hank Rearden

She stared at the receiver as at the muzzle of a gun. feeling
trapped, unable to breathe.

“Hello?” he repeated.

“Hank is that you?”

She heard a low sound, more a sigh than a gasp, and then the
long, empty crackling of the wire

“Hank!” There was no answer. “Hank!” she screamed in terror.

She thought she heard the effort of a breath— then she heard a
whisper, which was not a question, but a statement saying every-
thing: “Dagny.”

“Hank. I’m sorry — oh, darling. I'm sorry! — didn’t you know?”

“Where are you, Dagny?”

“Arc you all right 9 ”

“Of course.” J

“Didn’t you know that I was back and . . and alive?”

“No . . I didn’t know it.”

“Oh God, I’m sorry I called, l — ”

“What are you talking about? Dagny, where are you 9 ”

“In New York. Didn't you hear about it on the radio?”

“No. I’ve just come in.”

“Didn’t they give you a message to call Miss Ives?”

“No.”

“Arc you all right?”

“Now?” she heard his soft, low chuckle. She was hearing the sound
of unreleased laughter, the sound of youth* growing in his voice with
every word. “When did you come back?” ;

“This morning.”

“Dagny, where were you?” ,

She did not answer at once. “My plane (trashed,” she said. “In the
Rockies. I was picked up by some people who helped me, but l
could not send word to anyone.”

The laughter went out of his voice. “As bad as that?”

764

“Oh ... oh, the crash? No, it wasn’t bad. I wasn’t hurt. Not
seriously.”

“Then why couldn’t you send word?”

“There were no . . . no means of communication.”

“Why did it take you so long to get back?”

“f . . . can’t answer that now.”

“Dagny, were you in danger?”

The half-smiling, half-bitter tone ol her voice was almost regret,
as she answered, “No.”

“Were you held prisoner?”

“No — not really.”

“Then you could have returned sooner, but didn’t?”

“That’s true — but that’s all 1 can tell you.”

“Where were you, Dagny?”

“Do you mind if we don’t talk about it now? Let's wait until l
see you.”

“Of course 1 won’t ask any questions. Just tell me: are you safe
now?”

“Safe? Yes.”

“1 mean, have you suffered any permanent injuries or con-
sequences?”

She answered, with the same sound of a cheerless smile, “Injur-
ies- -no. Hank I don’t know, as to the permanent consequences.”

“Will you still be in New York tonight?”

“Why, yes. I'm . I'm back for good.”

“Aie you *”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I don’t know. 1 guess I’m too used to what it’s like when . . .
when I can’t find you.”

“I’m hack.”

“Yes, HI see you in a few horns” His voice broke off. as if the
sentence were too enormous to believe. “In a few hours,” he re-
peated firmly.

“I'll be here.”

“Dagny —

“Yes?”

He chuckled softly. “No, nothing. Just wanted to hear your voice
awhile longer Forgive me. 1 mean, not now. 1 mean, I don’t want
to say anything now.”

“Hank,' I—”

“When I see you, my darling. So long ”

She stood looking at the silent receiver. For the first time since
her return, she fell pain, a violent pain, but it made her alive, because
it was worth feeling.

She telephoned her secretary at Taggart Transcontinental, to say
briefly that she would be in the office in half an hour.

The statue of Nathaniel Taggart was real— when she stood facing
it in the concouise ot the Terminal. It seemed to her that they were
alone in a vast, echoing temple, with fog coils of formless ghosts
weaving and vanishing around them. She stood still, looking up at

765

the statue, as for a bnet moment of dedication. I’m back-»~were the
only words she had to offer.

“Dagny Taggart 0 was still the inscription on the frosted glass panel
of the door to her office. The look on the faces of her staff, as she
entered the anteroom, was the look of drowning persons at the sight
of a lifeline. She saw Eddie Willers standing at his desk in his glass
enclosure, with some man before him. Eddie made a move in her
direction, but stopped; he looked imprisoned. She let her glance
greet every face in turn, smiling at them gently as at doomed chil-
dren, then walked toward Eddie’s desk.

Eddie was watching her approach as if he were seeing nothing
else in the world, but his rigid posture seemed designed to pretend
that he was listening to the man before him.

“Motive power?’’ the man was saying in a voice that had a
brusque, staccato snap and a slurred, nasal drawl, together. “There’s
no problem about motive power You just take-”

“Hello.” said Eddie softly, with a muted smile, as to a distant
vision.

The man turned to glance at her. He had a yellow complexion,
curly hair, a hard face made of soft muscles, and the revolting hand-
someness belonging to the esthetic standards of barroom corners; his
blurred brown eyes had the empty flatness of glass.

“Miss Taggart,” said Eddie, in a resonant tone of severity, the
tone of slapping the man into the manners of a drawing room he
had never entered, “may 1 present Mr, Meigs > ”

“How d’ do,” said the man without interest, then turned to Eddie
and proceeded, as if she were not present “You just take the Comet
off the schedule for tomorrow and Tuesday, and shoot the engines
-to Ari/ona for the grapefruit special, with the rolling stock from the
Scranton coal run l mentioned. Send the orders out at once.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” she gasped, too incredulous to
be angry.

Eddie did not answer.

Meigs glanced at her with what would have been astonishment if
his eyes were capable of registering a reaction “Send the orders,”
he said to Eddie, with no emphasis, and walked out.

Eddie was jotting notations on a piece of paper.

“Are you crazy?” she asked.

He raised his eyes to her, as though exhausted by hours of beating.
“We’ll have to, Pagny,” he said, his voice dead.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing at the outer door that had
closed on Mr. Meigs.

“The Director of Unification.”

"What?”

“The Washington representative, in charge of the Railroad Unifi-
cation Plan.”

“What’s that?”

“ft’s . . . Oh, wait, Dagny, arc you all right? Were you hurt? Was
it a plane crash?” >

She had never imagined what the face of Eddie Willers would
look like in the process of aging, but she was seeing it now — aging

' 766

at thirty-five and within the span of one month, it was not a matter
of texture or wrinkles, it was the same face with the same muscles,
but saturated by the withering look of resignation to a pain accepted
as hopeless.

She smiled, gently and confidently, in understanding, in dismissal
of all problems, and said, extending her hand, “All right, Eddie,
Hello.”

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips, a thing he had never
done before, his manner neither daring nor apologetic, but simply
and openly personal.

“It was a plane crash,” she said, “and, Eddie, so that you won’t
worry. I'll tell you the truth: 1 wasn't hurt, not seriously. But that’s
not the story I’m going to give to the press and to all the others. So
you're never to mention it.”

“Of course ”

“I had no way to communicate with anyone, but not because I
was hurt. It’s all I can tell you. Eddie. Don't ask me where 1 was or
why it took me so long to return.”

“I won't.”

"Now tell me, what is the Railroad Unification Plan?”

“It's . . . Oh, do you mind? —let Jim tell you. He will, soon enough.
1 just don't have the stomach — unless you want me to,” he added,
with a conscientious effort at discipline.

“No, you don't have to. Just tell me whether I understood that
Unilicator correctly: he wants you to cancel the Comet for two days
in order to give her engines to a grapefruit special in Arizona?”

“ I hat’s right ”

“And he’s cancelled a coal train in order to get cars to lug
grapefruit?”

“Yes.”

“ Grapefruit ?*'

That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Dagny, 'why' is a word nobody uses any longer.”

After a moment, she asked, “Have you any guess about the
reason?”

“Guess? I don’t have to guess. 1 know.'’

“All light, what is it?"

“'Hie grapefruit special is tor the Smather brothers. The Smather
brothers bought a fruit ranch in Arizona a year ago, from a man
who went bankrupt under the Equalization of Opportunity Bill. He
had owned the ranch for thirty years. The Smather brothers were in
the punch board business the year before. They bought the ranch by
means of a loan from Washington under a project for the reclamation
of distressed areas, such as Arizona. The Smather brothers have
friends in Washington.”

“Well?”

“Dagny, everybody knows it. Everybody knows how train sched-
ules have been run in the past three weeks, and why some districts
and some shippers get transportation, while others don’t. What we’re
not supposed to do is say that we know it. We’re supposed to pretend

767

to believe that ‘public welfare’ is the only reason for any decision —
and that the public welfare of the city of New York requires the
immediate delivery of a large quantity of grapefruit.” He paused,
then added, ‘The Director of Unification is sole judge of the public
welfare and has sole authority over the allocation of any motive
power and rolling stock on any railroad anywhere in the United
States.”

There was a moment of silence. “I see,” she said. In another mo-
ment, she asked, “What has been done about the Winston tunnel?”

“Oh, that was abandoned three weeks ago. They never unearthed
the trains. The equipment gave out.”

“What has been done about rebuilding the old line around the
tunnel?”

“That was shelved.”

“Then are we running any transcontinental traffic?”

He gave her an odd glance. “Oh yes,” he said bitterly.

“Through the detour of the Kansas Western?”

“No.”

“Eddie, what has been happening here in the past month?”

He smiled as it his words were an ugly confession “We’ve been
making money in the past month,” he answered.

She saw the outer door open and Janies Taggart come in, accom-
panied by Mr. Meigs, “Eddie, do you want to be present at the
conference?” she asked. “Or would you rather miss this one?”

“No. I want to he present.”

Jim’s face looked like a crumpled piece of paper, though ils soft,
puffed flesh had acquired no additional lines.

“Dagny. there's a lot ot things to discuss, a lot oi important
changes which—” he said shrilly, his voice rushing in ahead of his
person. “Oh, I’m glad to see you back. I’m happy that you're alive,”
he added impatiently, remembering. “Now there are some urgent-

“Let’s go to my office,” she said.

Her office was like a historical reconstruction, restored and main-
tained by Eddie Willers. Her map. her calendar, (he picture of Nat
Taggart were on the walls, and no trace was left ot the Clifton
Locey era.

T understand that l am still the Operating Vice-President of this
railroad?" she asked, sitting down at her desk.

“You are,” said Taggart hastily, accusingly, almost defiantly. “You
certainly are — and don’t you forget it — you haven't quit, you’re
still --have you?”

“No, l haven’t quit.”

“Now the most urgent thing to do is to tell that to the press, tell
them that you’re back on the job and where you were and — and, by
the way, where were you?”

“Eddie.” she said, “will you make a n<|tc on this and send it to
the press? My plane developed engine trouble while I was flying
over the Rocky Mountains to the Taggart Tunnel. 1 lost my way,
looking for an emergency landing, and clashed in an uninhabited
mountain section — of Wyoming, f was found by an old shccpherder
and his wife, who took me to their cabin, deep in the wilderness,

768

fifty miles away from the nearest settlement. I was badly injured and
remained unconscious for most of two weeks. The old couple had
no telephone, no radio, no means of communication or transporta-
tion, except an old truck that broke down when they attempted to
use it. I had to remain with them until l recovered sufficient strength
to walk. 1 walked the fifty miles to the foothills, then hitch-hiked my
way to a Taggart station in Nebraska.”

“I see,” said Taggart. “Well, that’s fine. Now when you give the
press interview — ”

‘Tin not going to give any press interviews.”

"What? But they’ve been calling me all day! They’re waiting! It’s
essential!” He had an air of panic, "ft's most crucially essential!”

“Who’s been calling you all day?”

“People in Washington and . . . and others . . . They're waiting
for your statement.”

She pointed at Eddie’s notes. “There's my statement.”

“But that's not enough! You must say that you haven’t quit.”

“That’s obvious, isn’t it? I'm hack,”

“You must say something about it.”

“Such as what?”

“Something personal.”

“To whom?”

“To the country. People were worried about you. You must reas-
sure them.”

“The story will reassure them, if anyone was worried about me.”

“That’s not what 1 mean!”

“Well, what do you mean?”

“1 mean — ” He stopped, his eyes avoiding hers. “1 mean — ” He
sat, searching for words, cracking his knuckles.

Jim was going to pieces, she thought; the jerky impatience, the
shrillness, the aura of panic were new: crude outbreaks of a tone of
ineffectual menace had replaced his pose of cautious smoothness.

“1 mean—” He was searching for words to name his meaning
without naming it, she thought, to make her understand that which
he did not want to be understood. “1 mean, the public — ”

“I know what you mean.” she said. “No, Jim, I’m not going to
reassure the public about the stale of our industry.”

“Now you’re — ”

“The public had better be as unreassured as it has the wits to be.
Now proceed to business,”

“I—”

“Proceed to business, Jim.”

He glanced at Mr. Meigs. Mr. Meigs sat silently, his legs crossed,
smoking a cigarette. He wore a jacket which was not, but looked
like, a military uniform. The flesh of his neck bulged over the collar,
and the flesh of his body strained against the narrow waistline in-
tended to disguise it. He wore a ring with a large yellow diamond
that flashed when he moved his stubby fingers.

“You’ve met Mr. Meigs,” said Taggart, “I’m so glad that the two
of you will get along well together.” He made an expectant half-
pause, but received no answer from either. “Mr. Meigs is the repre-

769

tentative of the Railroad Unification Plan. You’ll have many oppor-
tunities to cooperate with him."

“What is the Railroad Unification Plan?"

“It is a ... a new national setup that went into effect three weeks
ago, which you will appreciate and approve of and find extremely
practical." She marveled at the futility of his method: he was acting
as if. by naming her opinion in advance, he would make heT unable
to alter it. "It is an emergency setup which has saved the country’s
transportation system."

"What is the plan?"

“You realize, of course, the insui mountable difficulties of any sort
of construction job during this period of emergency It is — temporar-
ily — impossible to lav new track Therefore, the country's top prob-
lem is to preserve the transportation industry as a whole . to preserve
its existing plant and all of its existing facilities The national survival
requires — “

"What is the plan 9 "

"As a policy of national survival, the railroads of the country have
been unified into a single team, pooling their resources. All of their
gross revenue is turned over to the Railroad Pool Board in Washing-
ton, which acts as trustee for the industry as a whole, and divides
the total income among the various railroads, according to a . . a
more modern principle of distribution '*

"What principle?"

“Now don’t worry, property rights have been fully preserved and
protected, they've merely been given a new form. Hvery railroad
retains independent responsibility for its own operations, its train
schedules and the maintenance of its track and equipment. As its
contribution to the national pool, every railroad permits any other,
when conditions so require, to use its track and facilities without
charge. At the end of the year, the Pool Board distributes the total
gross income, and every individual railroad is paid, not on the hap-
hazard, old-fashioned basis of the number of trains run or the tonnage
of freight carried, but on the basis ol its need — that is, the preserva-
tion of its track being its mam need, every individual railroad is paid
according to the mileage of the track which it owns and maintains."

She heard the words; she understood the meaning; she was unable
to make it real — to grant the respect of anger, concern, opposition
to a nightmare piece of insanity that rested on nothing but people’s
willingness to pretend to believe that it was sane She felt a numbed
emptiness — and the sense of being thrown far below the realm where
moral indignation is pertinent

“Whose track are we using for our transcontinental traffic?" she
asked, her voice flat and dry.

“Why, our own, of course," said Tagg«u nastily, “that is, from
New York to Bedford, Illinois. We run ou£ trains out of Bedford on
the track of the Atlantic Southern."

“To San Francisco?"

“Well, it’s much faster than that long detour you tried to
establish."

770

“We run our trains without charge for the use of the track?”

“Besides, your detour couldn’t have lasted, the Kansas Western
rail was shot, and besides — ”

“Without charge for the use of the Atlantic Southern track?”

“Well, we’re not charging them for the use of our Mississippi
bridge, either.”

Alter a moment, she asked, “Have you looked at a map?”

“Sure,” said Meigs unexpectedly. “You own the hugest track mile-
age ot any railroad in the country. So you’ve got nothing to worry
about.”

Eddie Willers burst out laughing.

Meigs glanced at him blankly. “What's the matter with you?" he
asked,

“Nothing,” said Eddie wearily, “nothing."

“Mr. Meigs,” she said, “if you look at a map, you will see that
two-thirds of the cost of maintaining a track for our transcontinental
traffic is given to us free and is paid by our competitor.”

“Why, sure,” he said, but his eyes narrowed, watching her suspi-
ciously. as il he were wondering what motive prompted her to so
explicit a statement.

“While we’re paid for owning miles of useless track which carries
no traffic,” she said.

Meigs understood- -and leaned back as if he had lost all further
interest in the discussion

“That's not true!” snapped Taggart “We re running a great num-
ber of lix«il trains to serve the region of our former transcontinental
line - through Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado — and, on the other side
ot the tunnel, through California, Nevada and Utah.”

“We’re running two locals a day,' said Eddie Willers, in the dry.
blankly innocent tone of a business report. “Fewer, some places.”

“What determines (he number of trains which any given railroad
is obligated to run?” she asked.

“The public welfare,” said Taggart.

“The Pool Board,” said Eddie.

“How many trains have been discontinued in the country in the
past three weeks?”

“As a matter of fact.” said Taggart eagerly, “the plan has helped
to harmonize the industry and to eliminate cutthroat competition,”

“It has eliminated thirty per cent of the trains run in the country*”
said Eddie. “The only competition left is in the applications to the
Board lor permission to cancel trains. The railroad to survive w\|l
be the one that manages to run no trains at all.”

“Has anybody calculated how long the Atlantic Southern is ex-
pected to be able to remain in business?”

“That’s no skin off your — ” started Meigs.

“ Please , Cuffy!” cried Taggart.

“The president of the Atlantic Southern,” said Eddie impassively,
“has committed suicide.”

“That had nothing to do with this!” yelled Taggart. “It was over
a personal matter!”

She remained silent. She sat, looking at their faces. There was still

771

an clement of wonder in the numbed indifference of her mind: Jim
had always managed to switch the weight of his failures upon the
strongest plants around him and to survive by destroying them to
pay for his errors, as he had done with Dan Conway, as he had
done with the industries of Colorado; but this did not have even the
rationality ot a looter— this pouncing upon the drained carcass of a
weaker, a half-bankrupt competitor for a moment's delay, with noth-
ing but a cracking bone between the pouncer and the abyss.

The impulse of the habit of reason almost pushed her to speak,
to argue, to demonstrate the self-evident— but she looked at their
faces and she saw that they knew it. In some terms different from
hers, in some inconceivable manner of consciousness, they knew all
that she could tell them, it was useless to prove to them the irrational
horror of their course and of its consequences, both Meigs and Tag-
gart knew it — and the secret ol their consciousness was the means
by which they escaped the finality of their knowledge.

“I see,” she said quietly.

“Well, what would you rather have had me do?” screamed Tag-
gart. “Give up our transcontinental traffic? Go bankrupt? Turn the
railroad tnto a miserable East Coast local?” Her two words seemed
to have hit him worse than any indignant objection; he seemed to
be shaking with terror at that which the quiet “I see” had acknowl-
edged seeing. “I couldn’t help it! We had to have a transcontinental
track! There was no way to get around the tunnel! We had no money
to pay for any extra costs! Something had to be done! We had to
have a track*”

Meigs was looking at him with a glance ot part-astonishment,
part-disgust.

“I am not arguing, Jim,” she said dryly.

“We couldn’t permit a railroad like Taggart Transcontinental to
crash! It would have been a national catastrophe! We had to think
of all the cities and industries and shippers and passengers and em-
ployees and stockholders whose lives depend on us! ft wasn’t just
for ourselves, it was for the public welfare! Everybody agrees that
the Railroad Unification Plan is practical! The best-informed—”

“Jim,” she said, “if you have any further business to discuss with
me — discuss it.”

“You’ve never considered the social angle of anything,” he said,
in a sullen, retreating voice.

She noticed that this form of pretense was as unreal to Mr, Meigs
as it was to her, though for an antipodal reason. He was looking at
Jim with bored contempt. Jim appeared to her suddenly as a man
who had tried to find a middle course between two poles — Meigs
and herself — and who was now seeing th^t his course was narrowing
and that he was to be ground between two straight walls.

“Mr. Meigs,” she asked, prompted by h touch of bitterly arriused
curiosity, “what is your economic plan fqr day after tomorrow?”

She saw his bleary brown eyes focus upon her without expression.
“YouYe impractical,” he said.

”It*s perfectly useless to theorize about the future,” snapped Tag-

772

gart, "when we have to take care of the emergency of the moment.
In the long run — "

"In the long run, we’ll all be dead," said Meigs.

Then, abruptly, he shot to his feet. "Ill run along, Jim," he said.
“I’ve got no time to waste on conversations." He added, "You talk
to her about that matter of doing something to stop all those train
wrecks— if she’s the little girl who’s such a wizard at railroading." It
was said inoffensively; he was a man who would not know when he
was giving offense or taking it.

“I’ll sec you later, Ouffy." said Taggart, as Meigs walked out with
no parting glance at any of them.

Taggart looked at her, expectantly and fearfully, as if dreading her
comment, yet desperately hoping to hear some woid, any word.

"Well?” she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Have you anything else to discuss?"

"Well, I . . He sounded disappointed. "Yes!" he cried, in the
tone of a desperate plunge. "I have another matter to discuss, the
most important one of all. the—"

"Your growing number of train wrecks?"

"No! Not that."

"What, then'"'

"It's . . .that youie going to appear on Beitram Scudder’s radio
program tonight."

She leaned back. "Am I?"

"Dagny, it’s imperative, it’s ciuciul. there’s nothing to be done
about it, to refuse is out of the question, m times like these one has
no choice, and—"

She glanced at her watch. "I’ll give you three minutes to explain —
it you want to be heard at all. And you'd better speak straight."

"a\11 right!" he said desperately. "It’s considered most important —
cm the highest levels, 1 mean Chick Morrison and Wesley Mouch
and Mr. Thompson, as high as that that you should make a speech
to the nation, a moi ale-building speech, >ou know, saying that you
haven’t quit "

"Why?"

"Because everybody thought you had! . . . You don't know what's
been going on lately, but . . but it's sort of uncanny. The country
is full of minors, all sorts of rumors, about everything, all of them
dangerous Disruptive, 1 mean. People seem to do nothing but whis-
per. They don't believe the newspapers, they don't believe the best
speakers, they believe every vicious, scare -mongering piece of gossip
that comes Heating aiound. Theie’s no confidence left, no faith, no
order, no . . . no respect for authority. People . . . people seem to
be on the verge of panic "

"Well?"

"Well, tor one thing, it's the damnable business of all those big
industrialists who’ve vanished into thin air! Nobody’s been able to
explain it and it's giving them the jitters. There’s all sorts of hysteri-
cal stuff being whispered about it. but what they whisper mostly is
that ‘no decent man will work for those people,' Hiey mean the

773

people in Washington, Now do you sec? You wouldn’t .suspect that
you were so famous, but you are, or you’ve become, ever since your
plane crash. Nobody believed the plane crash. They all thought you
had broken the law, that is. Directive 10-289, and deserted. There’s
a lot of popular . . . misunderstanding of Directive 10-289, a lot
of . . , well, unrest. Now you see how important it is that you go on
the air and tell people that it isn’t true that Directive 10-289 is
destroying industry, that it’s a sound piece of legislation devised for
everybody’s good, and that if they’ll just be patient a little longer,
things will improve and prosperity will return. They don’t believe
any public official any more. You . . . you’re an industrialist, one of
the few left of the old school, and the only one who’s ever come
back after they thought you’d gone. You’re known as ... as a
reactionary who’s opposed to Washington policies. So the people
will believe you. It would have a great influence on them, it would
buttress their confidence, it would help their morale. Now do you
see?”

He had rushed on. encouraged by the odd look of her face, a look
of contemplation that was almost a faint half-smile.

She had listened, hearing, through his words, the sound of Rear-
den's voice saying to her on a spring evening over a year ago* “They
need some sort of sanction from us. I don’t know the nature of that
sanction — but, Dagny, I know that if we value our lives, we must
not give it to them. If they put you on a torture rack, don’t give it
to them. Let them destroy your railroad and my mills, but don’t give
it to them.”

“Now do you see?”

“Oh yes, Jim, 1 see!”

He could not interpret the sound of her voice, it was low, it was
part-moan, part-chuckle, part-triumph — but it was the first sound of
emotion to come from her. and he plunged on, with no choice but
to hope. “1 promised them in Washington that you’d speak! We
can’t fail them — not in an issue of this kind! We can’t afford to be
suspected of disloyalty. It’s all arranged. You’ll be the guest speaker
on Bertram Scudder's program, tonight, at ten-thirty. He's got a
radio program where he interviews prominent public figures, it’s a
national hookup, he has a large following, he reaches over twenty
million people. The office of the Morale Conditioner has — ”

“The whutV ’

“The Morale Conditioner — that’s Chick Morrison — has called me
three limes, to make sure that nothing would go wrong. They’ve
issued orders to all the news broadcasters, who’vc been announcing
it all day, all over the country, telling people to listen to you tonight
on Bertram Scudder’s hour ”

He looked at her as if he were demanding both an answer and
the recognition that her answer was the ejement of least importance
in these circumstances. She said, “You know what 1 think of the
Washington policies and of Directive KL&89 ”

“At a time like this, y/c can’t afford the luxury of thinking!”

She laughed aloud.

“But don’t you see that you can’t refuse them now?” he yelled.

774

‘'If you don’t appear after all those announcements* it will support
the rumors, it will amount to an open declaration of disloyalty!”

“The trap won’t work. Jim.”

'■What trap?”

‘ The one you’re always setting up.”

”1 don't know what you mean!”

“Yes, you do. You knew- -all ol you knew it— that I would refuse.
So you pushed me into a public trap, where my refusal would be-
come an embarrassing scandal for you, more embarrassing than you
thought I’d dare to cause. You were counting on me to save your
faces and the necks you stuck out. I won’t save them.”

“But I promised it!”

“1 didn't.”

“But we can t refuse them! Don't you see that they've got us
hoglied 7 That they’re holding us by the throat? Don't you know
what they can do to us through this Railroad Pool, or through the
Unification Board, or through the moratorium on our bonds?”

“I knew that two years ago.”

He was shaking; there was some formless, desperate, almost super-
stitious quality in his terror, out of proportion to the dangers he
named She felt suddenly certain that it came from something deeper
than his fear of bureaucratic reprisal, that the reprisal was the only
identification of u which he would permit himsell to know, a reassur-
ing identification which had a semblance ol lationality and hid his
true motive. She felt ceitam that it was not the country’s panic he
wanted to stave off, but his own— that he. and Chick Morrison and
Wesley Mouch and all the rest ol the looting crew needed her sanc-
tion. not to reassure their victims, but to reassure themselves, though
the allegedly crafty, the allegedly practical idea of deluding their
victims was the only identification they gave to their own motive and
their hysterical insistence. With an awed contempt -awed by the
enormity of the sight — she wondered what inner degradation those
men had to reach in order to arrive at a level of self-deception where
they would seek the extorted approval of an unwilling victim as the
moral sanction thev needed, they who thought that they were merely
deceiving the world.

“We have no choice!” he cried “Nobody has any choice!”

“Get out of here,” she said, her voice very quiet and low.

Some tonal quality in the sound of her voice struck the note of
the uneonfessed within him, as i(. never allowing it into words, he
knew from what knowledge that sound had come. He got out.

She glanced at Eddie; he looked like a man worn by fighting one
more of the attacks of disgust which he was learning to endure as a
chronic condition.

After a moment, he asked, “Dagny, what became of Quentin Dan-
iels? You were flying after him, weren't you?”

“Yes,” she said. “He’s gone.”

“To the destroyer?”

The word hit her like a physical blow. It was the first touch of the
outer world upon that radiant presence which she had kept within
her all day, as a silent, changeless vision, a private vision, not to be

775

affected by any of the things around her, not to be thought about,
only to be felt as the source of her strength. The, destroyer, she
realized, was the name of that vision, here, in their world.

“Yes,” she said dully, with effort, “to the destroyer.”

Then she dosed her hands over the edge of the desk, to steady
her purpose and her posture, and said, with the bitter hint of a smile,
“Well, Eddie, let's sec what two impractical persons, like you and
me. can do about preventing the train wrecks.”

It was two hours later— when she was alone at her desk, bent over
sheets of paper that bore nothing but figures, yet were like a motion-
picture film unrolling to tell her the whole story of the railroad m
the past four weeks — that the buzzer rang and her secretary’s voice
said, “Mrs. Reardon to see you, Miss Taggart.”

“Mr. Rearden?” she asked incredulously, unable to believe cither.

“No. Mrs. Rearden.”

She let a moment pass, then said, “Please ask her to come in.”

There was some peculiar touch of emphasis in Lillian Rearden’s
bearing when she entered and walked toward the desk. She wore a
tailored suit, with a loose, bright bow hanging casualty sidewise for
a note of elegant incongruity, and a small hat tilted at an angle
considered smart by virtue of being considered amusing; her face
was a shade too smooth, her steps a shade too slow, and she walked
almost as if she were swinging her hips,

“How do you do. Miss Taggart,” she said in a la/tly gracious voice,
a drawing-room voice which seemed to strike, in that office, the same
style of incongruity as her suit and her bow.

Dagny inclined her head gravely.

Lillian glanced about the office, her glance had the same style of
amusement as her hat: an amusement purporting to express maturity
by the conviction that life could be nothing but ridiculous.

“Please sit down,” said Dagnv.

Lillian sat down, relaxing into a confident, gracefully casual pos-
ture. When she turned her face to Dagny, the amusement was still
there, but its shading was now different, it seemed to suggest that
they shared a secret, which would make her presence here seem
preposterous to the world, but sell evidently logical to the two of
them. She stressed it by remaining silent.

“What can 1 do for you 7 ”

"I came to tell you,” said Lillian pleasantly, "that you will appear
on Bertram Scudder’s bioadcast tonight.”

She detected no astonishment in Dagnys lace, no shock, only the
glance of an engineer studying a motor that makes an incgular
sound. “I assume,” said Dagny, “that you are fully aware of the
form of your sentence.”

“Oh yes!” said Lillian.

“Then proceed to support it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Proceed to tell me.”

Lillian gave a brief little laugh, its fonued brevity betraying that
this was not quite the attitude she had expected. “1 am sure that no
lengthy explanation will be necessary,” she said. “You know why

776

your appearance on that broadcast is important to those in power,
I know why you have refused to appear. I know your convictions
on the subject. You may have attached no importance to it, but you
do know that my sympathy has always been on the side of the system
now in power. Therefore, you will understand my interest in the
issue and my place in it. When your brother told me that you had
refused, I decided to take a hand m the matter — because, you see,
l am one of the very few who know that you are not in a position
to refuse.”

“I am not one of those few, as yet,” said Dagny.

Lillian smiled. “Well, yes, 1 must explain a little further. You real-
ize that your radio appearance will have the same value for those in
power as — as the action of my husband when he signed the Gift
Certificate that turned Rearden Metal over to them. You know how
trcquently and how usefully they have been mentioning it in all of
their piopaganda.”

“I didn't know that,” said Dagny sharply.

“Oh, of course, you have been away for most of the last two
months, so you might have missed the constant reminder— in the
press, on the radio, in public speeches — that even Hank Rcardcn
approves of and supports Directive 10-289, since he has voluntarily
signed his Metal over to the nation. Even Hank Rearden That dis-
courages a great many recalcitrants and helps to keep them in line.”
She leaned back and asked in the tone of a casual aside, “Have you
ever asked him why he signed?”

Dagny did not answer: she did not seem to hear that it was a
question: she sat still and her lace was expressionless, but her eyes
seemed loo large and they were fixed on Lillian’s, as if she were
nmv intent upon nothing but hearing Lillian to the end.

“No. I didn’t think you knew' it. I didn’t think that he would
ever tell you,” said Lillian, her voice smoother, as it recognizing the
signposts and sliding comfortably down the anticipated course “Yet
you must learn the reason that made him sign— -because it is the
same reason that will make you appear on Bertram Scudder’s broad-
cast tonight.”

She paused, wishing to be urged. Dagny waited.

“It is a reason,” said Lillian, “which should please you— as far as
my husband’s action is concerned. Consider what that signature
meant to him Rearden Metal was his greatest achievement, the sum-
mation of the best in his hte. the final symbol ot his pride— and my
husband, as you have reason to know, is an extremely passionate
man, his pride in himself being, perhaps, his greatest passion. Rear-
den Metal was more than an achievement to him, it was the symbol
of his ability to achieve, of his independence, of his snuggle, of his
rise It was his propel tv, his by right — and you know what rights
mean to a man as strict as he, and what property means to a man
as possessive. He would have gladly died to defend it. rather than
surrender it to the men he despised. This is what it meant to him —
and this is what he gave up. You will be glad to know that he gave
it up for your sake. Miss Taggart. For the sake of your reputation
and your honor. He signed the Gilt Certificate surrendering Rearden

777

Metal — under the threat that the adultery he was carrying on with
you would be exposed to the eyes of the world. Oh yes, we had full
proof of it. in every intimate detail. I believe that you hold a philoso-
phy which disapproves of sacrifice — but in this case, you are most
certainly a woman, so Vm sure that you will feel gratification at the
magnitude of the sacrifice a man has made for the privilege of using
your body. You have undoubtedly taken great pleasure in the nights
which he spent in your bed. You may now take pleasure in the
knowledge of what those nights have cost him. And since — you like
bluntness, don't you. Miss Taggart?- -since your chosen status is that
of a whore. 1 take my hat off to you in regard to the price you
exacted, which none of your sisters could ever have hoped to match/'

Lillian’s voice had kept growing reluctantly sharper, like a drill-
head that kept breaking by being unable to find the line of the fault
in the stone. Dagny was still looking at her, but the intensity had
vanished from Dagny ’s eyes and posture. Lillian wondered why she
felt as il Dagny ’s face were hit by a spotlight. She could detect no
particular expression, it was simply a face in natural repose- -and the
clarity seemed to come from its structure, from the precision of its
sharp planes, the firmness of the mouth, the steadiness of the eyes.
She could not decipher the expression of the eyes, it seemed incon-
gruous, if resembled the calm, not of a woman, but of a scholar,
it had that peculiar, luminous quality which is the tearlessness ot
satisfied knowledge.

‘it was I," said Lillian softly, “who informed the bureaucrats about
my husband’s adultery.”

Dagny noticed the first flicker ot feeling m Lillian’s lifeless eyes:
it resembled pleasure, but so distantly that it looked like sunlight
reflected from the dead surface of the moon to the stagnant water
of a swamp; il flickered for an instant and went.

“It was 1,” said Lillian, “who took Reardcn Metal away from
him.” It sounded almost like a plea.

It was not within the power of Dagny ’s consciousness ever to un-
derstand that plea or to know what response Lillian had hoped to
find; she knew only that she had not found it, when she heaul the
sudden shrillness of Lillian's voice. “Have you understood me?"

“Yes.”

“Then you know what I demand and why you'll obey me. You
thought you were invincible, you and he, didn't you?’* The voice was
attempting smoothness, but it was jerking unevenly. “You have al-
ways acted on no will but your own — a luxury' I have not been able
to afford. For once and in compensation, I will sec you acting on
mine. You can’t fight me. You can’t buy your way out of it. with
those dollars which you’re able to make and I'm not. Hide's no
profit you can offer me — I’m devoid of greed. I'm not paid by the
bureaucrats for doing this — I am doing |t without gain. Without gain.
Do you understand me?” f

“Yes.”

“Then no further explanations are necessary, only the reminder
that all the factual evidence — hotel registers, jewelry bills and stuff
like that — is still in the possession of fhe right persons and will be

778

broadcast on every radio program tomorrow, unless you appear on
one radio program tonight. Is this clear?’'

“Yes.”

•‘Now what is your answer?” She saw the luminous scholar-eyes
looking at her, and suddenly she felt as if too much of her were seen
and as if she were not seen at all.

“I am glad that you have told me,” said Dagny. “I will appear on
Bertram Scudder’s broadcast tonight.”

* *

There was a beam of white light beating down upon the glittering
metal of a microphone— in the center of a glass cage imprisoning
her with Bertram Scudder. The sparks of glitter were greenish-blue;
the microphone was made of Rearden Metal.

Above them, beyond a sheet of glass, she could distinguish a booth
with two rows of faces looking down at her: the lax, anxious face of
James Taggart, with Lillian Rearden beside him, her hand resting
reassuringly on his arm — a man who had arrived by plane from
Washington and had been introduced to her as Chick Morrison —
and a group of young men from his stall, who talked about percent-
age curves of intellectual influence and acted like motorcycle cops.

Bertram Scudder seemed to be alraid of her. He clung to the
microphone, spitting words into its delicate mesh, into the ears of
the country, introducing the subject of his program. He was laboring
to sound cynical, skeptical, superior and hysterical together, to sound
like a man who sneers at the vanity of all human beliefs and thereby
demands an instantaneous belict from his listeners. A small patch of
moisture glistened on the back of his neck. He was describing in
overcolored detail her month ol convalescence in the lonely cabin
of a shecpheider, then her heroic trudging down liity miles of moun-
tain trails for the sake ol tesummg her duties to the people in this
grave hour ol national emergency

”, . . And it any of you have been deceived by vicious rumors
aimed to undermine your faith in the great social program of our
leaders — you may trust the woid of Miss Taggart, who--”

She stood, looking up at the white beam. Specks of dust were
whirling in the beam and she noticed that one of them was alive: it
was a gnat with a tiny sparkle in place ol its beating wings, it was
sliuggling for some frantic purpose of its own, and she watched it,
tooling as distant from its purpose as front that of the world.

. . Miss Taggart is an impartial observer, a brilliant business-
woman who has often been critical of the government in the past
and who may be said to represent the extreme, conservative view-
point held by such giants of industry as Hank Rearden. Yet even
she—”

She wondered at how easy it felt, when one did not have to feel;
she seemed to be standing naked on public display, and a beam of
light was enough to support her, because there was no weight of
pain in her, no hope, no regret, no concern, no future,

. . And now, ladies and gentlemen, 1 will piesent to you the
heroine of this night, our most uncommon guest, the — ”

Pain came back to her in a sudden, piercing stab, like a long

779

splinter from the glass of a protective wall shattered by the knowl-
edge that the next words would be hers; it came back for the brief
length of a name in her mind, the name of the man she had called
the destroyer: she did not want him to hear what she would now
have to say. If you hear it — the pain was like a voice crying it to
him — you won’t believe the things I have said to you —no, worse,
the things which I have not said, but which you knew and believed
and accepted — you will think that 1 was not free to offer them and
that my days with you were a lie — this will destroy my one month
and ten of your years — this was not the way I wanted you to learn
it, not like this, not tonight — but you will, you who’ve watched and
known my every movement, you who’re watching me now, wherever
you are — you will hear it— but it has to he said.

“ — the last descendant of an illustrious name in our industrial his-
tory, the woman executive possible only in America, the Operating
Vice-President of a great railroad — Miss Dagny Taggart!”

Then she felt the touch of Rearden Metal, as her hand closed over
the stem of the microphone, and it was suddenly easy, not with the
drugged ease of indifference, but with the bright, dear, living ease
of action.

"I came here to tell you about the social program, the political
system and the moral philosophy under which you are now living.”

There was so calm, so natural, so total a certainly in the sound of
her voice that the mere sound seemed to carry an immense per-
suasiveness.

"You have heard it said that I behove that this system has deprav-
ity as its moli\e, plunder as its goal, lies, lraud and foice as its
method, and destruction as its only result. You have also heard it
said that, like Hank Rearden, I am a loyal supporter of this system
and that I give my voluntary co-operation to present politics, such
as Directive 10--289. I have come here to tell you the truth about it

"It is true that I share the stand with Hank Rearden, His political
convictions are mine. You have heard him denounced in the past as
a reactionary who opposed every step, measute, slogan and premise
of the present system. Now you hear him praised as our greatest
industrialist, whose judgment on the value ol economic policies may
safely be trusted. It is true. You may tiust his judgment. If you are
now beginning to fear that you are in the power of an n responsible
evil, that the country is collapsing and that you will soon be lelt to
starve — consider the views of our ablest industrialist, who knows
what conditions are necessary to make production possible and to
permit a country to survive. Consider all that you know about his
views. At such times as he was able to speak, you have heard him
tell you that this government’s policies w$re leading you to enslave
ment and destruction. Yet he did not denounce the final climax of
these policies — Directive 10--289. You have heard him fighting lor
his rights — his and yours— for his independence, for his property.
Yet he did not fight Directive 10-289. H<$ signed voluntarily, so you
have been told, the Gift Certificate that surrendered Rearden Metal
to his enemies. He signed the one paper which, by all of his previous
record, you had expected him to fight to the death. What could this

780

mean — you have constantly been told— unless it meant that even he
recognized the necessity of Directive 1 0-289 and sacrificed his per-
sonal interests for the sake of the country? Judge his views by the
motive of that action, you have constantly been told. And with this
I agree unreservedly: judge his views by the motive of that action ,
And — for whatever value you attach to my opinion and to any warn-
ing I may give you— judge my views also by the motive of that action,
because his convictions are mine.

“For two years, 1 had been Hank Rearden’s mistress. Let there
be no misunderstanding about it: 1 am saying this, not as a shameful
confession, but with the highest sense of pride. 1 had been his mis-
tress. I had slept with him, in his bed, in his arms. There is nothing
anyone might now say to you about me, which I will not tell you
first. It will be useless to defame me — I know the nature of the
accusations and 1 will state them to you myself. Did I feel a physical
desire for him? I did. Was 1 moved by a passion of my body? I was.
Have I experienced the most violent form of sensual pleasure? I
have. If this now makes me a disgraced woman in >our eyes— let
your estimate be your own concern. I will stand on mine.”

Bertram Scudder was staring at her; this was not the speech he
had expected and he felt, in dun panic, that it was not proper to let
it continue, but she was the special guest whom the Washington
rulers had ordered him to treat cautiously; he could not be certain
whether he was now supposed to interrupt her or not: besides, he
enjoyed hearing this sort of story. In the audience booth, James
Taggart and Lillian Rearden sal frozen, like animals paralyzed by
the headlight of a train rushing down upon them; they were the only
ones present who knew the connection between the words they were
hearing and the theme of the broadcast; it was too late for them to
move; they dared not assume the responsibility of a movement or
of whatever was to follow. In the control room, a young intellectual
of Chick Morrison’s staff stood ready to cut the broadcast off the
air in case of trouble, but he saw no political significance in the
speech he was hearing, no element he could construe as dangerous
to his masters He was accustomed to hearing speeches extorted by
unknown pressure from unwilling victims, and he concluded that this
was the case of a reactionary forced to confess a scandal and that,
therefore, the speech had, perhaps, some political value; besides, he
was curious to hear it

“I am proud that he had chosen me to give him pleasure and that
it was he who had been my choice. It was not — as it is for most of
you — an act of casual indulgence and mutual contempt. It was the
ultimate form of our admiration for each other, with full knowledge
of the values by which we made our choice. We are those who do
not disconnect the values of their minds front the actions of their
bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but
bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts,
and reality to values — those who make steel, railroads and happiness.
And to such among you who hate the thought of human joy, who
wish to see men’s life as chronic suffering and failure, who wish men
to apologize for happiness — or for success, or ability, or achievement,

781

or wealth — to such among you, 1 am now saying: l wanted him, I
had him, i was happy, 1 had known joy, a pure, full, guiltless joy,
the joy you dread to hear confessed by any human being, the joy of
which your only knowledge is in your hatred lor those who are
worthy of reaching it. Well, hale me, then — because 1 reached it!”

“Miss Taggart,” said Beitram Scudder nervously, “aren’t we de-
parting from the subject of . . . After all, your personal relationship
with Mr. Reardon has no political significance which — ”

“1 didn’t think it had, either. And, of course, 1 came here to tell
you about the political and moral system under which you are now
living Well, 1 thought that I knew everything about Hank Rearden,
but there was one thing which 1 did not learn until today It was the
blackmail threat that our relationship would be made public that
forced Hank Rearden to sign the Gilt Certificate surrendering Rear-
den Metal. It was blackmail — blackmail by your government officials,
by your rulers, by your — ”

In the instant when Scudder’s hand swept out to knock the micro-
phone over, a faint click came from its throat as it clashed to the
floor, signifying that the intellectual cop had cut the broadcast off
the air.

She laughed — but there was no one to see her and to hear the
nature of her laughter. The figures rushing into the glass enclosure
were screaming at one anothei. Chick Morrison was yelling unprint-
able curses at Bertram Scudder — Bertram Scudder was shouting that
he had been opposed to the whole idea, bill had been ordered to
do it — James Taggart looked like an animal baring its teeth, while
he snarled at two of Morrison’s youngest assistants and avoided the
snarls of an older third. The muscles of Lillian Rearden \s face had
an odd slackness, like the limbs of an animal lying in the road, mtacl
but dead. The morale conditioners were shrieking what they guessed
they thought Mr. Mouch would think. “What am l to say to them?”
the program announcer was crying, pointing at the microphone. “Mr.
Morrison, there’s an audience waiting, what am I to say?” Nobody
answered him. They were not lighting over what to do, but over
whom to blame.

Nobody said a word to Dagny or glanced in her direction. Nobody
stopped her, when she walked out.

She stepped into the first taxicab in sight, giving the address of
her apartment. As the cab started, she noticed that the dial of the
radio on the driver’s panel was lighted and silent, crackling with the
brief, tense coughs of static: it was tuned to Bertram Scudder's
program.

She lay back against the seat, feeling nothing but the desolation
of the knowledge that the sweep of he* action had, perhaps, swept
away the man who might never wish t<| see her again. She felt, for
the first time, the immensity of the hopelessness of finding him — il
he did not choose to be found — in thp streets of the city, in the
towns of a continent, in the canyons of ihe Rocky Mountains where
the goal was closed by a screen of rays. But one thing remained to
her, like a log floating on a void, the log to which she had clung
through the broadcast — and she knew that this was the thing she

782

could not abandon, even were she to lose all the rest; it was the
sound of his voice saying to her: “Nobody stays here by faking reality
in any manner whatever.'*

“Ladies and gentlemen." the voice of Bertram Scudder’s an-
nouncer crackled suddenly out of the static, “due to technical diffi-
culties over which we have no control, this station will remain off
the air, pending the necessary readjustments." The taxi driver gave
a brief, contemptuous chuckle — and snapped the radio off.

When she stepped out and handed him a bill, he extended the
change to her and, suddenly, leaned forward for a closer look at her
face. She felt certain that he recognized her and she held his glance
austerely for an instant. His bitter face and his overpatched shirt
were worn out by a hopeless, losing struggle. As she handed him a
tip, ho said quietly, with too earnest, too solemn an emphasis lor a
mere acknowledgment of the coins, “ Thunk vow, ma’am."

She turned swiftly and hurried into the building, not to let him
see the emotion which was suddenly more than she could bear.

Her head was drooping, as she unlocked the door ol her apart-
ment. and the light struck her from below, from the carpet, belore
she jerked her head up in astonishment at finding the apartment
lighted. She look a step forward --and saw Hank Rearden standing
across the room.

She was held still by two shocks' one was the sight of his presence,
she had not expected him to be back so soon: the other was the
sight of his lace His face had so firm, so confident, so mature a look
of calm, m the taint half -smile, in the clarity of the eyes, that she
felt as it he had aged decades within one month, but aged in the
proper sense of human growth, aged in vision, in stature, in powder.
She felt that he who had lived through a month of agony, he whom
she had hurt so deeply and was about to hurt more deeply still, he
would now be the one to give her suppoit and consolation, ins would
he the strength to protect them both. She stood motionless for only
an instant, but she saw his smile deepening as if he were reading
her thoughts and telling her that she had nothing to fear. SJje heard
a slight, crackling sound and saw. on a table beside him, the lighted
dial of a silent radio Her eves moved to his as a question and he
answered by the faintest nod, barely more than a lowering of his
eyelids; he had heard her broadcast.

They moved toward each other in the same moment He seized
her shoulders to support her, her face was raised to his. but he did
not touch her lips, he took her hand and kissed her wrist, her fingers,
her palm, as the sole form of the greeting which so much of his
suffering had gone to await. And suddenly, broken by the whole of
this day and of that month, she was sobbing in his arms, slumped
against him, sobbing as she had never done in her life, as a woman,
in surrender to pain and in a last, futile protest against it.

Holding her so that she stood and moved only by means of his
body, not hers, he led her to the couch and tried to make her stt
down beside him, but she slipped to the fhxir. to sit at his feet and
bury her face in his knees and sob without defense or disguise.

He did not lift her, he let her cry, with his arm tight about her.

783

She felt his hand on her head, on her shoulder, she felt the protection
of his firmness, a firmness which seemed to tell her that as her tears
were for both of them, so was his knowledge, that he knew her pain
and felt it and understood, yet was able to witness it calmly — and
his calm seemed to lift her burden, by granting her the right to break,
here, at his feet, by telling her that he was able to carry what she
could not carry any longer. She knew dimly that this was the real
Hank Rearden, and no matter what form of insulting cruelty he had
once given to their first nights together, no matter how often she
had seemed as the stronger of the two, this had always been within
him and at the root of their bond — this strength of his which would
protect her if ever hers were gone.

When she raised her head, he was smiling down at her.

•‘Hank . . she whispered guiltily, in desperate astonishment at
her own break.

“Quiet, darling.”

She let her face drop back on his knees; she lay still, lighting for
rest, fighting against the pressure of a wordless thought; he had been
able to bear and to accept her broadcast only as a confession of her
love; it made the truth she now had to tell him more inhuman a
blow than anyone had the right to deliver. She felt terror at the
thought that she would not have the strength to do it, and terror at
the thought that she would.

When she looked up at him again, he ran his hand over her tore-
head, brushing the hair off her face.

“It’s over, darling,” he said. “The worst of it is over, for both
of us.”

“No, Hank, it isn’t.”

fie smiled.

He drew her to sit beside him. with her head on his shoulder.
“Don’t say anything now,” he said. “You know that we both under-
stand all that has to be said, and we’ll speak of it, but not until it
has ceased to hurt you quite so much.”

His hand moved down the line of her sleeve, down a fold of her
skirt, witn so light a pressure that it seemed as it the hand did not
feel the body inside the clothes, as if he were regaining possession,
not of her body, but only of its vision.

“You've taken too much,” he said. “So have I. Let them batter
us. There’s no reason why we should add to it. No matter what we
have to face, there can be no suffering between the two of us. No
added pain. Let that come from their world. It won't come from us.
Don’t be afraid. We won t hurt each other. Not now.”

vShe raised her head, shaking it with $ bitter smile— there was a
desperate violence in her movement, b^t the smile was a sign of
recovery, of the determination to face tl|e despair.

“Hank, the kind of hell I let you go through in the last month — ”
Her voice was trembling. .

“It’s nothing, compared to the kind of hell I let you go through
in the last hour.” His voice was steady.

She got up, to pace the room, to prqve her strength — her steps
like words telling him that she was not to be spared any longer.

784

When she stopped and turned to face him, he rose, as if he under-
stood her motive.

“I know that I’ve made it worse for you,” she said, pointing at
the radio.

He shook his head. “No.”

“Hank, there v s something I have to tell you.”

“So have I. Will you let me speak first? You sec, it’s something i
should have said to you long ago. Will you let me speak and not
answer me until I finish?”

She nodded.

He took a moment to look at her as she stood before him, as if
to hold the full sight of her figure, of this moment and of everything
that had led them to it.

“I love you, Dagny,” he said quietly, with the simplicity of an
unclouded, yet unsmiling happiness.

She was about to speak, but knew that she couldn’t, even if he
had permitted it, she caught her unuttered words, the movement of
her lips was her only answer, then she inclined her head in
acceptance.

“I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the
same pride and the same meaning as 1 love my work, my mills, my
Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory', in an ore
mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and
knowledge, as I love the action ot my mind when it solves a chemical
equation or grasps a sunrise, as 1 love the things I've made and the
filings I’ve felt, as mv product, as my choice, as a shape ot my world,
as my best mirror, as the wife I’ve never had, as that which makes
all the rest ot it possible- as my power to live.”

She did not drop her face, but kept it level and open, to hear and
accept, as he wanted her to and as he deserved.

“I loved you from the first day 1 saw you, on a flatcar on a siding
of Milford Station. 1 loved you when we rode in the cab of the first
engine on the John Galt Line. I loved you on the gallery of Ellis
Wyatt’s house 1 loved you on that next morning. You knew' it. Hut
it’s 1 who must say it to you, as I’m saying it now- -it 1 am to redeem
all those days anil to let them be tullv what they were for both of
us, I loved you. You knew it. 1 didn’t. And because l didn’t, 1 had
lt> learn it when I sat at my desk and looked at the Cult Certificate
loi Reardon Metal.”

She closed her eyes. But there was no sutfering in his face, nothing
but the immense and quiet happiness of clarity.

“ ‘We are those who do not disconnect the values of their minds
Irom the actions of their bodies.’ You said it in your broadcast to-
night. But you knew it. then, on that morning m Eltis Wyatt’s house.
You knew that all those insults I was throwing at you were the fullest
confession of love a man could make. You knew that the physical
desire I was damning as our mutual shame, is neither physical nor
m expression of one’s body, but the expression of one’s mind’s deep-
est values, whether one has the courage to know it or not. That was
why you laughed at me as you did, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” she whispered.

785

“You said, *1 do not want your mind, your will, vour being or
your soul — so long as it’s to me that you will come tor that lowest
one of your desires. 5 You knew, when you said it, that it was my
mind, my will, my being and my soul that I was giving you by means
of that desire. And l want to say it now, to let that morning mean
what it meant: my mind, my will, my being and my soul, Dagny —
yours, for as long as 1 shall live.”

He was looking straight at her and she saw a brief sparkle in his
eyes, which was not a smile, but almost as if he had heard the cry
she had not uttered.

“Let me finish, dearest. I want you to know how fully I know
what l am saying. I, who thought that I was fighting them, 1 had
accepted the worst of our enemies' creed — and that is what I’ve paid
for ever since, as l am paying now and as I must. I had accepted
the one tenet by which they destroy a man before he's started, the
killer-tenet: the breach between his mind and body. I had accepted
it, like most of their victims, not knowing it, not knowing even that
the issue existed. I rebelled against their creed of human impotence
and 1 took pride in my ability to think, to act, to work for the
satisfaction ot my desires. But I did not know that this was virtue,
I never identified it as a moral value, as the highest of moral values,
to be defended above one’s life, because it’s that which makes life
possible. And I accepted punishment for it, punishment for virtue at
the hands oi an arrogant evil, made arrogant solely by my ignorance
and my submission.

“I accepted their insults, their frauds, their extortions. I thought I
could afford to ignore them — all those impotent mystics who prattle
about their souls and are unable to build a roof over their heads I
thought that the world was mine, and those jabbering incompetents
were no threat to my strength. I could not understand why 1 kept
losing every battle. I did not know that the force unleashed against
me was my own. While I was busy conquering matter, 1 had surrend-
ered to them the realm of the mind, of thought, of principle, of law,
of values, of morality. 1 had accepted, unwittingly and by default,
the tenet that ideas were of no consequence to one’s existence, to
one’s work, to reality, to this earth — as if ideas were not the province
of reason, but of that mystic faith which 1 despised. This was all they
wanted me to concede. It was enough. I had surrendered that which
all of their claptrap is designed to subvert and to destroy: man’s
reason. No, they were not able to deal with matter, to produce abun-
dance, to control this earth. They did not have to. They controlled
me.

“I, who knew that wealth is only a means to an end, created the
means and let them prescribe my ends I. who took pride in my
ability to achieve the satisfaction of my desires, let them prescribe
the code of values by which I judged my desires. I. who shaped
matter to serve my purpose, was left \^ith a pile of steel and gold,
but with my every purpose defeated, njy every desire betrayed, my
every attempt at happiness frustrated.

“I had cut myself in two, as the mystics preached, and 1 ran my
business by one code of rules, but my own life by another, i rebelled

786

against the looter’s attempt to set the price and value of my steel—
but I let them set the moral values of my life, I rebelled against
demands for an unearned wealth — but I thought it was my duty to
grant an unearned love to a wife 1 despised, an unearned respect to
a mother who hated me, an unearned support to a brother who
plotted for my destruction. 1 rebelled against undeserved financial
injury — but l accepted a life of undeserved pain. 1 rebelled against
the doctrine that my productive ability was guilt — but I accepted, as
guilt, my capacity for happiness. I rebelled against the creed that
virtue is some disembodied unknowable of the spirit — but I damned
you, you, my dearest one, for the desire of your body and mine. But
if the body is evil, then so are those who provide the means of its
survival, so is material wealth and those who produce it — and if
moral values arc set in contradiction to our physical existence, then
it’s right that rewards should be unearned, that virtue should consist
of the undone, that there should be no tie between achievement and
profit, that the inferior animals who' re able to produce should serve
those superior beings whose superiority in spirit consists of incompe-
tence in the flesh.

*‘lf some man like Hugh Akston had told me, when 1 started, that
by accepting the mystics’ theory of sex 1 was accepting the looters’
theory of economics, 1 would have laughed in his face. I would not
laugh at him now. Now I see Reardon Steel being ruled by human
scum — 1 see the achievement ot my life serving to enrich the worst
of my enemies- -and as to the only two persons l ever loved, I’ve
brought a deadly insult to one and public disgrace to the other. 1
slapped the lace of the man who was my tnend, my defender, my
teacher, the man who set me free by helping me to learn what I’ve
learned. I loved him, Dagny, he was the brother, the son. the com-
rade i never had — but l knocked him out of my life, because he
would not help me to produce for the looters. I'd give anything now
to have him back, but 1 own nothing to offer in such repayment,
and HI never see him again, because it's I who’ll know that there is
no way to deserve even the right to ask forgiveness

“But what I've done to you, my dearest, is still worse. Your speech
and that you had to make it — -that's what I've brought upon the only
woman I loved, in payment for the only happiness I’ve known. Don't
tell me that it was your choice from the first and that you accepted
all consequences, including tonight— it does not redeem the fact that
it was l who had no better choice to offer you. And that the looters
lorced you to speak, that you spoke to avenge me and set me free —
does not redeem the fact that it was I who made their tactics possi-
ble. It was not their own convictions of sin and dishonor that they
could use to disgrace you — it was mine. They merely carried out the
things 1 believed and said in Ellis Wyatt’s house, it was I who kept
our love hidden as a guilty secret — they merely treated it for what
it was by my own appraisal. It was 1 who was willing to counterfeit
reality for the sake of appearance in their eves — they merely cashed
in on the right I had given them.

"People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've
learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surren-

787

dcrs one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person
one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of
reality that person’s view requires to be faked. And if one gains the
immediate purpose of the lie — the price one pays is the destruction
of that which the gain was intended to serve. The man who lies to
the world, is the world’s slave from then on. When I chose to hide
my love for you, to disavow it in public and live it as a lie, I made
it public property — and the public has claimed it in a fitting sort of
manner. I had no way to avert it and no power to save you. When
I gave in to the looters, when l signed their Gift Certificate, to
protect you — I was still faking reality, there was nothing else left
open to me — and, Dagny, I’d rather have seen us both dead than to
permit them to do what they threatened. But there are no white lies,
there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the black-
est ot all. I was still faking reality, and it had the inexorable result:
instead of protection, it brought you a more terrible kind of ordeal,
instead of saving your name, it forced you to offer yourself for a
public stoning and to throw the stones by your own hand. I know
that you were proud of the things you said, and 1 was proud to hear
you— but that was the pride we should have claimed two years ago.

“No. you did not make it worse for me, you set me free, you
saved us both, you redeemed our past. I can’t ask you to lorgive
me, we’re far beyond such terms — and the only atonement I can
offer you is the fact that I am happy. That 1 am happy, my darling.
not that I suffer. I am happy that 1 have seen the truth- even if my
power of sight is all that's left to me now. W ere 1 to surrender to
pain and give up in lutile regret that my own error has wrecked my
past — that would be the act of final treason, the ultimate failure
toward that truth 1 regret having failed. But if my love of truth is
left as my only possession, then the greater the loss behind me, the
greater the pride l may take in the price I have paid lor that love
Then the wreckage will not become a lunereal mount above me, but
will serve as a height 1 have climbed to attain a wider field of vision.
My pride and my power of vision were all that 1 owned when I
started— and whatever I achieved, was achieved by means ol them.
Both are greater now. Now I have the knowledge ol the superlative
value 1 had missed: of my right to be proud of my vision, lhe rest
is mine to reach.

‘ And, Dagny, the one thing I wanted, as the first step oi my
future, was to say that I love you — as I’m saying it now I love you,
my dearest, with that blindest passion of mv body which comes from
the clearest perception of my mind — and my love for you is the only
attainment of my past that will be left to me, unchanged, through
all the years ahead. 1 wanted to say it to you while I still had the
right to say it. And because I had not $aid it at our beginning, this
is the way I have to say it — at the end. Now I'll tell you what it was
that you wanted to tell me— because, yop see. I know it and I accept:
somewhere within the past month, you Jiave met the man you h\ve.
and if love means one’s final, irreplaceable choice, then he is the
only man you’ve ever loved.”

“Yes!” Her voice was half-gasp, half-scream, as under a physical

788

blow, the shock as her only awareness. “Hank! — how did you
know it?”

He smiled and pointed at the radio. “My darling, you used nothing
but the past tense.”

“Oh . . . !” Her voice was now half-gasp, half-moan, and she
closed her eyes.

“You nevci pronounced the one word you would have rightfully
thrown at them, were it otherwise You said. "1 wanted him, 1 not, *1
love him. 1 You told me on the phone today that you could have
returned sooner. No other reason would have made you leave me
as you did. Only that one reason was valid and right.”

She was leaning back a little, as if fighting for balance to stand,
vet she was looking straight at him, with a smile that did not part
her lips, but softened her eyes to a glance of admiration and her
mouth to a shape of pain.

“It’s true. I've met the man 1 love and will always love. I’ve seen
him, I've spoken to him — but he’s a man whom 1 can't have, whom
1 may never have and, perhaps, may never see again.”

*1 think I’ve always known that you would find him. I knew what
you felt for me, I knew how much it was, but I knew that 1 was not
your final choice. What you'll give him is not taken away from me,
it's what I’ve never had I can't rebel against it. What I've had means
too much to me -and that I’ve had it, can never be changed.'*

"Do you warn me to say it, flank*’ Will you understand it, if 1 say
that I'll always love you ’”

“1 think I've understood it before you did.”

Tve always seen you as you are now. 'Hiat greatness of yours
which you are just beginning to allow yourself to know- -I've always
known it and I've watched your struggle to discover it. Don’t speak
of atonement, you have not hurt me, your mistakes came from your
magnificent integrity under the torture of an impossible code — and
your light against it did not bring me suffering, it brought me the
feeling I've found too seldom: admiration. If you will accept it, it
will always be yours. What you meant to me can never be changed.
But the man l met - -he is the love I had wanted to reach long before
I knew that he existed, and I think he will remain beyond my reach,
but that 1 love him will be enough to keep me living.”

He look her hand and pressed it to his lips “Then you know what
I teel,” he said, “and why l am still happy.”

Looking up at his face, she realized that for the first time he was
what she had always thought him intended to be: a man with an
immense capacity for the enjoyment of existence. The taut look of
endurance, of fiercely unadmitted pain, was gone; now, in the midst
of the wreckage and of his hardest hour, his face had the serenity
of pure strength; it had the look she had seen in the faces of the
men in the valley.

“Hank,” she whispered, “I don’t think I can explain it, but 1 feel
that I have committed no treason, either to you or to him.”

“You haven't.”

Her eyes seemed abnormally alive in a face drained of color, as
if her consciousness remained untouched in a body broken by ex-

789

hauslion. He made her sit down and slipped his arm 'along the back,
of the couch, not touching her. yet holding her in a protective
embrace.

"Now tell me," he a,sked, "‘where were you?"

"1 can't tell you that. I've given my word never to reveal anything
about it. I can say only that it’s a place J found by accident, when
1 crashed, and I left it blindfolded— and 1 wouldn't be able to find
it again.”

"Couldn't you trace your way back to it?”

"1 won't try.”

“And the man””

“I won’t look for him."

"He remained there?”

i don't know.”

“Why did you leave him?”

”1 can’t tell you,”

“Who is he?”

Her chuckle of desperate amusement was involuntary. "Who is
John Galt?”

He glanced at her, astonished — but realized that she was not jok-
ing. "So there is a John Gall?” he asked slowly.

"Yes.”

“That slant: phrase refers to hitnT

"Yes ”

"And it has some special meaning? '

"Oh yes! . . . There's one thing I can tell you about him, because
1 discovered it earlier, without promise of secrecy, he is the man
who invented the motor we found.”

“Oh!” He smiled, as if he should have known it Then he said
softly, with a glance that was almost compassion, "lie's the de-
stroyer, isn't he ?” He saw her look of shock, and added. "No. don't
answer me, if you can't. 1 think 1 know where you were. It was
Quentin Daniels that you wanted to save from the destroyer, and
you were following Daniels when you crashed, weren't you 9 ”

"Yes.”

"Good God, Dagny!— does such a place really exist? Are they all
alive? Is there . . . ? I’m sorry. Don't answer.”

She smiled, it does exist.”

He remained silent for a long time.

“Hank, could you give up Rearden Steel?”

“No!” The answer was fiercely immediate, but he added, with the
first sound of hopclessnes.s in his voice, "Not yet.”

Then he looked at her, as if, in the transition of his three words,
he had lived the course of her agony of the past month. "I see,” he
said. He ran his hand over her forehead, with a gesture of under-
standing, of compassion, of an almost incredulous wonder. “What
hell you’ve now undertaken to endure!” he said, his voice low.

She nodded.

She slipped down, to lie stretched, her face on his knees. He
stroked her hair; he said, “We’ll fight the looters as long as we can.
I don’t know what future is possible to us, but we'll win or we’ll

790

learn that it’s hopeless. Until we do, we’ll fight for our world. We’re
all that’s left of it.”

She fell asleep, lying there, her hand clasping his. Her last aware-
ness, before she surrendered the icsponsibility of consciousness, was
the sense of an enormous void, the void of a city and of a continent
where she would never be able to find the man whom she had no
right to seek.

Chapter IV ANTI-LIFE

lames Taggart reached into the pocket of his dinner jacket, pulled
out the first wad ot paper he found, which was a hundred-dollar bill,
and dropped it into the beggar’s hand.

He noticed that the beggar pocketed the money m a manner as
indifferent as his own. “Thanks, bud.” said the beggar contemptu-
ously, and walked away

James Taggart remained still in the middle ot the sidewalk, won-
dering what gave him a sense of shock and dread. It was not the
man’s insolence — he had not sought any gratitude, he had not been
moved by pity, his gesture had been automatic and meaningless. It
was that the beggar acted as if he would have been indifferent had
he leceived a hundred dollars or a dime or, failing to find any help
whatever, he had seen himself dying of starvation within this night.
laggaTt shuddered and walked brusquely on, the shudder serving to
cut off the realization that the beggar's mood matched his own.

The walls of the street aiound him had the stressed, unnatural
clarity of a summer twilight, while an orange haze filled the channels
of intersections and veiled the tiers ot roofs, leaving him on a shrink-
ing remnant of ground. The calendar in the sky seemed to stand
insistently out ot the haze, yellow like a page of old parchment,
saying: August 5.

No— he thought, in answers to things he had not named — it was
not true, he felt line, that's why he wanted to do something tonight.
He could not admit to himself that his peculiar restlessness came
from a desire to experience pleasure; he could not admit that the
particulai pleasure he wanted was that ot celebration, because he
could not admit what it was that he wanted to celebrate.

This had been a day of intense activity, spent on words floating
as vaguely as cotton* yet achieving a purpose as precisely as an add-
ing machine, summing up to his full satisfaction. But his purpose and
the nature of his satisfaction had to be kept as carefully hidden from
himself as they had been from others; and his sudden craving for
pleasure was a dangerous breach.

The day had started with a small luncheon in the hotel suite of a
visiting Argentinian legislator, where a few people of various nation-
alities had talked at leisurely length about the climate of Argentina,
its soil, its resources, the needs of its people, the value of a dynamic,
progressive attitude toward the future — and had mentioned, as the
briefest topic of conversation, that Argentina would be declared a
People’s State within two weeks.

791

It had been followed by a few cocktails at the home of Orren
Boyle, with only one unobtrusive gentleman from Argentina sitting
silently in a corner, while two executives from Washington and a few
friends of unspecified positions had talked about national resources,
metallurgy, mineralogy, neighborly duties and the welfare of the
globe — and had mentioned that a loan of four billion dollars would
be granted within three weeks to the People’s State of Argentina
and the People’s State of Chile.

It had been followed by a small cocktail party in a private room
of the bar built like a cellar on the roof of a skyscraper, an informal
party given by him, James Taggart, for the directors of a recently
formed company. The Interneighborly Amity and Development Cor-
poration. of which Orren Boyle was president and a slender, graceful,
overactive man from Chile was treasurer, a man whose name was
Sefior Mario Martinez, but whom Taggart was templed, by some
resemblance of spirit, to call Seftor Cuffy Meigs. Here they had
talked about golf, horse races, boat races, automobiles and women.
It had not been necessary to mention, since they all knew it, that
the Interneighborly Amity and Development Corporation had an
exclusive contract to operate, on a twenty-year “managerial lease,”
all the industrial properties of the People's States of the Southern
Hemisphere.

The last event of the day had been a large dinner reception at the
home of Seftor Rodrigo Gonzales, a diplomatic representative of
Chile. No one had heard of Sefior Gon/ales a year ago. but he had
become famous for the parties he had given in the past six months,
ever since his arrival m New York. His guests described him as a
progressive businessman. He had lost his property— it was said —
when Chile, becoming a People's State, had nationalized all proper-
ties, except those belonging to citizens of backward, non-Peoplo’s
countries, such as Argentina; but he had adopted an enlightening
attitude and had joined the new regime, placing himself in the service
of his country. His home in New York occupied an entire lloor of
an exclusive residential hotel He had a fat, blank face and the eyes
of a killer. Watching him at tonight's reception, Taggart had con-
cluded that the man was impervious to any sorf of feeling, he looked
as if a knife could slash, unnoticed, through his pendulous layers of
flesh— except that there was a lewd, almost sexual relish in the wav
he rubbed his feet against the rich pile of his Persian rugs, or patted
the polished arm of his chair, or folded his lips about a cigar. His
wife, the Sefiora Gonzales, was a small, attractive woman, not as
beautiful as she assumed, but enjoying the reputation of a beauty by
means of a violent nervous energy and an odd manner of loose,
warm, cynical self-assertiveness that see&ied to promise anything and
to absolve anyone. It was known that h^r particular brand of trading
was her husband’s chief asset, in an age^when one traded, not goods,
but favors— and, watching her among t%c guests, Taggart had found
amusement in wondering what deals ha4 been made, what directives
issued, what industries destroyed in exchange for a few chance nights,
which most of those men had had no reason to seek and, perhaps,
could no longer remember. The party had bored him, there had been

792

only half a dozen persons for whose sake he had put in an appear-
ance, and it had not been necessary to speak to that half-dozen,
merely to be seen and to exchange a few glances. Dinner had been
about to be served; when he had heard what he had come to hear:
Seflor Gonzales had mentioned — the smoke of his cigar weaving over
the half-dozen men who had drifted toward his armchair- -that by
agreement with the future People’s State of Argentina, the properties
of d’Anconia Copper would be nationalized by the People’s State of
Chile, in less than a month, on September 2.

It had all gone as Taggart had expected; the unexpected had come
when, on hearing those words, he had felt an irresistible urge to
escape. He had felt incapable of enduring the boredom ot the dinner,
as if some other form of activity were needed to greet the achieve-
ment of this night. He had walked out into the summer twilight of
the streets, feeling as if he were both pursuing and pursued: pursuing
a pleasure which nothing could give him, in celebration ot a feeling
which he dared not name —pursued by the dread of discovering what
motive had moved him through the planning of tonight’s achieve-
ment and what aspect of it now gave him this feverish sense of
gratification.

He reminded himself that he would sell his d’Anconia Copper
stock, which had never rallied fully after its crash ot last year, and
he would purchase shares of the Inlerneighboily Amity and Develop-
ment Corporation, as agreed with his friends, which would bring him
a fortune. But the thought brought him nothing but boredom; this
was not the thing he wanted to celebrate.

He tried to force himself to enjoy it: money, he thought, had been
his motive, money, nothing worse. Wasn’t that a normal motive? A
valid one? Wasn’t that what they all were after, the Wyatts, the
Reardens, the d’Anconias? . . , He jerked his head to stop it; he felt
as if his thoughts were slipping down a dangerous blind alley, the
end of which he must never permit himself to see.

No — he thought bleakly, in reluctant admission — money meant
nothing to him any longer. He had thrown dollars about by the
hundreds — at that parly he had given today — for unfinished drinks,
for uneaten delicacies, for unprovoked tips and unexpected whims,
tor a long-distance phone call to Argentina because one of the guests
had wanted to check the exact version of a smutty story he had
started telling, for the spur of any moment, for the clammy stupor
of knowing that it was easier to pay than to think.

“You've got nothing to worry about, under that Railroad Unifica-
tion Plan,” Orren Boyle had giggled to him drunkenlv. Under the
Railroad Unification Plan, a local railroad had gone bankrupt in
North Dakota, abandoning the region to the fate of a blighted area,
the local banker had committed suicide, first killing his wife and
children—a freight train had been taken off the schedule in Tennes-
see, leaving a local tactory without transportation at a day’s notice,
the factory owner’s son had quit college and was now m jail, awaiting
execution for a murder committed with a gang of ratders—a way
station had been closed in Kansas, and the station agent, who had
wanted to be a scientist, had given up his studies and become a

793

dishwasher— that he, James Taggart, might sit in a private barroom
and pay for the alcohol pouring down Orren Boyle’s throat, for the
waiter who sponged Boyle’s garments when he spilled his drink over
his chest, for the carpet burned by the cigarettes of an ex-pimp from
Chile who did not want to take the trouble of reaching for an ashtray
across a distance of three feet.

It was not the knowledge ol his indifference to money that now
gave him a shudder of dread. It was the knowledge that he would
be equally indifferent, were he reduced to the state of the beggar.
There had been a time when he had felt some measure of guilt — in
no clearer a form than a touch of irritation — at the thought that he
shared the sin of greed, which he spent his time denouncing. Now
he was hit by the chill realization that, in fact, he had never been a
hypocrite- m full truth, he had never cared for money Hus left
another hole gaping open before him, leading into another blind
alley which he could not risk seeing.

I just want to do something tonight! — he cried soundlessly to
someone at large, in protest and in demanding anger— in protest
against whatever it was that kept lorcmg these thoughts into his
mind — in anger at a universe where some malevolent power would
not permit him to find enjoyment without the need to know what
he wanted or why.

What do you want? --some enemy voice kept asking, and he
walked faster, trying to escape it. It seemed to him that his brain
was a maze where a blind alley opened at every turn, leading into
a fog that hid an abyss. It seemed to him that he was running, while
the small island of safety was shrinking and nothing but those alleys
would soon be left It was like the remnant of clarity in the stieet
around him, with the haze rolling in to fill all exits. Why did it have
to shrink? — he thought in panic. This was the way he had lived all his
life— keeping his eyes stubbornly, safely on the immediate pavement
before him, craftily avoiding the sight ol his road, of corners, of
distances, of pinnacles. He had never intended going anywhere, he
had wanted to be free of progression, free of the yoke of a straight
line, he had never wanted his years to add up to any sum — what
had summed them up? — why had he reached some unchosen destina-
tion where one could no longer stand still or retreat? ‘‘Look where
you’re going, brother!” snarled some voice, while an elbow pushed
him back — and he realized that he had collided with some large, ill-
smelling figure and that he had been running.

He slowed his steps and admitted into his mind a recognition of
the streets he had chosen in his random escape. He had not wanted
to know that he was going home to hi^ wife. That, too, was a fog-
bound alley, but there was no other left to him.

He knew — the moment he saw Cherryl’s silent, poised figure as
she rose at his entrance into her room — Jhat this was more dangerous
than he had allowed himself to know and that he would not find
what he wanted. But danger, to him, was a signal to shut off his
sight, suspend his judgment and pursue an unaltered course, on the
unstated premise that the danger would remain unreal by the sover-

794

eign power of his wish not to see it — like a foghorn within him,
blowing, not to sound a warning, but to summon the fog.

"Why. yes, I did have an important business banquet to attend,
but I changed my mind, I felt like having dinner with you tonight,”
he said in the tone of a compliment — but a quiet "f see” was the
only answer he obtained.

He felt irritation at her unastonished manner and her pale, unre-
vealing face. He felt irritation at the smooth efficiency with which
she gave instructions to the servants, then at finding himself in the
candlelight of the dining room, facing hei across a perfectly ap-
pointed table, with two crystal cups of fruit in silver bowls of ice
between them.

It was her poise that irritated him most; she was no longer an
incongruous little freak, dwarfed by the luxury of the residence which
a famous uitisl had designed, she matched it. She sat at the table as
if she were the kind of hostess that room had the right to demand.
She wore a tailored housecoat of russet -colored brocade that blended
with the bronze of hei hair, the severe simplicity of its lines serving
as her only ornament. He would have preferred the jingling bracelets
and rhinestone buckles of her past. Her eyes disturbed him, as they
had for months, they were neither friendly nor hostile, but watchful
and questioning

“I closed a big deal today.'* he said, his tone part boastful, part
pleading. “A deal involving this whole continent and half a dozen
governments."

He realized that the awe, the admiration, the eager curiosity he
had expected, belonged to the face of the little shopgirl who had
ceased to exist. He saw none of it in the face of his wife; even anger
or hatred would have been preferable to her level, attentive glance;
the glance was worse than accusing, it was inquiring

"What deal, Jim?"

"What do you mean, what deal? Why are you suspicious? Why
do you have to start prying at once?"

"I’m sorry. I didn't know it was confidential You don't have to
answer me."

"It's not confidential." He waited, but she remained silent. "Well?
Aren’t vou going to say anything?"

“Why, no." She said it simply, as if to please him.

“So you’re not interested at all?"

"But I thought you didn’t want to discuss it."

“Oh, don’t be so tricky!" he snapped. "It's a big business deal.
That’s what you admire, isn’t it, big business? Well, it's bigger than
anything those boys ever dreamed of. They spend their lives grub-
bing for theii fortunes penny by penny, while I can do it like that"' —
he snapped his fingers — “just like that. It’s the biggest single stunt
ever pulled."

"Stunt, Jim?"

“Deal!"

“And you did it? Yourself?"

“You bet I did! That fat fool, Orren Boyle, couldn't have swung
it m a million years. This took knowledge and skill and timing" — he

795

saw a spark of interest in her eyes — “and psychology.” The spark
vanished, but he went rushing heedlessly on. “One had to know how
to approach Wesley, and how to keep the wrong influences away
from him, and how to get Mr. Thompson interested without letting
him know too much, and how to cut Chick Morrison in on it, but
keep Tinky Holloway out, and how to get the right people to give
a few parties for Wesley at the right time, and . . . Say, Cherry!, is
there any champagne in this house?"

“Champagne?"

“Can’t we do something special tonight? Can’t we have a sort of
celebration together?"

“We can have champagne, yes, Jim, of course.”

She rang the bell and gave the orders, in her odd, lifeless, uncritical
manner, a manner of meticulous compliance with his wishes while
volunteering none of her own.

“You don’t seem to be very impressed," he said. “But what would
you know about business, anyway'* You wouldn't be able to under-
stand anything on so large a scale. Wait till September second. Wait
till they hear about it.”

“They ? Who?”

He glanced at her, as it he had let a dangerous word slip out
involuntarily. “We've organized a setup where we~ me, Orren and
a few friends — are going to control every industrial property south
of the border.”

“Whose property?"

“Why . . . the people's. This is not an old-fashioned grab lor
private profit. It’s a deal with a mission — a worthy, public-spirited
mission— to manage the nationalized properties of the various Peo-
ple’s States of South America, to teach their workers our modern
techniques of production, to help the underprivileged who've never
had a chance, to— •” He broke off abruptly, though she had merely
sat looking at him without shifting her glance. “You know.” he said
suddenly, with a cold little chuckle, “if you’re so damn anxious to
hide that you came from the slums, you ought to be less indillerent
to the philosophy of social welfare. It’s always the poor who lack
humanitarian instincts. One has to be born to wealth in order to
know the finer feelings of altruism.”

“I’ve never tried to hide that 1 came from the slums,” she said in
the simple, impersonal tone of a factual correction. “And 1 haven’t
any sympathy for that welfare philosophy. I’ve seen enough of them
to know what makes the kind of poor who want something for noth-
ing.” He did not answer, and she added suddenly, her voice aston-
ished, but firm, as if in final confirmation of a long-standing doubt,
“Jim, you don’t care about it either, ^ou don’t care about any of
that welfare bogwash.”

“Well, if money is all that you're interested in,” he snapped, “let
me tell you that that deal will bring me | fortune. That’s what you've
always admired, isn’t it, wealth?”

“It depends.”

“I think I’ll end up as one of the richest men in the world,” he
said; he did not ask what her admiration depended upon. “There’s

796

nothing I won’t be able to afford. Nothing. Just name it. I can give
you anything you want. Go on, name it.”

“I don’t want anything, Jim.”

“But I’d like to give you a present! To celebrate the occasion,
see? Anything you take it into your head to ask. Anything. I can do
it. I want to show you that I can do it. Any fancy you care to name.”

“I haven’t any fancies.”

“Oh, come on! Want a yacht?”

“No.”

“Want me to buy you the whole neighborhood where you lived
in Buffalo?”

“No.”

“Want the eiown jewels of the People’s State of England? They
can be had, you know. That People’s State has been hinting about
it on the black market for a long time. But there aren’t any old-
fashioned tycoons left who’re able to afford it. I'm able to afford
it— or will be, after September second. Want it?”

“No.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I don’t want anything, Jim.”

“But you’ve got to' You’ve got to want something, damn you!”

She looked at him, faintly startled, but otherwise indifferent.

“Oh, all right. I’m sorry,” he said; he seemed astonished by his
own outbreak. “I just wanted to please you.” he added sullenly, “but
f guess you can't understand it at all. You don’t know how important
it is. You don’t know how big a man you’re married to ’’

“I'm trying to find out,” she said slowly.

“Do you still think, as you used to, that Hank Rcarden is a
great man?”

“Yes, Jim, 1 do.”

“Well. I’ve got him beaten. I’m greater than anv of them, greater
than Rearden and greater than that other lover of my sister’s, who—-”
He stopped, as if he had slid too fai.

“Jim ” she asked evenly, “what's going to happen on September
second?”

He glanced up at hei. from under his forehead — a cold glance,
with his muscles creased into a semi-smile, as d in cynical breach of
some hallowed restraint: “They’re going to nationalize d’ Ancon ia
C opper.” he said.

He heard the long, harsh roll of a motor, as a plane went by
somewheie m the darkness above the roof then a thin tinkle, as a
piece of ice settled melting, in the silver bowl of his fruit cup— before
she answered. She said, “He was your fiicnd. wasn’t he?”

“Oh, shut up'”

He remained silent, not looking at her When his eyes came back
to her face, she was still watching him arid she spoke first, her voice
oddly stern: “What youi sister did in her radio broadcast was great.”

“Yes, J know. 1 know, you’ve been saying that for a month,”

“You’ve never answered me.”

“What is there to ans . . ?”

“Just as your friends in Washington have never answered her.”

797

He remained silent. “Jim, Pm not dropping the subject.*’ He did not
answer. “Your friends in Washington never uttered a word about it.
They did not deny the things she said, they did not explain, they did
nn» try to justify themselves. They acted as if she had never spoken.
I think they’re hoping that people will forget it. Some people will.
But the rest of us know what she said and that your friends were
afraid to fight her.”

“That’s not true! The proper action was taken and the incident is
closed and 1 don’t see why you keep bringing it up.”

“What action?”

“Bertram Scudder was taken oft the air, as a program not in the
public interest at the present time.”

“Does that answer her?”

“It dosed the issue and there's nothing more to be said about it.”

“About a government that works by blackmail and extortion?”

“You can’t say that nothing was done. It’s been publicly an-
nounced that Scudder’s programs were disruptive, destructive and
untrustworthy.”

“Jim, f want to understand this. Scudder wasn’t on her side— he
was on yours. He didn’t even arrange that broadcast. He was acting
on orders from Washington, wasn’t he?”

“1 thought you didn't like Bertram Scudder.”

“I didn’t and I don’t, but — ”

“Then what do you care?”

“But he was innocent, as far as your friends were concerned,
wasn’t he?”

“1 wish you wouldn't bother with polities. You talk like a fool ”

“He was innocent, wasn’t he?”

“So what?”

She looked at him, her eyes incredulously wide. “Then they just
made him the scapegoat, didn’t they?”

“Oh, don’t sit there looking like Eddie Willers!”

“Do I? I like Eddie Willers. He's honest.”

“He’s a damn half-wit who doesn’t have the faintest idea of how'
to deal with practical reality!”

“But you do, don’t you, Jim?”

“You bet I do!”

“Then couldn’t you have helped Scudder?”

“/?” He burst into helpless, angry laughter. “Oh, why don’t you
grow up? I did my best to get Scudder thrown to the lions! Some-
body had to be. Don’t you know that it was my neck, if some other
hadn’t been found?”

“ Your neck? Why not Dagny’s, it sfic was wrong? Because she
wasn’t?” r

“Dagny is an entirely different category! It had to be Scuddei
or me.”

“Why?”

“And it’s much better for national pdlicy to let it be Scudder. This
way, it’s not necessary to argue about \tfhat she said — and if anybody
brings it up, we start howling that it w£s said on Scudder’s program
and that Scudder’s programs have been discredited and that Scuddei

798

is a proven fraud and liar* etc., etc. — and do you think the public
will be able to unscramble it? Nobody’s ever trusted Bertram Scud-
der, anyway. Oh, don’t stare at me like that! Would you rather they’d
picked me to discredit?”

“Why not Dagny? Because her speech could not be discredited?”

“If you’re so damn sorry for Bertram Scudder, you should have
seen him try his damndest to make them break my neck! He's been
doing that for years — how do you think he’ got to where he was,
except by climbing on carcasses? He thought he was pretty powerful,
too — you should have seen how the big business tycoons used to be
afraid of him! But he got himself out maneuvered, this time. This
time* he belonged to the wrong faction.”

Dimly, thtough the pleasant stupor of relaxing, of sprawling back
in his chair and smiling, he knew that this was the enjoyment he
wanted, to be himself lo be himself— he thought, in the drugged,
precarious state of floating past the deadliest of his blind alleys, the
one that led to the question of what was himself.

“You see, he belonged to the Tinky Holloway faction. It was
prelty much of a seesaw for a while, between the Tinky Holloway
faction and the Cluck Morrison faction. But we won Tinky made a
deal and agreed to scuttle his pal Bertram in exchange for a few
things he needed from us. You should have heard Bertram howl!
But he was a dead duck and lie knew it ”

He started on a rolling chuckle, but choked it off, as the haze
cleai oil and he saw lus wife's face. "'Jim.” she whispered, “is that
the sort of . . victories you’re winning?”

“Oh, for Christ's sake!” he screamed, smashing his fist down on
the table. “Where have you been all these years? What sort of world
do you think you're living in?” His blow had upset his water glass
and the water went spreading in dark stains over the lace of the
tablecloth.

“I'm trying to find out,” she whispered Her shoulders were sag-
ging and her face looked suddenly worn, an odd, aged look that
seemed haggard and lost.

“1 couldn’t help it!” he burst out m the silence. “I’m not to blame!

I have to lake things as 1 find them! It’s not l who've made this
world!”

He was shocked to see that she smiled— a smile of so fiercely
bitter a contempt that it seemed incredible on her gently patient
face; she was not looking at him. but at some image of her own.
“That's what my father used lo say when he got drunk at the corner
saloon instead of looking for work,”

“How dare you try comparing me to—-” he started, but did not
finish, because she was not listening.

Her words, when she looked at him again, astonished him as com-
pletely irrelevant “The date of that nationalization, September sec-
ond,” she asked, her voice wistful, “was it you who picked it?”

“No. I had nothing to do with it. It’s the date of some special
session of their legislature. Why?”

“It’s the date of our first wedding anniversary.”

“Oh? Oh, that’s right!” He smiled, relieved at the change to a

799

safe subjeet “We’ll have been married a year. My, it doesn’t seem
that long!”

“It seems much longer,” she said tonelessly.

She was looking off again, and he felt in sudden uneasiness that
the subject was not safe at all; he wished she would not look as if

she were seeing the whole course of that year and of their marriage

not to get scared, but to leant— she thought — the thing to do is not
to get scared, but to learn . . . The words came from a sentence she
had repeated to herself so often that it felt like a pillar polished
smooth by the helpless weight of her body, the pillar that had sup-
ported her through the past year. She tried to repeat it, but she fell
as if her hands were slipping on the polish, as if the sentence would
not stave off terror any longer — bccau.se she was beginning to
understand.

If you don’t know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to
learn. ... It was m the bewildered loneliness of the first weeks of
her marriage that she said it to herself for the first lime. She could
not understand Jim's behavior, or his sullen anger, which looked like
weakness, or his evasive, incomprehensible answers to her questions,
which sounded like cowardice; such trails were not possible in the
James Taggart whom she had married. She told herself that she
could not condemn without understanding, that she knew nothing
about his world, that the extent of her ignorance was the extent to
which she misinterpreted his actions. She took the blame, she took
the beating of self-reproach — against some bleakly stubborn certainty
which told her that something was wrong and that the thing she felt
was fear.

“I must learn everything thai Mrs. James Taggart is expected to
know and to be,” was the way she explained her purpose to a teacher
of etiquette. She set out to learn with the devotion, the discipline,
the drive of a military cadet or a religious novice. It was the only
way, she thought, of earning the height which her husband had
granted her on trust, of living up to his vision of her. which it was
now her duty to achieve. And, not wishing to confess it to herself
she felt also that at the end of the long task she would lccapture
her vision of him, that knowledge would bring back to her the man
she had seen on the night of his railroad’s triumph.

She could not understand Jim's attitude when she told him about
her lessons. He burst out laughing; she was unable to believe that
the laughter had a sound of malicious contempt. “Wh#, Jim? Why?
What are you laughing at ?” He would not explain — almost as il the
fact of his contempt were suttieient and required no reasons.

She could not suspect him of malice: hp was too patiently generous
about her mistakes. He seemed eager* to display her in the best
drawing rooms of the city, and he nevec uttered a word of reproach
for her ignorance, for her awkwardness^ for those terrible moments
when a silent exchange ot glances amofcg the guests and a burst of
blood to her cheekbones told her that she had said the wrong thing
again. He showed no embarrassment, hi merely watched her with a
faint smile. When they came home, aft^r one of those evenings, his

800

mood seemed affectionately cheerful. He was trying to make it easier
for her, she thought— and gratitude drove her to study the harder.

She expected her reward on the evening when, by some impercep-
tible transition, she found herself enjoying a party for the first time,
She felt free to act, not by rules, but at her own pleasure, with
sudden confidence that the rules had fused into a natural habit— she
knew that she was attracting attention, but now, for the first time, it
was not the attention of ridicule, but of admiration— she was sought
after, on her own merit, she was Mrs. Taggait. she had ceased being
an object of charity weighing Jim down, painfully tolerated for his
sake— she was laughing gaily and seeing the smiles of response, of
appreciation on the faces around her — and she kept glancing at him
across the room, radiantly, like a child handing him a report card
with a perfect score, begging him to be proud of her. Jim sat alone
in a corner, watching her with an undecipherable glance.

He would not speak to her on their way home. “I don’t know why
1 keep dragging myself to those parties.” he snapped suddenly, tear-
ing off his dress tie in the middle of their living room. ‘Tve never
sat through such a vulgar, boring waste of time!” “Why. Jim,” she
said, stunned, “I thought it was wonderful.” “You would! You
seemed to be quite at home — quite as if it were Coney Island. I wish
you'd learn to keep your place and not to embarrass me in public.”
“I embarrassed you? Tonight ?” “ You did!” “How?” “If you don’t
understand it, I can’t explain.” he said in the tone of a mystic who
implies that a lack of understanding is the confession of a shameful
inferiority. “1 don’t understand it,” she said firmly. He walked out
of the mom, slamming the door.

She felt that the inexplicable was not a mere blank, this time: it
had a tinge of evil. From that night on, a small, hard point of fear
remained within her, like the spot of a distant headlight advancing
upon her down an invisible track.

Knowledge did not seem to bring her a clearer vision of Jim’s
world, but to make the mysteiy greater. She could not believe that
she was supposed to feel respect for the dreary senselessness of the art
shows which his friends attended, of the novels they read, of the
political magazines they discussed — the art shows, where she saw the
kind of drawings she had seen chalked on any pavement of her
childhood’s slums — the novels, that purported to prove the futility
of science, industry, civilization and love, using language that her
father would not have used in his drunkenest moments— the maga-
zines, that propounded cowardly generalities, less clear and more
stale than the sermons for which she had condemned the preacher
of the slum mission as a mealy-mouthed old fraud. She aiuld not
believe that these things were the culture she had so reverently
looked up to and so eagerly waited to discover. She felt as if she
had climbed a mountain toward a jagged shape that had looked like
a castle and had found it to be the crumbling ruin of a gutted
warehouse.

“Jim,” she said once, after an evening spent among the men who
were called the intellectual leaders of the country, “Dr. Simon Prit-
chett is a phony — a mean, scared old phony.” “Now, really,” he

801

answered, “do you think you’re qualified to pass judgment on philos-
ophers?’ 4 “I’m qualified to pass judgment on con men. I’ve seen
enough of them to know one when I see him.” “Now this is why I
say that you’ll never outgrow your background. If you had, you
would have learned to appreciate Dr. Pritchett’s philosophy." “What
philosophy?” “If you don’t understand it, l can’t explain." She would
not let him end the conversation on that favorite foimula of his.
“Jim.” she said, “he’s a phony, he and Balph Eubank and that whole
gang of theirs— and 1 think you’ve been taken in by them.” Instead
of the anger she expected, she saw a brief flash of amusement in the
lift of his eyelids. “That’s what you think,” he answered.

She felt an instant of terror at the first touch of a concept she had
not known to be possible: What if Jim was not taken in by them?
She could understand the phoniness of Dr. Pritchett, she thought —
it was a racket that gave him an undeserved income; she could even
admit the possibility, by now, that Jim might be a phony in his own
business; what she could not hold inside her mind was the concept
of Jim as a phony in a racket from which he gained nothing, an
unpaid phony, an unvenal phony; the phoniness of a cardsharp or a
con man seemed innocently wholesome by comparison. She could
not conceive of his motive; she felt only that the headlight moving
upon her had grown larger.

She could not remember by what steps, what accumulation of pain,
first as small scratches of uneasiness, then as stabs of bewilderment,
then as the chronic, nagging pull of fear, she had begun to doubt
Jim’s position on the railroad. It was his sudden, angry “so you don't
trust me 9 ” snapped in answer to her first, innocent questions that
made her realize that she did not-— when the doubt had not yet
formed in her mind and she had fully expected that his answers would
reassure her. She had learned, in the slums of her childhood, that
honest people were never touchy about the matter of being trusted.

“I don’t care to talk shop.” was his answer whenever she men-
tioned the railroad. She tried to plead with him once. “Jim. you
know what I think of your work and how much I admire you for
it.” “Oh, really? What is it you married, a man or a railroad presi-
dent?” “I , . . i never thought ot separating the two.” “Well, it is not
very flattering to me.” She looked at him, baffled: she had thought it
was. “I’d like to believe,” he said, “that you love me for myself, and
not for my railroad.” “Oh God, Jim.” she gasped, “you didn't think
that 1 — !” “No,” he said, with a sadly generous smile, “I didn’t think
that you married me for my money or my position. / have never
doubted you.” Realizing, in stunned copfusion and in tortured fair-
ness, that she might have given him ground to misinterpret her feel-
ing, that she had forgotten how many bitter disappointments he must
have suffered at the hands of fortune-h|Linting women, she could do
nothing but shake her head and moan,; “Oh, Jim, that’s not what I
meant!” He chuckled softly, as at a chihj, and slipped his arm around
her. “Do you love me?” he asked. “Ye%” she whispered. “Then you
must have faith in me. Love is faith, you know. Don’t you see that

802

I need it? I don’t trust anyone around me, l have nothing but ene-
mies, I am very lonely. Don't you know that I need you’?”

The thing that made her pace her room— hours later, m tortured
restlessness— was that she wished desperately to believe him and did
not believe a word of it, yet knew that it was true.

Jt was true, but not in the manner he implied, not in any manner
or meaning she could ever hope to grasp. It was true that he needed
her, but the nature of his need kept slipping past her every effort to
define it She did not know what he wanted ot her. It was not flattery
that he wanted, she had seen him listening to the obsequious compli-
ments of liars, listening with a look ol resentful inertness — almost
the look of a drug addict at a dose inadequate to rouse him. But
she had seen him took at her as if he were waiting for some reviving
shot and. at times, as if he were begging. She had seen a flicker of
life in his eyes whenever she granted him some sign of admiration-
vet a burst ot anger was his answer, whenever she named a leason
for admiring him. He seemed to want her to consider him great, but
never dare ascribe any specific content to his greatness.

She did not understand the night, in mid-April, when he retained
from a trip to Washington. “Hi, kid!” he said loudly, dropping a
sheaf of lilac into her arms. “Happy days are here again! Just saw
those flowers and thought of you. Spring is coming, baby!”

He poured himself a drink and paced the 100m, talking with loo
light, too brash a manner of gaiety. There was a feverish sparkle in
his eyes, and his voice seemed shredded by some unnatural excite-
ment. She began to wonder whether he was elated or crushed.

“1 know what it is that they’re planning!” he said suddenly, with-
out transition, and she glanced up at him swiftly: she knew 7 the sound
of one of his inner explosions. ‘There's not a dozen people in the
whole country who know it, but I do! The top boys are keeping it
secret till they’re ready to spring it on the nation. Will it surprise a
lot of people! Will it knock them flat! A lot of people? Hell, every
single person in this country! It will affect every single person. That's
how important it is.”

‘Affect —how, Jim?’’

“It will affect them! And they don't know what’s coming, but I
do. There they sit tonight” — he waved at the lighted windows of the
city — “making plans, counting then money, hugging their children
or their dreams, and they don’t know, but I do, that all of it will be
struck, stopped, changed!”

“Changed — for the worse or the better?”

“For the bcttcT, of course,” he answered impatiently, as if it were
irrelevant; his voice seemed to lose its fire and to slip into the fraudu-
lent sound of duty. “It’s a plan to save the country, to stop our
economic decline, to hold things still, to achieve stability and
security.”

“What plan?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s secret. Top secret. You have no idea how
many people would like to know it. There’s no industrialist who
wouldn’t give a dozen of his best furnaces for just one hint of warn-
ing, which he’s not going to get! Like Hank Rearden, for instance,

803

whom you admire so much.'* He chuckled, looking off into the
future.

“Jim.” she asked, the sound of fear in her voice, telling him what
the sound of his chuckle had been like, “why do you hate Hank
Rearden?”

“I don't hate him!” He whirled to her, and his face, incredibly,
looked anxious, almost frightened. “1 nevci said 1 hated him. Don't
worry, hell approve of the plan. Everybody will. It’s for everybody’s
good.” He sounded as if he were pleading. She felt the dizzying
certainty that he was lying, yet that the plea was sincere — as if he had
a desperate need to reassure her, but not about the things he said.

She forced herself to smile. “Yes, Jim, of course,” she answered,
wondering what instinct in what impossible kind of chaos had made
her say it as if it were her part to reassure him.

The look she saw on his face was almost a smile and almost of
gratitude. “I had to tell you about it tonight. I had to tell you. I
wanted you to know what tremendous issues l deal with. You always
talk about my work, but you don’t understand it at all. it’s so much
wider than you imagine. You think that running a railroad is a matter
of tracklaying and fancy metals and getting trains there on time. But
it's not. Any underling can do that. The real heart of a railroad is
in Washington. My job is politics. Politics. Decisions made on a na-
tional scale, affecting everything, controlling everybody. A few words
on paper, a directive — changing the life of every person in every
nook, cranny and penthouse of this country!”

“Yes, Jim,” she said, wishing to believe that he was, perhaps, a
man of stature in the mysterious realm of Washington.

“You'll see,” he said, pacing the room. “You think they’re power-
ful — those giants of industry who ’re so clever with motors and fur-
naces? They’ll be stopped! They’ll be stripped! They’ll be brought
down! They’ll be — ” He noticed the way she was staring at him
“It’s not for ourselves,” he snapped hastily, “it’s for the people
That’s the difference between business and politics — we have no
selfish ends in view, no private motives, we’re not after profit, wc
don’t spend our lives scrambling for money, we don’t have to! That’s
why we’re slandered and misunderstood by all the greedy
profitchasers who can't conceive of a spiritual motive or a moral
ideal or . . . We couldn’t help it!” he cried suddenly, whirling to her
“We had to have that plan! With everything falling to pieces and
stopping, something had to be done! We had to stop them from
stopping! We couldn't help it!”

His eyes were desperate; she did not know whether he was boast-
ing or begging for forgiveness; she d|d not know whether this was
triumph or terror. “Jim, don’t you feil well? Maybe you’ve worked
too hard and you’re worn out and —

“I’ve never felt better in my life!” jhe snapped, resuming. his pac-
ing. “You bet I’ve worked hard. My Work is bigger than any job you
can hope to imagine. It’s above anything that grubbing mechanics,
like Rearden and my sister, are doing. Whatever they do, 1 can undo
it. Let them build a track — I can coirie and break it, just like that!”
He snapped his fingers. “Just like breaking a spine!”

804

“You want to break spines?” she whispered, trembling,

“l haven’t said that!” he screamed. “What’s the matter with you?
I haven’t said it!”

“I’m sorry, Jim!” she gasped, shocked by her own words and by
the terror in his eyes, “It’s just that 1 don’t understand, but . , . but
I know I shouldn’t bother you with questions when you’re so
tired’—she was struggling desperately to convince herself-— “when
you have so many things on your mind . . . such . . . such great
things . . . things l can’t even begin to think of .

His shoulders sagged, relaxing. He approached her and dropped
wearily down on his knees, slipping his arms around her. “You poor
little fool,” he said affectionately.

She held onto him, moved by something that felt like tenderness
and almost like pity. But he raised his head to glance up at her face,
and it seemed to her that the look she saw in his eyes was part-
gratification, part-contempt — almost as if. by some unknown kind of
sanction, she had absolved him and damned herself.

It was useless — she found in the days that followed— to tell heiself
that these things were beyond her understanding, that it was her
duly to believe in him, that love was faith. Her doubt kept growing-
doubt of his incomprehensible work and of his relation to the rail-
load. She wondered why it kept growing in direct proportion to her
self-admonitions that faith was the duty she owed him. Then, one
sleepless night, she realized that her effort to fulfill that duty con-
sisted of turning away whenever people discussed his job. of refusing
to look at newspaper mentions of Taggart Transcontinental, of slam-
ming her mind shut against any evidence and every contradiction.
She stopped, aghast, struck by the question What is it. then— faith
versus truth? And realizing that part of her zeal to believe was her
tear to know, she set out to learn the truth, with a cleanei, calmer
sense of rightness than the effort as dutiful sell-fraud had ever
given her.

It did not take her long to learn The evasiveness ol the Taggart
executives, when she asked a few casual questions, the stale generali-
ties ol their answers, the strain of their manner at the mention of
their boss, and their obvious reluctance to discuss him — told her
nothing concrete, but gave her a feeling equivalent to knowing the
worst, lhe railroad workers were moie specific — the switchmen, the
gatemen, the ticket sellers whom she drew into chance conversations
in the Taggart Tciminal and who did not know her. “Jim Taggart?
That whining, sniveling, speech-making deadhead!" “Jimmy the
President? Well, I’ll tell you* he's the hobo on the gravy train." “The
boss? Mr. Taggart? You mean M/av Taggart, don't you?"

It was Tdche Willers who told her the whole truth. She heard that
he had known Jim since childhood, and she asked him to lunch with
her. When she laced him at the table, when she saw the earnest,
questioning directness of his eyes and the severely literal simplicity
of his woids, she dropped all attempts at casual prodding, she told
him what she wanted to know and why, briefly, impersonally, not
appealing for help or for pity, only for truth. He answered her in
the same manner. He told her the whole story, quietly, impersonally,

805

pronouncing no verdict, expressing no opinion, never encroaching
on her emotions by any sign of concern for them, speaking with the
shining austerity and the awesome power of facts. He tofd her who
ran Taggart Transcontinental. He told her the story of the John Galt
Line. She listened, and what she telt was not shock, but worse: the
lack of shock, as if she had always known it. “Thank you, Mr. Will-
ers," was all that she said when he finished.

She waited for Jim to come home, that evening, and the thing that
eroded any pain or indignation, was a feeling of her own detachment,
as if it did not matter to her any longer, as if some action were
required of her, but it made no difference what the action would be
or the consequences.

It was not anger that she felt when she saw Jim enter the room,
but a murky astonishment, almost as if she wondered who he was
and why it should now be necessary to speak to him She told him
what she knew, briefly, in a tired, extinguished voice. It seemed to
her that he understood it from her first few sentences, as if he had
expected this to come sooner or later

“Why didn't you tell me the truth?" she asked.

“So that’s your idea of gratitude 7 " he screamed. “So that’s how
you feel after everything I’ve done for you? Everybody told me that
crudeness and selfishness was all 1 could expect for lifting a cheap
little alley cat by the scruff of her neck!"

She looked at him as if he were making inarticulate sounds that
connected to nothing inside her mind “Why didn’t you tell me the
truth?"

“Is that all the love you fell for me, you sneaky little hypocrite?
Is that all I get in return for my faith in you?"

“Why did you lie? Why did you let me think what I thought?”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, you should he ashamed to
face me or speak to me!"

“I?" The inarticulate sounds had connected, but she could not
believe the sum they made. “What are you trying to do, Jim?” she
asked, her voice incredulous and distant.

“Have you thought of my feelings? Have you thought of what this
would do to my feelings? You should have considered my feelings
first! That’s the first obligation of any wife — and of a woman in your
position in particular! There’s nothing lower and uglier than
ingratitude!"

For the flash of one instant, she grasped the unthinkable fact ol a
man who was guilty and knew it and was trying to escape by inducing
an emotion of guilt in his victim. But she could not hold the fact
inside her brain. She felt a stab of hoiror, the convulsion of a mind
rejecting a sight that would destroy it — a s(ab like a swift recoil from
the edge of insanity. By the time she dropped her head, closing her
eyes, she knew only that she felt disgust* a sickening disgust for a
nameless reason.

When she raised her head, it seemed Uo her that she caught a
glimpse of him watching her with the underlain, retreating, calculat-
ing look of a man whose trick had not worked. But before she had

806

time to believe it, his face was hidden again under an expression of
injury and anger.

She said, as it she were naming her thoughts for the benefit of the
rational being who was not present, but whose presence she had to
assume, since no other could be addressed, “That night . . . those
headlines . . . that glory ... it was not you at all . . . it was Dagny,”

“Shut up, you rotten little bitch!”

She looked at him blankly, without reaction. She looked as if noth-
mg could reach her, because her dying words had been uttered.

He made the sound of a sob. “Cherryl, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
it, 1 take it back, I didn't mean it . .

She remained standing, leaning against the wall, as she had stood
from the first.

He dropped down on the edge of a couch, in a posture of helpless
dejection. “How could 1 have explained it to you?” ho said in the
tone of abandoning hope. “Ifs all so big and so complex. How could
1 have told you anything about a transcontinental railroad, unless
you knew ail the details and ramifications? How could I have e\-
plained to you my years of work, my - . . Oh, what’s the use? I’ve
always been misunderstood and 1 should have been accustomed to
it by now, only I thought that you were different and that I had
a chance.”

“Jim, why did you marry me?"

He chuckled sadly. “That's what everybody kept asking me. I
didn’t think you'd ever ask it. Why 7 Because I love you.”

She wondered at how strange it was that this word— which was
supposed to be the simplest in the human language, the word under-
stood by all, the uni\ersal bond among men — conveyed to her no
meaning whatever She did not know what it was that it named in
his mind.

“Nobody's ever loved me.” he said. “There isn’t unv love m the
world. People don't feel. 1 feel things. Who cares about that? All
they care for is time schedules and freight loads and money. I can’t
live among those people. I'm very lonely. I’\e always longed to find
understanding. Maybe Pm just a hopeless idealist, looking for the
impossible. Nobody will ever understand me.”

“Jim,” she said, with an odd little note of severity in her voice,
“what I've struggled for all this time is to understand you.”

He dropped his hand in a motion of brushing her words aside, not
offensively, but sadly, “I thought you could. You’re all I have. But
maybe understanding is just not possible between human beings.”

“Why should it be impossible? Why don’t you tell me what it is
that you want? Why don’t you help me to understand you?”

He sighed. “That’s it. That’s the trouble- your asking all those
why’s. Your constant asking of a why for everything. What I’m talk-
ing about can’t be put into words. It can’t be named. It has to be
felt. Either you feel it or you don’t It’s not a thing of the mind, but
of the heart. Don't you ever feel? Just feel , without asking all those
questions? Can’t you understand me as a human being, not as if I
were a scientific object in a laboratory? The greater understanding
that transcends our shabby words and helpless minds , . . No, l guess

807

I shouldn’t look for it. But I’ll always seek and hope. You’re my last
hope. You’re all I have.”

She stood at the wall, without moving.

”1 need you,” he wailed softly. ‘Tm all alone. You’re not like the
others. I believe in you. I trust you. What has all that money and
fame and business and struggle given me? You’re all I have . .

She stood without moving and the direction of her glance, lowered
to look down at him, was the only form of recognition she gave him.
The things he said about his suffering were lies, she thought; but the
suffering was real; he was a man torn by some continual anguish,
which he seemed unable to tell her, but which, perhaps, she could
learn to understand. She still owed him this much — she thought, with
the grayness of a sense of duty — in payment for the position he had
given her, which, perhaps, was all he had to give, she owed him an
effort to understand him.

It was strange to feel, in the days that followed, that she had
become a stranger to herself, a stranger who had nothing to want
or to seek. In place ot a love made by the brilliant (ire of hero
worship, she was left with the gnawing drabness of pity. In place ol
the men she had struggled to find, men who fought for their goals
and refused to suffer — she was left with a man whose suffering was
his only claim lo value and his only offer in exchange for her life.
But it made no difference to her any longer. The one who was she.
had looked with eagerness at the turn of every coiner ahead, the
passive stranger who had taken hei place, was like all the over
groomed people aiound her, the people who said that they were
adult because they did not lr> to think or desire.

But the stranger was still haunted by a ghost who wa> hoi self, and
the ghost had a mission to accomplish She had to learn to under-
stand the things that had destroyed her. She had to know, and she
lived with a sense of ceaseless waiting. She had to know, even though
she felt that the headlight was closci and in the moment of knowl
edge she would he struck by the wheels

What do you want ol me? — was the question that kept beating m
her mind as a clue. What do you want of me? she kept ciying
soundlessly, at dinner tables, in drawing rooms, on sleepless nights
crying it to Jim and those who seemed to share his secret, to Balph
Eubank, to Dr. Simon Pritchett -what do you want of me? She did
not ask it aloud; she knew that they would not answer. What do you
want of me? — she asked, feeling as if she were running, but no way
were open to escape. What do you want of me” — she asked, looking
at the whole long torture of her marriage that had not lasted the
full span ot one year

”What do you want of rne?” she askcfl aloud— and saw that she
was sitting at the table in her dining rojom. looking at Jim, at his
feverish face, and at a drying stain of waiter on the table.

She did not know how long a span of silence had stretched be-
tween them, she was startled by her own! voice and by the question
she had not intended to utter. She did nek expect him to understand
it, he bad never seemed to understand much simpler queries — and
she shook her head, struggling to recapture the reality of the present

808

She was startled to see him looking at her with a touch of derision,
as if he were mocking her estimate of his understanding.

“Love,” he answered.

She felt herself sagging with hopelessness, in the face of that an-
swer which was at once so simple and so meaningless.

“You don't love me,” he said accusingly. She did not answer.
“You don’t love me or you wouldn’t ask such a question.”

“1 did love you once,” she said dully, “but it wasn’t what you
wanted. I loved you for your courage, your ambition, your ability.
But it wasn’t real, any of it.”

His lower lip swelled a little in a faint, contemptuous thrust. “What
a shabby idea of love!” he said.

“Jim, what is it that you want to be loved for?”

“What a cheap shopkeeper’s attitude!”

She did not speak; she looked at him, her eyes stretched by a
silent question.

“To be loved fori" he said, his voice grating with mockery and
righteousness. “So you think that love is a matter of mathematics,
of exchange, of weighing and measuring, like a pound of butter on
a grocery counter 7 l don’t want to be loved for anything. 1 want to
he loved for mysell — not for anything 1 do or have or say or think
for myself ' not tor my body or mind or words or works or actions.”

“But then . , . what is yourself?”

“11 you loved me. you wouldn't ask it,” His voice had a shrill note
of nervousness, as if he were swaying dangerously between caution
and some blindly heedless impulse. “You wouldn’t ask. You'd know.
You’d feel it. Why do you always try to tag and label everything?
C an't you rise above those petty materialistic definitions? Don't you
ever t eel— just /tv/?”

“Yes, Jim. 1 do,” she said, her voice low. “But 1 am trying not to,
because , . because what 1 feel is fear.”

“Of me?” he asked hopefully

“No. not exactly. Not tear of what you can do to me. but of what
you are.”

He dropped his eyelids with the swiftness of slamming a door —
but she caught a flash of his eyes and the flash, incredibly, was terror.
“You’re not capable of love, you cheap little gold-digger!” he cried
suddenly, in a tone stripped of all color but the desiie to hurt. “Yes,
1 said gold-digger. There are many forms of it. other than greed for
money, other and worse. You're a gold-digger of the spirit. You
didn’t marry nre for my cash— but you married me for my ability
or courage or whatever value it was that you set as the price of
your love!”

“Do you want . . . love . , . to be . , . causeless?”

“Love is its own cause! Love is above causes and reasons. Love
is blind. But you wouldn’t be capable of it. You have the mean,
scheming, calculating little soul of a shopkeeper who trades, but
never gives! Love is a gift — a great, free, unconditional gift that tran-
scends and forgives everything. What's the generosity of loving a
man for his virtues? What do you give him? Nothing. It’s no more
than cold justice. No more than he’s earned.”

809

Her eyes were dark with the dangerous intensity of glimpsing her
goal. “You want it to be unearned,’' she said, not in' the tone of a
question, but of a verdict.

“Oh, you don't understand!"

“Yes, Jim, 1 do. That’s what you want — that’s what all of you
really want — not money, not material benefits, not economic security,
not any of the handouts you keep demanding." She spoke in a fiat
monotone, as if reciting her thoughts to herself, intent upon giving
the solid identity of words to the torturous shreds of chaos twisting
in her mind. “All of you welfare preachers — it’s not unearned money
that you’re after You want handouts, but of a different kind. I’m a
gold-digger of the spirit, you said, because I look for value. Then
you, the welfare preachers . . it’s the spirit that you want to loot.
I never thought and nobody ever told us how it could be thought ot
and what it would mean— the unearned in spirit. But that is what
you want. You want unearned love. You want unearned admiration.
You want unearned greatness. You want to be a man like Hank
Rcarden without the necessity ol being what he is. Without the ne-
cessity of being anything. Without . . the necessity . . . ot being "

“Shut up!" he screamed.

They looked at each other, both in terror, both feeling as if they
were swavmg on an edge which she could not and he would not
name, both knowing that one more step would be fatal.

“What do you think you're saying?" he asked in a tone of petty
anger, which sounded almost benevolent by bringing them back into
the realm of the normal, into the near-wholesomeness of nothing
worse than a family quarrel. “What sort of metaphysical subject are
you trying to deal with?"

“1 don’t know . . she said wearily, dropping her head, as if some
shape she had tried to capture had slipped once more out of her
grasp. “I don’t know ... It doesn't seem possible . . ."

“You’d better not try to wade in way over your head or--" But
he had to stop, because the butler entered, bringing the glittering
ice bucket with the champagne oidered for celebration.

They remained silent, letting the room be filled by the sounds
which centuries of men and of struggle had established as the symbol
of joyous attainment: the blast of the cork, the laughing tinkle of a
pale gold liquid running into iwo broad cups filled with the weaving
reflections of candles, the whisper of bubbles rising through two crys-
tal stems, almost demanding that everything m sight rise, too, in the
same aspiration.

They remained silent, till the butler bad gone. Taggart sat looking
down at the bubbles, holding the stem of his glass between two
limply casual fingers. Then his hand clpsed suddenly about the stem
into an awkwardly convulsed fist and be raised it, not as one lifts a
glass of champagne, but as one would Ilift a butcher knife.

“To Francisco d’Anconia!" he said. !

She put her glass down. “No," she answered.

“Drink it!" he screamed.

“No," she answered, her voice like 8 drop of lead,

810

They held each other’s glances for a moment, the light playing on
the golden liquid, not reaching their faces or eyes.

“Oh, go to hell!” he cried, leaping to his feet, flinging his glass to
smash on the floor, and rushing out of the room.

She sat at the table, not moving, for a long time, then rose slowly
and pressed the bell.

She walked to her room, her steps unnaturally even, she opened
the door of a closet, she reached for a suit and a pair of shoes, she
took off the housecoat, moving with cautious precision, as if her life
depended on not jarring anything about or within her. She held onto
a single thought: that she had to get out of this house-just get out
of it for a while, if only for the next hour™ -and then, later, she would
be able to face all that had to be faced.

* *

The lines were blurring on the paper before her and, raising her
head, Dagny realized that it had long since grown dark.

She pushed the papers aside, unwilling to turn on the lamp, permit-
ting herself the luxury of idleness and darkness. It cut her off from
the city beyond the windows of her living room. The calendar in the
distance said: August 5.

The month behind her had gone, leaving nolhing but the blank of
dead time. It had gone mto the planless, thankless work of racing
from emergency to emergency, of delaying the collapse of a rail-
road — a month like a waste pile of disconnected days, each given to
averting the disaster of the moment. It had not been a sum of
achievements brought into existence, but only a sum of zeros, of that
which had not happened, a sum of prevented catastrophes — not a
task m the service of life, but only a race against death.

There had been times when an unsummoned vision — a sight of
the valley — had seemed to rise before her, not as a sudden appear-
ance, hut as a constant, hidden presence that suddenly chose to as-
sume an insistent reality. She had faced it. through moments of
blinded stillness, in a contest between an unmoving decision and an
unyielding pain, a pain to be fought by acknowledgment, by saying:
All right, even this.

There had been mornings when, awakening with rays ol sunlight
on her face, she had thought that she must hurry to Hammond's
Market to gel fresh eggs for bteakfast; then, recapturing full con-
sciousness, seeing the haze of New York beyond the window of her
bedroom, she had felt a tearing stab, like a touch of death, the touch
ol rejecting reality You knew it — she had told herself .severely — you
knew what it would be like when you made your choice. And drag-
ging her body, like an unwilling weight, out of bed to face an unwel-
come day, she would whisper: All nght, even this.

The worst of the torture had been the moments when, walking
down the street, she had caught a sudden glimpse of chestnut-gold,
a glowing streak of hair among the heads of strangers, and had felt
as if the city had vanished, as if nothing but the violent stillness
within her were delaying the moment when she would rush to him
and seize him; but that next moment had come as the sight of some
meaningless face — and she had stood, not wishing to live through

811

the following step, not wishing to generate the energy of living. She
had tried to avoid such moments; she had tried to forbid herself to
look; she had walked, keeping her eyes on the pavements. She had
failed; by some will of their own, her eyes had kept leaping to every
streak of gold.

She had kept the blinds raised on the windows of her office, re-
membering his promise, thinking only: If you are watching me, wher-
ever you are . . . There were no buildings close to the height of her
office, but she had looked at the distant towers, wondering which
window was his observation post, wondering whether some invention
of his own. some device of rays and lenses, permitted him to observe
her every movement from some skyscraper a block or a mile away.
She had sat at her desk, at her uncurtained windows, thinking: Just
to know that you’re seeing me, even if I’m never to see you again.

And rememheiing it, now, in the darkness of her room, she leaped
to her feet and snapped on the light.

Then she dropped her head for an instant, smiling m mirthless
amusement at herself. She wondered whether her lighted windows,
in the black immensity of the city, were a flare of distress, calling
for his help— or a lighthouse still protecting the rest of the woild.

The doorbell rang

When she opened the door, she saw the silhouette of a girl with
a faintly familiar face — and it t(x>k her a moment of startled astonish-
ment to leahze that it was Cherryl Taggart. Except for a formal
exchange of greetings on a few chance encounters in the halls of the
Taggart Building, they had not seen each other since the wedding.

Cherryl’s face was composed and unsmiling. “Would you permit
me to speak to you’* — she hesitated and ended on— “Miss 1 nggarC"

“Of course,*’ said Dagny gravely. “Come in.”

She sensed some desperate emergency in the unnatural calm ol
Cherryl’s manner; she became certain of it when she looked at the
girl's face in the light of the living loom, “Sit down,” she said, but
Cherryl remained standing.

“I came to pay a debt.” said Cherryl, her voice solemn with the
effort to permit hersclt no sound of emotion, i want to apologize
for the things I said to you at my wedding. There’s no reason why
you should forgive me. but it’s my place to tell you that I know i
was insulting everything I admire and defending everything I despise
I know that admitting it now, doesn’t make up for it, and even
coming here is only another presumption, there's no reason why you
should want to hear it, so 1 can't even cancel the debt, 1 can only
ask for a favor — that you let me say the things I want to say to you.

Dagny’s shock of emotion, incredulous, warm and painful, was the
wordless equivalent of the sentence’ What a distance to travel in less
than a year . . . t She answered, the [unsmiling earnestness of her
voice like a hand extended in support^ knowing that a smile would
upset some precarious balance, “But it does make up for it, and l
do want to hear it.” *

“I know that it was you who ran Taggart Transcontinental, It was
you who built the John Galt Line. It was you who had the mind and
the courage that kept all of it alive. 1 suppose you thought that I

812

married Jim for his money — as what shopgirl wouldn’t have? But
you see, I married Jim because 1 . . 1 thought that he was you. I

thought that he was Taggart Transcontinental. Now I know that
lie’s’' — she hesitated, then went on firmly, as if not to spare herself
anything — “he’s some sort ot vicious moocher. though I can’t under-
stand of what kmd or why. When I spoke to you at my wedding, I
thought that I was defending greatness and attacking its enemy . . .
hut it was in reverse ... it was in such horrible, unbelievable
reverse! ... So 1 wanted to tell you that 1 know the truth . . . not
so much for your sake, I had no right to presume that you’d care,
but . . . but for the sake of the things 1 loved.”

Dagny said slowly, “Of course 1 forgive it.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, and turned to go.

“Sit down.”

She shook her head. “That . . . that was all. Miss Taggart.”

Dagny allowed herself the first touch of a smile, no more than in
the look her eyes, as she said, “Cherryl, my name is Dagny.”

Cherryl’s answer was no mote than a taint, tremulous crease of
her mouth, as if together, they had completed a single smile. “1 . . .

1 didn’t know whether T should--”

“We’re sisters, aren’t we?”

“No! Not through Jim!” li was an involuntary cry.

“No, through our own choice. Sit down, Cherryl.” The girl obeyed,
struggling not to show the eagerness of her acceptance, not to grasp
for support, not to break. “You’ve had a terrible time, haven’t you?”

“Yes . . . but that doesn’t matter . . that’s my own problem . .

and my own fault.”

“1 don’t think it was your own fault.”

Cherryl did not answer, then said suddenly, desperately. “Look . . .
what I don’t want is charity ”

“Jim must have told you— and it’s true -that l never engage m
charity,”

“Yes, he did . . . But what l mean is-—”

“I know what you mean.”

“But there's no reason why you should have to feel concern for
me ... I didn't come here to complain and . . . and load another
burden on your shoulders. . . . That I happen to suffer . doesn’t give
me a claim on you.”

“No, it doesn’t. But that you value all the things 1 value, does.”

“You mean . , . if you want to talk to me, it’s not alms? Not just
because you feel sorry tor me?”

“1 feel terribly sorry for you, Cherryl, and I’d like to help you —
not because you suffer, but because you haven’t deserved to suffer.”

“You mean, you wouldn’t be kind to anything weak or whining
or rotten about me? Only to whatever you see in me that’s good?”

“Of course.”

Cherryl did not move her head, but she looked as if it were lifted —
as if some bracing current were relaxing her features into that rare
look which combines pain and dignity.

“It's not alms, Cherryl. Don’t be afraid to speak to me,”

“It’s strange . , . You’re the first person 1 can talk to . . . and it

813

feels so easy . * . yet I ... I was afraid to speak to you. I wanted
to ask your forgiveness long ago . . . ever since l learned the truth.
I went as far as the door of your office, but 1 stopped and stood
there in the hall and didn't have the courage to go in. ... I didn't
intend to come here tonight. 1 went out only to . . to think some-
thing over, and then, suddenly, I knew that 1 wanted to see you, that
in the whole of the city this was the only place for me to go and
the only thing still left for me to do."

“l’m glad you did. 7 '

“You know. Miss Tag — Dagny," she said softly, in wonder,
“you’re not as I expected you to be at all. . . They, Jim and his
friends, they said you were hard and cold and unfeeling."

“But it’s true. Cherryl. 1 am, m the sense they mean— -only have
they ever told you in just what sense they mean it 9 "

“No. They never do. They only sneer at me when 1 ask them what
they mean by anything . . about anything. What did they mean
about you 9 "

“Whenever anyone accuses some person of being ‘unicehng.’ he
means that that person is just. He means that that person has no
causeless emotions and will not grant him a feeling which he does
not deserve. He means that ‘to feel' is to go against reason, against
moral values, against reality. He means . . . What’s the matter?" she
asked, seeing the abnormal intensity of the gill’s face.

“It's . . it's something I’ve tried so hard to understand . . , for
such a long time. . .

“Well, observe that you never hear that accusation in defense ol
innocence, but always in defense of guilt. You never hear it said by
a good person about those who fail to do him justice. But you always
hear it said by a rotter about those who treat him as a rotter, those
who don’t feel any sympathy for the evil he’s committed or for the
pain he suffers as a consequence. Well, it’s true— that is what I do
not feel. But those who fee! it, feel nothing for any quality of human
greatness, for any person or action that deserves admiration, ap-
proval, esteem. These are the things / feel. You'll find that it's one
or the other. Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to inno-
cence. Ask yourself which, ol the two, are the unfeeling persons
And then you’ll see what motive is the opposite of charity."

“What?" she whispered.

“Justice, Cherryl."

Cherryl shuddered suddenly and dropped her head, “Oh God!"
she moaned “If you knew what hell Jim has been giving me because
1 believed just what you said!" She raised her face in the sweep of
another shudder, as if the things she had tried to control had broken
through; the look in her eyes was terror. “Dagny," she whispered,
“Dagny, I'm afraid of them , . . of Jifn and all the others . . . not
afraid of something they’ll do . . . if it.; were that, I could escape . . .
but afraid, as if there’s no way out » . . afraid of what they are
and . . . and that they exist," ;

Dagny came forward swiftly to sit on the arm of her chair and
seize her shoulder in a steadying gt£sp. “Quiet, kid," she said.
“You’re wrong. You must never feel afraid of people in that way

814

You must never think that their existence is a reflection on yours —
yet that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Yes ... Yes, I feel that there’s no chance for me to exist, if they
do . , . no chance, no room, no world I can cope with. ... I don’t
want to teel it, 1 keep pushing it hack, but it's coming closer and I
know 1 have no place to run. ... 1 can t explain what it feels like,

1 can’t catch hold of it — and that’s part of the terror, that you can 7
catch hold of anything — it’s as if the whole world were suddenly
destroyed, but not by an explosion— an explosion is something hard
and solid— but destroyed by ... by some horrible kind of
softening ... as if nothing were solid, nothing held any shape at all,
and you could poke your finger through stone wall and the stone
would give, like jelly, and mountains would slither, and buildings
would switch their shapes like clouds— and that would be the end
ot the world, not lire and brimstone, but goo ”

“Cherrvl . . . Cherryl, you poor kid. there have been centuries of
philosophers plotting to turn the world into just that— to destroy
people’s minds by making them believe that that’s what they're
seeing. But you don’t have to accept it. You don’t have to see
through the eyes of others, hold on to yours, stand on your own
judgment, you know that what is, is — say it aloud, like the holiest of
praycis, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise ”

‘'But . . . but nothing is, any more. Jim and his friends — they’re
not l don't know what I’m looking at, when I’m among them. 1
don’t know what I’m hearing when they speak . . . it's not real, any
of it. it’s some ghastly sort ot act that they're all going through . . .
and I don’t know what they're after. . . Dagnv* We’ve always been
told that human beings have such a great power of knowledge, so
much greater than animals, but I — I feel blinder than any animal
light now', blinder and more helpless. An animal knows who are its
friends and who are its enemies, and when to defend itself. It doesn’t
expect a triend to step on it or to cut its throat. It doesn’t expect to
he told that love is blind, that plunder is achievement, that gangsters
aie statesmen and that it's great to break the spine of Hank Rear-
den!— oh God, what am I saving?”

“1 know what you’re saying,”

i mean, how am I to deal with people? I mean, if nothing hold
firm for the length of one hour— we couldn’t go on, could we? Well,

1 knowr that tilings are solid — but people 0 Dagny! They’re nothing
and anything, they’re not beings, they're only switches, just constant
switches without any shape. But I have to live among them, flow
am I to do it?”

“Cherryl, what you’ve been struggling with is the greatest problem
m history, the one that has caused all of human suffering. You’ve
understood much more than most people, who suffer and die, never
knowing what killed them. I’ll help you to understand. It’s a big
subject and a hard battle— but first, above all, don’t be afraid.”

The look on Cherry I's face was an odd. wistful longing, as if. seeing
ftagny from a great distance, she were straining and failing to come
doser. “J wish l could wish to fight,” she said softly, “but 1 don’t. I
don’t even want to win any longer. There’s one change that 1 don’t

815

seem to have the strength to make. You see, I haci never expected
anything like my marriage to Jim. Then when it happened, l thought
that life was much more wonderful than 1 had expected. And now
to get used to the idea that life and people are much more horrible
than anything I had imagined and that my marriage was not a glori
ous miracle, but some unspeakable kind of evil which I’m still atraid
to learn fully — that is what l can’t force myself to take. I can’t get
past it.” She glanced up suddenly. “Dagny, how did you do it? How
did you manage to remain unmangled?”

“By holding to just one rule.”

“ Which?”

“To place nothing — nothing — above the verdict of my own mind.”

“You've taken some terrible beatings . . . maybe worse than I
did . . . worse than any of us. . . . What held you through it?”

“The knowledge that my life is the highest of values, too high to
give up without a fight.”

She saw a look ot astonishment, ot incredulous recognition on
Chcrryi’s face, as if the girl were struggling to recapture some sensa-
tion across a span of years, “Dagny”— her voice was a whisper —
“that's . . . that’s what I felt when I was a child . . . that’s what I
seem to remember most about myself . . . that kind of feeling . . .
and I never lost it, it’s there, it's always been there, but as I grew
up, I thought it was something that I must hide. ... I never had any
name for it, but just now, when you said it, it struck me that that's
what it was. . . Dagny, to feel that way about your own life — is

that gooeft"

“Cherry!, listen to me carefully: that feeling— with everything,
which it requires and implies — is the highest, noblest and only good
on earth.”

“The reason 1 ask is because 1 ... I wouldn’t have dared to think
that. Somehow, people always made me feel as if they thought it
was a sin ... as if that were the thing in me which they resented
and . . . and wanted to destioy.”

“It’s true. Some people do want to destroy it. And when you learn
to understand their motive, you’ll know the darkest, ugliest and only
evil in the world, but you’ll be safely out of its reach.”

Cherryl’s smile was like a feeble flicker struggling to retain its hold
upon a few drops of fuel, to catch them, to flare up. “It’s the first
time in months,” she whispered, “that I've felt as if ... as if there’s
still a chance.” She saw Dagny’s eyes watching her with attentive
concern, and she added, “I’ll be all right . . Let me get used to

it — to you, to all the things you said. 1 think I'll come to believe
it ... to believe that it’s real . . . and that Jim doesn’t matter.” She
rose to her feet, as if trying to retaiif the moment of assurance.

Prompted by a sudden, causeless f certainty, Dagny said sharply.
“Cherry!, I don’t want you to go hothe tonight.”

“Oh no! I’m all right. I’m not afraid, that way. Not of going
home.”

“Didn’t something happen there tonight?”

“No . . . not really . . . nothing worse than UvSual. It was just that
I began to sec things a little more clearly, that was all. ... I’m all

816

right. I have to think, think harder than I ever did before . . . and
then HI decide what I must do. Mav I— 1 11 She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“May I come back to talk to you again?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you, 1 ... I’m very grateful to you.”

“Will you promise me that you’ll come back?”

“1 promise.”

Dagny saw her walking off down the hall toward the elevator, saw
the slump of her shoulders, then the effort that lifted them, saw the
slender figure that seemed to sway then marshal all of its strength
lo remain erect. She looked like a plant with a broken stem, still
held together by a single fiber, struggling lo heal the breach, which
one more gust of wind would finish.

* *

Through the open door of his study. James Taggart had seen Cher-
ry I cross the anteroom and walk out ot the apartment. He had
slammed his door and slumped down on the davenport, with patches
of spilled champagne still soaking the cloth of his trousers, as if his
own discomfort were a revenge upon his wife and upon a universt:
that would not provide him with the celebration he had wanted.

\fter a while, he leaped to his feet, lore off his coal and threw it
across the room. He reached lor a cigarette, but snapped it in half
and flung it at a painting over the fireplace.

He noticed a vase of Venetian glass-— a museum piece, centuries
old, with an intricate system of blue and gold arteries twisting
through its transparent body He seized it and Hung it at the wall; it
hurst into a rain of glass as thin as a shattered light bulb.

He had bought that vase for the satisfaction of thinking ot all
the connoisseurs who could not afford it. Now he experienced the
satisfaction ol a revenge upon the centuries which had prized it —
and the satisfaction of thinking that there were millions of desperate
I amities, any one of whom could have lived for a year on the price
ol that vase.

He kicked off his shoes, and fell back on Ihc davenport, letting
his s'oeking feet dangle In mid-air.

The sound ot the doorbell startled hinr it seemed to match his
mood. It was the kind of brusque, demanding, impatient snap of
^ound he would have produced it he were now- jabbing his finger at
someone’s doorbell.

He listened lo the butler's steps, promising himself the pleasure
ot refusing admittance to whoever was seeking it. In a moment, he
heard the knock at his door and the butler entered to announce,
‘Mrs. Reardon to see you, sir.”

“What? . . . Oh , . . Well! Have her come in!”

He swung his feet down to the floor, but made no other conces-
sion, and waited with half a smile of aleited curiosity, choosing not
to rise until a moment after Lillian had entered the room.

She wore a wine -colored dinner gown, an imitation of an Empire
traveling suit, with a miniature double-breasted jacket gripping her
high waistline over the long sweep of the skirt, and a small hat

817

clinging to one ear, with a feather sweeping down to curl under her
chin. She entered with a brusque, unrhythmical motion, the train of
her dress and the feather of her hat swirling, then flapping against
her legs and throat, like pennants signaling nervousness.

“Lillian, my dear, am I to be flattered, delighted or just plain
flabbergasted?"

“Oh. don’t make a fuss about it! I had to see you, and it had to
be immediately, that's all.”

The impatient tone, the peremptory movement with which she sat
down were a confession of weakness: by the rules of their unwritten
language, one did not assume a demanding manner unless one were
seeking a favor and had no value — no threat — to barter.

“Why didn’t you stay at the Gun/ales reception?" she asked, her
casual smile failing to hide the lone of irritation. “1 dropped in on
them after dinner, just to catch hold of you-* -but they said you hadn’t
been feeling well and had gone home."

He crossed the room and picked up a cigarette, for the pleasure
of padding in his stocking feet past the formal elegance her cos-
tume. “I was bored," he answered.

“I can't stand them." she said, with a little shudder, he glanced at
her in astonishment: the words sounded involuntary and sincere. “I
can't stand Senor Gon/ales and that whore he's got himself for a
wife. It’s disgusting that they've become so fashionable, they and
their parties. I don't feel like going anywhere any longer. It’s not
the same style any more, not the same spiiit. 1 haven’t run into
Balph Eubank for months, or Dr. Pritchett, or any of the boys. And
all those new faces that look like butcher’s assistants! After all. our
crowd were gentlemen."

“Yeah," he said reflectively. “Yeah, there’s some lunny kind ot
difference. It's like on the railroad, too: 1 could get along with Hern
Weatherby, he was civili/ed, but Cuffy Meigs — that’s something else
again, that’s . . He stopped abruptly

“It’s perfectly preposterous." she said, in the tone of a challenge
to the space at large. “They can’t get away with it."

She did not explain “who" or “with what." He knew what she
meant. Through a moment of silence, they* looked as if they were
clinging to each other for reassurance.

In the next moment, he was thinking with pleasurable amusement
that Lillian was beginning to show her age. The deep burgundy color
of her gown was unbecoming, it seemed to draw a purplish tinge out ot
her skin, a tinge that gathered, like twilight, in the small gullies of
her face, softening her flesh to a texture of tired slackness, changing hci
look of bright mockery into a look of static malice.

He saw her studying him, smiling and spying crisply, with the smile
as license for insult, “You are unwell, Aren’t you, Jim? You look
like a disorganized stableboy." ;

He chuckled. "I can afford it."

“I know it, darling. You’re one of the most powerful men in New
York City." She added, “It’s a good joke on New York City."

“It is.”

“I concede that you’re in a position to do anything. That’s why 1

818

had to see you.” She added a small, gruntlike sound of amusement,
to dilute her statement’s frankness,

“Good,” he said, his voice comfortable and noncommittal.

“I had to come here, because 1 thought it best, in this particular
matter, not to be seen together in public.”

“That is always wise.”

“J seem to remember having been useful to you in the past.”

“In the past — yes.”

“1 am sure that 1 can count on you.”

“Of course — only isn’t that an old-fashioned, unphilosophical re-
mark? How can we ever be sure of anything?”

“Jim,” she snapped suddenly, “you've got to help me!”

“My dear. Pm at your disposal, Pd do anything to help you,” he
answered, the rules of their language requiring that any open state-
ment be answered by a blatant lie. Lillian was slipping, he thought —
and he experienced the pleasure of dealing with an inadequate
adversary.

She was neglecting, he noted, even the perfection of her particular
trademark: her grooming A few strands were escaping from the
drilled waves of her hair — hei nails, matching her gown, were the deep
shade of coagulated blood, which made it easy to norice the chipped
polish at their tips — and against the broad, smooth, creamy expanse
of her skin in the low, square cut of her gown, he observed the tiny
glitter of a safety pin holding the stiap of her slip

“You’ve got to prevent it!” she said, in the belligerent tone of a
plea disguised as a command. “You've got to slop it!”

“Really? What?”

“My divorce.”

“Oh . !” His features dropped into sudden earnestness.

“You know that he's going to divorce me. don’t you?”

“I’ve heard some rumors about it.”

“It's set for next month. And when 1 say \et. that's just what l
mean. Oh, it’s cost him plenty- but he's bought the judge, the clerks,
the bailiffs, their backers, their backers' backers, a few legislators,
half a do/en administrators- he’s bought the whole legal process,
like a private thoroughfare, and there’s no single crossroad left for
me to squeeze through to slop it!”

“I see.”

“You know, of course, what made him start divorce proceedings?”

“I can guess.”

“And l did it as a favor to you*" Her voice was growing anxiously
shrill. “I told you about your sister in order to let you get that Gift
C ertificate for your friends, which—”

“1 swear f don’t know who let it out!” he cried hastily. “Only a
very few at the lop knew that you'd been our informer, and I'm sure
nobody would dare mention--”

“Oh, l*m sure nobody did. He’d have the brains to guess it,
wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, f suppose so. Well, then you knew that you were taking
a chance.”

m

U I didn’t think he’d go that far. 1 didn’t think he’d ever divorce
me. I didn’t — ”

He chuckled suddenly, with a glance of astonishing perceptiveness.
"You didn’t think that guilt is a rope that wears thin, did you,
Lillian?”

She looked at him. startled, then answered stonily. “I don’t think
it does.”

"It does, my dear— -for men such as your husband.”

"I don’t want him to divorce me!” It was a sudden scream. "1
don’t want to let him go free! 1 won’t permit it! I won’t let the whole
of my life be a total failure!” She stopped abruptly, as if she had
admitted too much.

He was chuckling softly, nodding his head with a slow movement
that had an air of intelligence, almost of dignity, by signifying a
complete understanding.

"1 mean . . . after all, he’s my husband,” she said defensively

“Yes, Lillian, yes, 1 know.”

"Do you know what he's planning? He’s going to get the decree
and he’s going to cut me off without a penny— no settlement, no
alimony, nothing! He's going to have the last word. Don't you see?
If he gets away with it, then then the Gift Ceitilicate was no
victory fot me at all!”

“Yes, my dear, 1 see.”

'And besides . . . It’s preposterous that l should have to think ol
it. but what am 1 going to live on 7 The little money I had of my
own is worth nothing nowadays. It’s mainly stock in lactories of my
father’s time, that have closed long ago. What am I going to do?”

“But, Lillian,” he said softly, “I thought you had no concern for
money or for any material rewards.”

“You don't understand! I'm not talking about money — I’m talking
about poverty! Real, stinking, hall-bedroom poverty! That’s out ot
bounds for any civilized person! I -I too have to worry about lood
and rent 7 ”

He was watching her with a faint smile; for once, his soft, aging
face seemed tightened into a look of wisdom, he was discovering the
pleasure of full perception --in a reality which he could permit him-
self to perceive.

“Jim, you’ve got to help me! My lawyer is powerless, I've spent
the little I had, on him and on his investigators, friends and fixers- -
but all they could do for me was find out that they can do nothing.
My lawyer gave me his final report this afternoon, fie told me bluntly
that I haven't a chance I don't seem to know anyone who can help
against a setup of this kind. I had counted on Bertram Scudder,
but . . . well, you know what happened tk> Bertram. And that, too.
was because I had tried to help you. You , pulled yourself out of that
one, Jim, you're the only person who caii pull me out now. You've
got your gopher-holc pipe line straight up to the top. You can reach
the big boys. Slip a word to your triends to slip a word to their
friends. One word from Wesley would do it. Have them order that
divorce decree to be refused. Just have it refused.”

He shook his head slowly, almost compassionately, like a tired

m

professional at an overzealous amateur. “It can’t be done, Lillian/’
he said firmly. “I’d like to do it — for the same reason as yours — and
l think you know it. But whatever power I have is not enough in
this case.”

She was looking at him, her eyes dark with an odd, lifeless stillness;
when she spoke, the motion of her lips was twisted by so evil a
contempt that he did not dare identify it beyond knowing that it
embraced them both; she said, “I know that you’d like to do it”

He felt no desire to pretend; oddly, for the first time, for this one
chance, truth seemed much more pleasurable— truth, for once, serv-
ing his particular kind of enjoyment. “I think you know that it can’t
he done,” he said. “Nobody does favors nowadays, if there’s nothing
to gain in return. And the stakes are getting higher and higher. The
gopher holes, as you called them, are so complex, so twisted and
intertwisted that everybody has something on everybody else, and
nobody dares move because he can t tell who’ll crack which way or
when. So he’ll move only when he has to, when the stakes are life
or death— and that’s practically the only kind of stakes we’re playing
for now. Well, what’s your private life to any of those boys? That
you’d like to hold your husband — what’s in it for them, one way or
another? And my personal stock-in-trade — well, there’s nothing 1
could offer them at the moment in exchange for trying to blast a
whole court clique out of a highly profitable deal. Besides, right now,
the top boys wouldn’t do it at any price. They have to be mighty
careful of your husband — he’s the man who’s safe from them right
now — ever since that radio broadcast of my sister's.”

“ You asked me to force her to speak on that broadcast!”

“1 know, Lillian. We lost, both of u is, that time And we lose, both
ot us, now.”

“Yes,” she said, with the same darkness of contempt in her eyes,
“both of us.”

It was the contempt that pleased him, it was the strange, heedless,
unfamiliar pleasure of knowing that this woman saw him as he was,
yet remained held by his presence, remained and leaned back in her
chair, as if declaring her bondage.

“You’re a wonderful person, Jim,” she said. It had the sound of
damnation. Yet it was a tribute, and she meant it as such, and his
pleasure came from the knowledge that they were in a realm where
damnation was value.

“You know,” he said suddenly, “you’re wrong about those butch-
er’s assistants, like Gonzales. They have their uses. Have you ever
liked Francisco d’Anconia?”

“I can’t stand him.”

“Well, do you know the real purpose of that cocktail-swilling occa-
sion staged by Seftor Gonzales tonight? It was to celebrate the
agreement to nationalize d’Anconia Copper in about a month.”

She looked at him for a moment, the comer of her lips lifting
slowly into a smile. “He was your friend, wasn’t he?”

Her voice had a tone he had never earned before, the tone of an
emotion which he had drawn from people only by fraud, but which

821

now, for the first time, was granted with full awareness to the real,
the actual nature of his deed: a tone of admiration.

Suddenly, he knew that this was the goal of his restless hours, this
was the pleasure he had despaired of finding, this was the celebration
he had wanted,

'’Let's have a drink, Lil," he said.

Pouring the liquor, he glanced at her across the room, as she lay
stretched limply in her chair. 'Let him get his divorce," he said. “He
won’t have the last word. 7 hey will. I he butcher's assistants. Scfior
Gon/alcs and Cuffy Meigs."

She did not answer. When he approached, she took the glass Irom
him with a sloppily indifferent sweep of her hand. She drank, not in
the maimer of a social gesture, but like a lonely drinker in a saloon—
for the physical sake ol the liquor.

He sat down on the arm of the davenport, improperly close to
her, and sipped his drink, watching hei tact. After a while, he asked,
"What does he think of me 9 "

The question did not seem to astonish her. "He thinks you’re a
fool." she answered. "He thinks life’s too short to notice your
existence."

"He’d notice it, il~ He stopped.

" — if you bashed him ovei the head with a club" I'm not too sure.
He’d merely blame himself for not having moved out of the dub's
reach. Still, that would be your only chance.”

She shifted her body, sliding lower in the armchair, stomach for-
ward. as if relaxation were ugliness, as il she were granting him the
kind of intimacy that required no poise and no respect.

"That was the first thing I noticed about him,” she said, "when 1
met him for the first time that he was not afraid He looked as it
he fell certain that there was nothing any of us could do to him—
so certain that he didn’t even know the issue or the nature of what
he felt."

"How long since you saw him last?”

"Three months. 1 haven’t seen him since . . since the Gift
Certificate ..."

"1 saw him at an industrial meeting two weeks ago. He still looks
that way — only more so. iVmv, he looks as if he knows it." He added,
"You have failed, Lillian."

She did not answer. She pushed her hat off with the back of her
hand: it rolled down to the carpet, its feather curling like a question
mark. "1 remember the first time 1 saw his mills," she said. "/ hs
mills! You can’t imagine what he fell about them. You wouldn't
know the kind of intellectual arrogance it takes to feel as if anything
pertaining to him, anything he touched. Were made sacred by the
touch. His mills, his Metal, his money, his bed, his wife!" She glanced
up at him, a small flicker piercing the lethargic emptiness of her
eyes. "He never noticed your existence. Hp did notice mine. Pm still
Mrs, Rearden — at least for another mont^."

"Yes . , ." he said, looking down at her with a sudden, new
interest.

"Mrs. Rearden!" she chuckled. "You wouldn’t know what that

822

meant to him. No feudal lord ever felt or demanded such reverence
for the title of his wife — or held it as such a symbol of honor. Of
his unbending, untouchable, inviolate, stainless honor!” She waved
her hand in a vague motion, indicating the length of her sprawled
body. ‘‘Caesar’s wife!” she chuckled. “Do you remember what she
was supposed to be? No, you wouldn’t. She was supposed to be
above reproach.”*

He was staring down at her with the heavy, blind stare of impotent
hatred- a haired of which she was the sudden symbol, not the object.
*‘He didn’t like it when his Metal was thrown into common, public
use, for any chance passer-by to make . . . did he?”

“No, he didn’t.”

His words were blurring a little, as if weighted with drops of the
liquor he had swallowed: “Don’t tell me that you helped us to get
that Gift Certificate as a favor to me and that you gained nothing. . . .

1 know why you did it.”

“You knew it at the time.”

“Sure. That’s why 1 like you, Lillian.”

His eyes kept coming back to the low cut of her gown. It was not
the smooth skin that attracted his glance, not the exposed rise of
her breasts, but the fraud of the safety pin beyond the edge.

“I'd like to see him beaten,” he said. “I’d like to hear him scream
with pain, just once.”

“You won’t, Jimmy ”

“Why does he think he's better than the rest of us — he and that
sister of mine 9 ”

She chuckled.

He rose as if she had slapped him. He went to the bar and poured
himself another drink, not offering to refill her glass.

She was speaking into space, staring past him. “He did notice my
existence -even though 1 can’t lay railtoad tracks for him and erect
bridges to the glory of his Metal. 1 can’t build his mills — but I can
destroy them. 1 can't produce his Metal— but 1 can take it away from
him. I can’t bring men down to their knees in admiration — but I can
bring them down to their knees.”

' Shut up!” he screamed in terror, as if she were coming too close
to that fogbound alley which had to remain unseen.

She glanced up at his face. “You're such a coward, Jim.”

“Why don't you get drunk?” he snapped, sticking his unfinished
drink at her mouth, as if he wanted to strike her.

Her fingers half-closed limply about the glass, and she drank, spill-
ing the liquor down her chin, her breast and her gown.

“Oh hell, Lillian, you’re a mess!” he said and, not troubling lo
reach for his handkerchief, he stretched out his hand to wipe the
liquor with the fiat of his palm. His fingers slipped under the gown’s
neckline, dosing over her breast, his breath catching in a sudden
gulp, like a hiccough. His eyelids were drawing closed, but he caught
a glimpse of her face leaning back unresistingly, her mouth swollen
with revulsion. When he reached for her mouth, her arms embraced
him obediently and her mouth responded, but the response was just
a pressure, not a kiss.

* 823

He raised his head to glance at her face. Her teeth were bared in
a smile, but she was staring past him, as if mocking some invisible
presence, her smile lifeless, yet loud with malice, like the grin of a
fleshless skull.

He jerked her closer, to stifle the sight of his own shudder. His
hands were going through the automatic motions of intimacy — and
she complied, but in a manner that made him feel as if the beats of
her arteries under his touch were snickering giggles. They were both
performing an expected routine, a routine invented by someone and
imposed upon them, performing it in mockery, in hatred, in defiling
parody on its inventors.

He felt a sightless, heedless fury, part-horror, part-pleasure — the
horror of committing an act he would never dare contess to anyone—
the pleasure of committing it in blasphemous defiance of those to
whom he would not dare confess it. He was himself! — the only con-
scious part of his rage seemed to be screaming to hirn — he was, at
last, himself!

They did not speak. They knew each other’s motive. Only two
words were pronounced between them. “Mrs. Rearden ,” he said.

They did not look at each other when he pushed her into his
bedroom and onto his bed. falling against her body, the look of
partners in guilt, the furtive, smutty look ol children defiling some-
one’s dean fence by chalking sneaky scratches intended as symbols
of obscenity

Afterward, it did not disappoint him that what he had possessed
was an inanimate body without resistance or response. It was not a
woman that he had wanted to possess. It was not an act in celebra-
tion of life that he had wanted to perform —but an act in celebration
of the triumph of impotence

* *

Cherry! unlocked the door and slipped in quietly, almost surrepti-
tiously, as if hoping not to be seen or to see the place which was
her home. The sense of Dagny’s presence- -of Dagny's world — had
supported her on her way back, but when she entered her own apart-
ment the walls seemed to swallow her again into the suffocation ol
a trap.

The apartment was silent; a wedge of light cut across the anteroom
from a door left half-open. She dragged herself mechanically in the
direction of her room. Then she stopped.

The open band of light was the door of Jim's study, and on the
illuminated strip of its carpet she saw a woman’s hat with a feather
stirring faintly in a draft.

She took a step forward. The room jwas empty, she saw two
glasses, one on a table, the other on the ffoor, and a woman’s purse
lying on the seat of an armchair. She st^nxi, in unreacting stupor,
until she heard the muffled drawl of two Voices behind the door of
Jim’s bedroom; she could not distinguish (he words, only the quality
of the sounds; Jim’s voice had a tone of irritation, the woman’s—
of contempt.

Then she found herself in her own room, fumbling frantically to
lock her door. She had been flung here by the blind panic of escape,

824 *

as if it were she who had to hide, she who had to run from the ugliness
of being seen in the act of seeing them— a panic made of revulsion*
of pity, of embarrassment, of that mental chastity which recoils from
confronting a man with the unanswerable proof of his evil.

She stood in the middle of her room, unable to grasp what action
was now possible to her. Then her knees gave way, folding gently,
she found herself sitting on the floor and she stayed there, staring
al the carpet, shaking.

It was neither anger nor jealousy nor indignation, but the blank
horror ol dealing with the grotesquely senseless. It was the knowl-
edge that neither their marriage nor his love for her nor his insistence
on holding her nor his love lor that other woman nor this gratuitous
adultery had any meaning whatever, that there was no shred of sense
in any of it and no use to grope for explanations. She had always
thought of evil as purposeful, as a means to some end: what she was
seeing now was evil for evil's sake.

She did not know how long she had sat there, when she heard
their steps and voices, then the sound of the front door dosing. She
got up, with no purpose in mind, but impelled by some instinct from
the past, as if acting in a vacuum where honesty was not relevant
any longer, but knowing no other way to act.

She met Jim in the anteroom, f or a moment, they looked at each
other as if neither could believe the other’s reality.

“When did vou come back?'' he snapped “How long have you
been home?"

“I don't know . .

He was looking at her face. “What’s the matter with you?"

“Jim, I — ’’ She struggled, gave up and waved her hand toward his
bedroom. “Jim, I know."

“What do you know 0 "

“You were there ... with a woman."

His first action was to push her into his study and slam the door,
as if to hide them both, he could no longer sa> from whom. An
unadmitted rage was boiling m hts mind, struggling between escape
and explosion, and it blew up into the sensation that this negligible
little wife of his was depriving him of his triumph, that he would not
surrender to her his new enjoyment

“Sure!" he screamed. “So what? What are you going to do
about it?"

She stared at him blankly.

“Sure! I was there with a woman! That's what I did, because that's
what I felt like doing! Do you think you're going to scare me with
your gasps, your stares, your whimpering virtue?" He snapped his
fingers. "That for your opinion! I don't give a hoot in hell about
your opinion! Take it and like it!" It was her white, defenseless face
that drove him on, lashing him into a stale of pleasure, the pleasure
of feeling as if his words were blows disfiguring a human face. “Do
you think you're going to make me hide? I'm sick of having to put
on an act for your righteous satisfaction! Who the hell are you* you
cheap little nobody? I'll do as I please, and you’ll keep your mouth
shut and go through the right tricks in public, like everybody else,

825

and stop demanding that l act in my own home! — nobody is virtuous
in his own home, the show is only for company! — but if you expect
me to mean it — to mean it, you damn little fool! — you’d better grow
up in a hurry!”

ft was not her face that he was seeing, it was the face of the man
at whom he wanted and would never be able to throw his deed of
this night — but she had always stood as the worshipper, the defender,
the agent of that man in his eyes, he had married her for it, so she
could serve his purpose now, and he screamed, “Do you know who
she was, the woman 1 laid? It was — ”

“No!” she cried. “Jim! I don’t have to know!**

“ft was Mrs. Rearden! Mrs. Hank Rearden!’’

She stepped back. He felt a brief Hash of terror-— because she was
looking at him as if she were seeing that which had to remain unad-
mitted to himself. She asked, m a dead voice that had the incongru-
ous sound of common sense, “I suppose you will now want us to
get divorced?”

He burst out laughing “You goddamn tool! You still mean it!
You still want it big and pure! I wouldn’t think of divorcing you—
and don’t go imagining that I’ll let you divorce me! You think it’s
as important as lhal #> Listen, you tool, there isn't a husband who
doesn't sleep with other women and liieie isn't a wife who doesn't
know it, but they don’t talk about it! I ll lay anybody I please, and
you go and do the same, like all those bitches, and keep your
mouth shut!”

He saw the sudden, startling sight ot a look of hard, unclouded,
unfeeling, almost inhuman intelligence in her eyes. “Jim, if 1 were
the kind who did or would, you wouldn’t have mairted me.”

“No. I wouldn't have.”

“Why did you marry me?”

He felt himself drawn as by a whirlpool, part m relief that the
moment of danger was past, part in irresistible defiance of the same
danger. “Because you were a cheap, helpless, preposterous little gut-
tersnipe, who’d never have a chance at anything to equal me! Be-
cause I thought you’d love me! I thought you'd know that you had
to love me!”

“As you are?”

“Without daring to ask what I am! Without reasons! Without put-
ting me on the spot always to live up to reason after reason after
reason, like being on some goddamn dress parade to the end of
my days!”

“You loved me . . . because 1 was worthless?”

“Well, what did you think you were?”

“You loved me for being rotten?”

“What else did you have to offer? But y6u didn’t have the humility
to appreciate it. I wanted to be generofis, 1 wanted to give you
security — what security is there in being hived for one’s virtues? The
competition’s wide open, like a jungle mafkcl place, a better persort
will always come along to beat you! But f^l was willing to love you
for your flaws, for your faults and weaknesses, for your ignorance,
your crudeness, your vulgarity — and that’s safe, you’d have nothing

826

to fear, nothing to hide, you could he yourself, your real, stinking,
sinful, ugly self-— everybody’s self is a gutter — but you could hold my
love, with nothing demanded of you!”

“You wanted me to . . . accept your love ... as alms?”

“Did you imagine that you could earn it? Did you imagine that
you could deserve to marry me, you poor little tramp? I used to buy
the likes of you lor the price of a meal! I wanted you to know, with
every step you took, with every mouthful of caviar you swallowed,
that you owed it all to me, thal you had nothing and were nothing
and could never hope to equal, deserve or repay!”

“1 . . . tried ... to deserve it."

“Of what use would you be to me if you had?”

“You didn’t want me to?”

“Oh, you goddamn loop”

“You didn’t want me to improve? You didn’t want me to rise?
You thought me rotten and you wanted me to say rotten?”

“O! what use would you be to me, if you earned it all, and I had
to work to hold you. and you could trade elsewhere if you chose?”

“You wanted it to be alms . . , for both of us and from both?
You wanted us to be two beggars chained to each other?”

“Yes, you goddamn evangelist’ Yes. you goddamned hero wor-
shipper! Yes’”

“You chose me because 1 was worthless?”

“Yes!”

“You’re lying. Jim ”

His answer was only a startled glance of astonishment.

“Those girls that you used to buy lor the price of a meal, they
would have been glad to let their real selves become a gutter, they
would have taken your alms and never tried to rise, but you would
not marry one of them. You married me. because you knew that 1
did not accept the gutter, inside or (ml, that I was struggling to rise
and would go on struggling— -didn’t you?”

“Yes’” he cried.

I hen the headlight she had felt rushing upon her. hit its goal — and
she screamed in the bright explosion of the impact — she screamed in
physical terror, backing away from him.

“What's the matter with >ou?” he cried, shaking, not daring to
see in her eyes the thing she had seen.

She moved her hands in groping gestures, half-waving it away,
half-trying to grasp it; when she answeied, her words did not quite
name it, but they were the only words she could find: “You . . .
you’re a killer . . for the sake of killing . .

It was too close to the unnamed; shaking with terror, he swung
out blindly and struck her in the face.

She fell against the side of an armchair, her head striking the floor,
but she raised her head in a moment and looked up at him blankly,
without astonishment, as if physical reality were merely taking the
form she had expected. A single pear-shaped drop of blood went
slithering slowly from the corner of her mouth.

He stood motionless — and for a moment they looked at each
other, as if neither dared to move.

827

She moved first. She sprang to her feet — and ran* She ran out of
the room, out of the apartment — he heard her running down the hall,
tearing open the iron door of the emergency stairway, not waiting to
ring for the elevator.

She ran down the stairs, opening doors on random landings, run-
ning through the twisting hallways of the building, then down the
stairs again, until she found herself in the lobby and ran to the street.

After a while, she saw that she was walking down a littered side-
walk in a dark neighborhood, with an electric bulb glaring in the
cave of a subway entrance and a lighted billboard advertising soda
crackers on the black roof of a laundry. She did not remember how
she had come here. Her mind seemed to work in broken spurts,
without connections. She knew only that she had to escape and that
escape was impossible.

She had to escape from Jim. she thought Where?— she asked,
looking around her with a glance like a cry of prayer. She would
have seized upon a job in a (ive-and ten, or in that laundry, or in
any of the dismal shops she passed. But she would work, she thought,
and the harder she worked, the more malevolence she would draw
from the people around her, and she would not know when truth
would be expected of her and when a he, but the stricter her honesty,
the greater the fraud she would be asked to suffer at their hands.
She had seen it before and had borne it, in the home of her family,
in the shops of the slums, but she had thought that these were vicious
exceptions, chance evils, to escape and forget. Now she knew that
they were not exceptions, that theirs was the code accepted by the
world, that it was a creed of living, known by all, but kept unnamed,
leering at her from people s eves in that sly, guilty look she had
never been able to understand — and at the root of the creed, hidden
by silence, lying in wait for her in the cellars of the city and m the
cellars of their souls, there was a thing with which one could not live.

Why are you doing it to me?— she cried soundlessly to the dark
ness around her. Because you’re good — some enormous laughter
seemed to be answering from the roof tops and from the sewers
Then i won't want to be good any longer — But you will — I don’t
have to — You will— 1 can t bear it — You will.

She shuddered and walked faster- -but ahead of her, in the foggy
distance, she saw the calendar above the roofs of the city — it was
long past midnight and the calendar said: August 6, but it seemed
to her suddenly that she saw September 2 written above the city in
letters of blood — and she thought: If she worked, if she struggled, it
she rose, she would take a harder beating with each step of her climb,
until, at the end, whatever she reached, it a copper company oi
an unmortgaged cottage, she would see? it seized by Jim on some
September 2 and she would see it vanish (o pay for the parties where
Jim made his deals with his friends. j

Then 1 won’t! — she screamed and whaled around and went run*
ning back along the street — but it seemed to her that in the black
sky, grinning at her from the steam of the laundry, there weaved an
enormous figure that would hold no shapfe, but its grin remained the
same on its changing faces, and its face was Jim’s and her childhood

828

preacher’s ami the woman social worker’s from the personnel depart-
ment of the five-and-ten — and the grin seemed to say to her: People
like you will always stay honest, people like you will always struggle
to rise, people like you will always work, so we’re safe and you have
no choice.

She ran. When she looked around her once more, she was walking
down a quiet street, past the glass doorways where lights were burn-
ing in the carpeted lobbies of luxurious buildings. She noticed that
she was limping, and saw that the heel of her pump was loose; she
had broken it^omewhere in her blank span of running.

From the sUddcn space of a broad intersection, she looked at the
great skyscrapers in the distance. They were vanishing quietly into
a veil of fog, with the faint breath of a glow behind them, with a
few lights like a smile of farewell. Once, they had been a promise,
and from the midst of the stagnant sloth around her she had looked
to them for proof that another kind of men existed. Now she knew
that they were tombstones, slender obelisks soaring in memory of the
men who had been destroyed for having created them, they were
the frozen shape of the silent cry that the reward of achievement
was marly rdf >m.

Somewhere in one of those vanishing towers, she thought, there
was Dagnv— but Dagny was a lonely victim, fighting a losing battle,
to be destroyed and to sink into fog like the others.

There is no place to go, she thought and stumbled on — 1 can't
stand still, nor move much longer— 1 can neither work nor rest™ !
can neither surrender nor fight- hut this . . t/us is what they want

of me, this is where they want me— neither living nor deeid. neither
thinking nor insane, but just a chunk of pulp that screams with fear,
to be shaped by them as they please, the> who have no shape ot
their own.

She plunged into the darkness behind a corner, shrinking in dread
lrom any human figure. No. she thought, they're not evil, not all
people . . . they're only their own first victims, hut they all believe
in Jim's creed, and I can't deal wiih them, once 1 know it . . . and
it I spoke to them, they would try to grant me their good will, but
I’d know what it is that they hold as the good and 1 would see death
staring out ol their eyes.

The sidewalk had shrunk to a broken strip, and splashes of garbage
ran over from the cans at the stoops of crumbling houses. Beyond
the dusty glow of a saloon, she saw a lighted sign “Young Women's
Rest Club" above a locked dooi

She knew the institutions of that kind and the women who ran
them, the women who said that theirs was the job ot helping suffer-
ers. It she went in- - she thought, stumbling past- -if she faced them
and begged them for help, “What is your guilt?" they would ask
her. “Drink? Dope? Pregnancy? Shoplifting?" She would answer. “I
have no guilt, l am innocent, but Ym — " “Sorry. We have no concern
for the pain of the innocent.”

She ran. She stopped, regaining her eyesight, on the corner of a
long, wide street. The buildings and pavements merged with the
sky— and two lines of green lights hung in open space, going off into

829

an endless distance, as if stretching into other towns and oceans and
foreign lands, to encircle the earth. The green glow had a look of
serenity, like an inviting, unlimited path open to confident travel.
Then the lights switched to red, dropping heavily lower, turning from
sharp circles into foggy smears, into a warning of unlimited danger.
She stood and watched a giant truck go by, its enormous wheels
crushing one more layer of shiny polish into the flattened cobbles of
the street.

The lights went back to the green of safety-hut she stood trembling,
unable to move. That’s how it works for the travel of one’s body,
she thought, but what have they done to the traffic of the soul? They
have set the signals in reverse— and the road is safe when the lights
are the red of evil — but when the lights are the green of virtue,
promising that yours is the right-of-way, you venture forth and arc
ground by the wheels. All over the world, she thought — those in-
verted lights go reaching into every land, they go on. encircling the
earth. And the earth is littered with mangled cripples, who don’t
know what has hit them or why, who crawl as best they can on their
crushed limbs through their lightless days, with no answer save that
pain is the core of existence — and the traffic cops of morality chortle
and tell them that man, by his nature, is unable to walk.

These were not words in her mind, these were the words which
would have named, had she had the power to find them, what she
knew only as a sudden fury that made her beat her fists in futile
horror against the iron post of the traffic light beside her. against
the hollow tube where the hoarse, rusty chuckle of a relentless mech-
anism went grating on and on.

She could not smash it with her fists, she could not batter one by
one all the posts of the street stretching off beyond eyesight— as she
could not smash that creed from the souls of the men she would
encounter, one by one. She could not deal with people any longer,
she could not take the paths they took - but what could she say to
them, she who had no words to name the thing she knew and no
voice that people would hear? What could she tell them? How could
she reach them all? Where were the men who could have spoken?

These were not words in hei mind, these were only the blows of
her fists agaiast metal — then she saw herself suddenly battering her
knuckles to blood agaiast an immovable post, and the sight made
her shudder— and she stumbled away. She went on, seeing nothing
around her, feeling trapped in a maze with no exit.

No exit — her shreds of awareness wer<$ saying, beating it into the
pavements in the sound of her steps —no exit ... no refuge . . . no
signals ... no way to tell destruction fik>m safety, or enemy from
friend. . . . Like that dog she had hea^.1 about, she thought . . .
somebody’s dog in somebody's laboratory ... the dog who got his
signals switched on him, and saw no w>y to tell satisfaction “from
torture, saw food changed to beatings arid beatings to food, saw his
eyes and ears deceiving him and his judgment futile and his con-
sciousness impotent in a shifting, swimming, shapeless world — and
gave up, refusing to eat at that price or to live in a world of that
kind. . . . No! — was the only conscious word in her brain— no! —

830

no! — no!— not your way, not your world — even if this “no” is all
that’s to be left of mine!

It was in the darkest hour of the night, in an alley among wharfs
and warehouses that the social worker saw her. The social worker
was a woman whose gray face and gray coat blended with the walls
of the district. She saw a young girl wearing a suit too smart and
expensive for the neighborhood, with no hat, no purse, with a broken
heel, disheveled hair and a bruise at the corner of her mouth, a girl
staggering blindly, not knowing sidewalks from pavements. The
street was only a narrow crack between the sheer, blank walls of
storage structures, but a njy of light fell through a fog dank with the
odor of rotting water; a stone parapet ended the street on the edge
of a vast black hole merging river and sky.

'Hie social worker approached her and asked severely. “Are you
in trouble?” — and saw one wary eye, the other hidden by a lock of
hair, and the face of a wild creature who has forgotten the sound of
human voices, but listens as to a distant echo, with suspicion, yet
almost with hope.

The social worker seized her arm. “It’s a disgrace to come to such
a state . . if you society girls had something to do besides indulging
your desires and chasing pleasures, you wouldn't be wandering,
drunk as a tramp, at this hour of the night ... if you stopped living
for your own enjoyment, stopped thinking of yourself and found
some higher—”

Then the girl screamed — and the scream went beating against the
blank walls of the street as in a chamber of loiture, an animal scream
of terror. She tore her arm loose and sprang back, then screamed
inarticulate sounds:

“No! No! Not your kind of world!”

Then she ran, ran by the sudden propulsion of a burst of power,
the power of a creature running for its life, she ran straight down
the street that ended at the river — and in a single streak of speed,
with no break, no moment of doubt, with full consciousness of acting
in self preservation, she kept running till the parapet barred her way
and, not stopping, went over into space.

Chapter V THEIR BROTHERS' KEEPERS

On the morning of September 2, a copper wire broke in California,
between two telephone poles by the track of the Pacific branch line
of Taggart Transcontinental.

A slow, thin rain had been falling since midnight, and there had
been no sunrise, only a gray light seeping through a soggy sky — and
the brilliant raindrops hanging on the telephone wires had been the
only sparks glittering against the chalk of the clouds, the lead of the
ocean and the steel of the oil derricks descending as lone bristles
down a desolate hillside. The wires had been worn by more rains
and years than they had been intended to carry; one of them had
kept sagging, through the hours of that morning, under the fragile
load of raindrops; then its one last drop had grown on the wire’s

831

curve and had hung like a crystal bead, gathering the weight of many
seconds; the bead and the wire had given up together and, as sound-
less as the fall of tears, the wire had broken and fallen with the fall
of the bead.

The men at the Division Headquarters of Taggart Transcontinental
avoided looking at one another, when the break of the telephone
line was discovered and reported. They made statements painfully
miscalculated to seem to refer to the problem, yet to state nothing,
none fooling the others. They knew that copper wire was a vanishing
commodity, more precious than gold or honor; they knew that the
division storekeeper had sold their stock of wire weeks ago, to un-
known dealers who came by night and were not businessmen in
the daytime, but only men who had friends in Sacramento and in
Washington — just as the storekeeper, recently appointed to the divi-
sion, had a friend in New York, named Cuffy Meigs, about whom
one asked no questions. They knew that the man who would now
assume the responsibility of ordering repairs and initiating the action
which would lead to the discovery that the repairs could not be
made, would incur retaliation fiom unknown enemies, that his fellow
workers would become mysteriously silent and would not testify to
help him, that he would prove nothing, and if he attempted to do
hts job, it would not be his any longer. They did not know what was
safe or dangerous these days, when the guilty were not punished,
but the accusers were; and, like animals, they knew that immobility
was the only protection when in doubt and in danger. They remained
immobile; they spoke about the appropriate proccduic of sending
reports to the appropriate authorities on the appropriate dates.

A young roadmaster walked out of the room and out of the head-
quarters building to the safely of a telephone booth in a drugstore
and, at his own expense, ignoring the continent and the tiers ol
appropriate executives between, he telephoned Dagny Taggart in
New York,

She received the call in her brother’s office, interrupting an emer-
gency conference. The young roadmaster told her only that the tele-
phone line was broken and that there was no wire to repair it; he said
nothing else and he did not explain wh) he had tound it necessary to
call her in person. She did not question him; she understood. “Thank
you,” was ail that she answered.

An emergency file in her office kept a iccord of all the crucial
materials still on hand, on every division of Taggart Transcontinental.
Like the file of a bankrupt, it kept registering losses, while the rare
additions of new supplies seemed like the malicious chuckles of some
tormentor throwing crumbs at a starving continent. She looked
through the tile, closed it, sighed and s<|d. ‘Montana, Eddie. Phone
the Montana Line to ship half their stocjt of wire to California. Mon-
tana might be able to last without il-ifor another week.” And as
Eddie Willers was about to protest, she? added, “Oil, Eddie. Califor-
nia is one of the Iasi producers of oil lift in the country. We don’t
dare lose the Pacific lane.” Then she went back to the conference
in her brother's office.

“Copper wire?” said James Taggart, with an odd glance that went

832

from her face to the city beyond the window. “In a very short while*
wc won’t have any trouble about copper.”

“Why?” she asked, but he did not answer. There was nothing
special to see beyond the window, only the clear sky of a sunny day,
the quiet light of early afternoon on the roofs of the city and, above
them, the page of the calendar, saying: September 2.

She did not know why he had insisted on holding this conference
in his own office, why he had insisted on speaking to her alone,
which he had always tried to avoid, or why he kept glancing at his
wrist watch.

“Things are, it seems to me, going wrong,” he said. “Something
has to be done. There appears to exist a state of dislocation and
confusion tending toward an unco-ordinated, unbalanced policy.
What I mean is, there’s a tremendous national demand for transpor-
tation, yet we're losing money. It seems to me — ”

She sal looking at the ancestral map of Taggart Tianscontinental
on the wall of his office, at the red arteries winding across a yellowed
continent. There had been a time when the railroad was called the
blood system of the nation, and the si ream of trains had been like
a living circuit of blood, bringing growth and wealth to every patch
of wilderness it touched. Now. it was still like a stream of blood, but
like the one-way stream that runs from a wound, draining the last
o! a body’s sustenance and life. One-way traffic — she thought indif-
ferently— consumers’ traffic.

There was Train Number 193. she thought. Six weeks ago. Train
Number 193 had been sent with a load of steel, not to Faulkton,
Nebraska, where the Spencer Machine fool Company, the best ma-
chine tend concern still in existence, had been idle for two weeks,
waiting for the shipment -but to Sand Creek, Illinois, where Confed-
erated Machine had been wallowing in debt for over a year, produc-
ing unreliable goods at unpredictable times. The steel had been
allocated by a directive which explained that the Spencer Machine
Tool Company was a rich concern, able to wait, while Confederated
Machines was bankrupt and could not be allowed to collapse, being
the sole source of livelihood of the community of Sand Creek, Illi-
nois. Vhe Spencer Machine Tool Company had closed a month ago.
Confederated Machines had closed two weeks later.

The people of Sand Creek, Illinois, had been placed on national
relief, but no food could be found for them in the empty granaries
of the nation at the frantic call of the moment— so the seed grain of
the farmers of Nebraska had been seized by order of the Unification
Board— ^and Train Number 194 had carried the unplanted harvest
and the future of the people of Nebraska to be consumed by the
people of Illinois. “In this enlightened age,” Eugene Lawson had
said in a radio broadcast; “we have come, at last, to realize that each
one of us is his brother’s keeper.”

“In a precarious period of emergency, like the present,” James
Taggart was saying, while she looked at the map, “it is dangerous
to find ourselves forced to miss pay days and accumulate wage ar-
rears on some of our divisions, a temporary condition, of course,
but — ”

833

She chuckled. “The Railroad Unification Plan isn’t working, is
it, Jim?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re to receive a big cut of the Atlantic Southern’s gross in-
come, out of the common pool at the end of the year — only there
won’t be any gross income left for the pool to seize, will there 0 ”

“That’s not true! It’s just that the bankers are sabotaging the Plan.
Those bastards — who used to give us loans in the old days, with no
security at all except our own railroad -now refuse to let nte have
a few measly hundred-thousands, on short term, just to take care of
a few payrolls, when 1 have the entire plant of all the railroads of
the country to offer them as security for my loan!”

She chuckled.

“We couldn’t help it!” he cried. “It’s not the fault of the Plan that
some people refuse to carry their fair share of our burdens 1 ”

“Jim, was this all you wanted to tell me? 11 it is. I'll go. I have
work to do.”

His eyes shot to his wrist watch. “No. no, that’s not all’ It’s most
urgent that we discuss the situation and arrive at some decision,
which — ”

She listened blankly to the next stream ol generalities, wondering
about his motive- He was marking time, vet he wasn't, not fully; she
felt certain that he was holding her here for some specific purpose
and, simultaneously, that he was holding her for the mere sake of
her presence.

It was some new trail in hurt, which she had begun to notice
ever since Cherryl’s death, fie had come running to her, rushing,
unannounced, into her apartment on the evening of flic day when
Cherryl's body had been found and the story of her suicide had filled
the newspapers, given by some social worker who had witnessed it,
“an inexplicable suicide.” the newspapers had called it, unable to
discover any motive, “ft wasn’t my fault!” he had screamed to her,
as if she were the only judge whom he had to placate. ‘Tin not to
blame for it! I’m not to blame!” He had been shaking with terror —
yet she had caught a few glances thrown shrewdly at her face, which
had seemed, inconceivably, to convey a touch of triumph. “Ciet out
of here, Jim,” was all she had said to him.

He had never spoken to her again about Cherryl, but he had
started coming to her office more often than usual, he had stopped
her in the halls for snatches of pointless discussions — and such mo-
ments had grown into a sum that gav§ her an incomprehensible
sensation: as if, while clinging to her for support and protection
against some nameless terror, his arms Were sliding to embrace her
and to plunge a knife into her back. 4

“1 am eager to know your views,’ he was saying insistently, as she
looked away, “it is most urgent that we f iscuss the situation and . .
and you haven’t said anything.” She did dot turn. “It’s not as if there
wete no money to be had out of the railroad business, but—”

She glanced at him sharply: his eyes scurried away.

“What 1 mean is, some constructive policy has to be devised,” he

834

droned on hastily. “Something has to be done ... by somebody. In
times of emergency—’'

She knew what thought he had scurried to avoid, what hint he
had given her, yet did not want her to acknowledge or discuss. She
knew that no train schedules could be maintained any longer, no
promises kept, no contracts observed, that regular trains were can-
celled at a moment’s notice and transformed into emergency specials
sent by unexplained orders to unexpected destinations— and that the
orders came from Cuffy Meigs, sole judge of emergencies and of the
public weltare. She knew that factories were dosing, some with their
machinery stilled for Jack of supplies that had not been received,
others with their warehouses full of goods that could not be deliv-
ered. She knew that the old industries— the giants who had built
their power by a purposeful course projected over a span of time —
were left to exist at the whim ol the moment, a moment they could
not foresee or control. She knew that the best among them, those
ol the longest range and most complex function, had long since
gone - -and those still struggling to produce, struggling savagely to
preserve the code of an age when production had been possible, were
now inserting into their contracts a line shameful to a descendant of
Nat Taggart: “Transportation permitting.”

And yet there were men- -and she knew' it™ who were able to
obtain transportation whenever they wished, as by a mystic secret,
as by the grace of some power which one was not to question or
explain. They were the men whose dealings with Cuffy Meigs were
regarded by people as that unknowable of mystic creeds which smites
the observer foi the sm of looking, so people kept their eyes closed,
dreading, not ignorance, but knowledge. She knew that deals were
made whereby those men sold a commodity known as “transporta-
tion puli ’ " -a term which all understood, but none would dare define.
She knew that these were the men ot the emergency specials, the
men who could cancel her scheduled trains and send them to any
random spot of the continent which they chose to strike with thcii
voodoo stamp, the stamp superseding contract, property, justice, rea-
son and lives, the stamp stating that “the public welfare” required
the immediate salvation of that spot, lliese were the men who sent
trains to the relief of the Smather Brothers and their grapefruit in
Arizona- -to the relief of a factory in Florida engaged in the produc-
tion of pin-ball machines — to the relief of a horse farm in Ken-
tucky —to the relief of Orren Boyle's Associated Steel.

These were the men who made deals with desperate industrialists
to provide transportation for the goods stalled in their warehouses —
or. failing to obtain the percentage demanded, made deals to pur-
chase the goods, when the factory closed, at the bankruptcy sale, at
ten cents on the dollar, and to speed the goods away m freight cars
suddenly available, away to markets where dealers of the same kind
were ready for the kill. There were the men who hovered over fac-
tories, waiting for the last breath of a furnace, to pounce upon the
equipment— and over desolate sidings, to pounce upon the freight
cars of undelivered goods— these were a new biological species, the
hit-and-run businessmen, who did not stay in any line of business

835

longer than the span of one deal, who had no payrolls 1 6 meet, no
overhead to carry, no real estate to own, no equipment to build,
whose only asset and sole investment consisted of an item known as
“friendship.” These were the men whom official speeches described
as “the progressive businessmen of our dynamic age,” but whom
people called “the pull peddlers”— the species included many breeds,
those of “transportation pull,” and of “steel pull” and “oil pull” and
“wage-raise pull” and “suspended sentence pull” — men who were
dynamic, who kept darting all over the country while no one else
could move, men who were active and mindless, active, not like
animals, but like that which breeds, feeds and moves upon the
stillness of a corpse.

She knew that there was money to be had out of the railroad
business and she knew who was now obtaining it. Cuffy Meigs was
selling trains as he was selling the last of the railroad’s supplies,
whenever he could rig a setup which would not let it be discovered
or proved — selling rail to roads in Guatemala or to trolley companies
in Canada, selling wire to manufacturers of juke boxes, selling cross-
ties for fuel in resort hotels.

Did it matter — she thought, looking at the map— which part of the
corpse had been consumed by which type of maggot, by those who
gorged themselves or by those who gave the food to other maggots?
So long as living flesh was prey to be devoured, did it matter whose
stomachs it had gone to fill? There was no way to tell which devasta-
tion had been accomplished by the humanitarians and which by un
disguised gangsters. There was no way to tell which acts of plunder
had been prompted by the chanty-lust ol the Lawsons and which by
the gluttony of Cuffy Meigs— no way to tell which communities had
been immolated to feed another community one week closer to star-
vation and which to provide yachts for the pull-peddlers. Did it mat-
ter? Both were alike in fact as they were alike in spirit, both were
in need and need was regarded as sole title to property, both were
aetting in strictest accordance with the same code of morality. Both
held the immolation of men as proper and both were achieving it.
There wasn’t even any way to tell who were the cannibals and who
the victims — the communities that accepted as their rightful due the
confiscated clothing or fuel of a town to the east of them, found,
next week, their granaries confiscated to feed a town to the west —
men had achieved the ideal of the centuries, they were practicing it
in unobstructed perfection, they were serving need as their highest
ruler, need as first claim upon them, need as their standard of value,
as the coin of their realm, as more sacred than right and life. Men
had been pushed into a pit where, shouting that man is his brother’s
keeper, each was devouring his neighbor i and was being devoured
by his neighbor’s brother, each was proclaiming the righteousness of
the unearned and wondering who was stripping the skin off his back,
each was devouring himself, while screaming in terror that some
unknowable evil was destroying the earth I

“What complaint do they nriw have to make?” she heard Hugh
Akston’s voice in her mind. “That the universe is irrational? Is it?”

She sat looking at the map^ her glance dispassionately solemn, as

836

if no emotion save respect were permissible when observing the awe-
some power of logic. She was seeing— in the chaos of a perishing
continent — the precise, mathematical execution of all the ideas men
had held. They had not wanted to know that this was what they
wanted, they had not wanted to see that they had the power to wish,
but not the power to fake — and they had achieved their wish to the
letter, to the last bloodstained comma of it.

What were they thinking now. the champions of need and the
lechers of pity? — she wondered. What were they counting on? Those
who had once simpered: “I don’t want to destroy the rich, I only
want to seize a little of their surplus to help the poor, just a little ,
they’ll never miss it!” — then, later, had snapped: “The tycoons can
stand being squeezed; they’ve amassed enough to last them for three
generations” — then, later, had yelled: “Why should the people suffer
while businessmen have reserves to last a year?” — now were scream
ing: “Why should we starve while some people have reserves to last
a week?” What were they counting on? — she wondered.

“You must do something 1 ” cried Janies Taggart.

She whirled to lace him. “/?”

“It's your job, it’s your province, it’s your duty!”

“What is?”

“To act. To do.”

“To do— what?”

“How should I know? It's your special talent. You'te the doer.”

She glanced at him: the statement was so oddly perceptive and so
incongruously irrelevant. She rose to her feet.

“Is tins all. Jim?"

“No! No! 1 want a discussion’ *

“Go ahead.”

“Hut you haven't said anything!"

“You haven’t, either.”

“Hut . . What I mean is, there arc practical problems to solve,

which . . For instance, what was that matter of our last allocation

of new rail vanishing from the storehouse in Pittsburgh?*’

‘ C'uffy Meigs stole it and sold it."

“Can you prove it?" he snapped defensively.

“Have your friends left anv means, methods, rules or agencies
of proof?”

“Then don't talk about it, don't be theoretical, we've got to deal
with facts! We've got to deal with facts as they are today ... I mean,
we’ve got to be realistic and devise some practical means to protect
our supplies under existing conditions, not under improvable assump-
tions. which-

She chuckled, there was the form of the lormless. she thought,
there was the method of his consciousness; he wanted her to protect
him from Cufty Meigs without acknowledging Meigs’ existence, to
light it without admitting its reality, to defeat it without disturbing
its game

“What do you find so damn funny?" he snapped angrily,

“You know it.”

“I don't know what's the matter with you! 1 don't know what’s

837

happened to you ... in the last two months . . . ever since you came
back. . . . You’ve never been so unco-operative !”

“Why, Jim, I haven’t argued with you in the last two months.”

“That’s what I mean!” He caught himself hastily, but not fast
enough to miss her smile. “I mean, 1 wanted to have a conference,
I wanted to know your view of the situation — ”

“You know it.”

“But you haven't said a word!”

“I said everything I had to say, three years ago. 1 told you where
your course would take you. It has.”

“Now there you go again! What's the use of theorizing? We’re
here, we’re not back three years ago. We’ve got to deal with the
present, not the past. Maybe things would have been different, if we
had followed your opinion, maybe, but the fact is that we didn't —
and we’ve got to deal with facts. We’ve got to take reality as it is
now , today!”

“Well, take it.”

“1 beg your pardon?”

“Take your reality. I’ll merely take your orders.”

“That’s unfair! I’m asking for your opinion — ”

“You’re asking for reassurance, Jim You’re not going to get it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m not going to help you pretend — by arguing with you — that
the reality you’re talking about is not what it is, that there’s still a
way to make it work and to save your neck. There isn’t.”

“Well . . .” There was no explosion, no angei — only the feebly
uncertain voice of a man on the verge of abdication. “Well . . what
would you want me to do?”

“Give up.” He looked at her blankly. “Give up- all of you. you
and your Washington friends and your looting planners and the
whole of your cannibal philosophy. Give up and get out of the way
and let those of us who can, start from scratch out of the ruins.”

“No!” The explosion came, oddly, now; it was the scream of a
man who would die rather than betray his idea, and it came from a
man who had spent his life evading the existence of ideas, acting
with the expediency of a criminal. She wondered whether she had
ever understood the essence of criminals. She wondered about the
nature of the loyalty to the idea of denying ideas.

“No!” he cried, his voice lower, hoarser and more normal, sinking
from the tone of a zealot to the lone of an overbearing executive.
“That’s impossible! That’s out of the question!”

“Who said so?”

“Never mind! It’s so! Why do you always think of the impractical?
Why don’t you accept reality as it is aijd do something about if*
You’re the realist, you’re the doer, the mpver. the producer, the Nat
Taggart, you’re the person who’s able; to achieve any go^l she
chooses! You could save us now, you Could find a wav to make
things work — if you wanted to!”

She burst out laughing.

There , she thought, was the ultimate goal of all that loose academic
prattle which businessmen had ignored for years, the goal of all the

m

slipshod definitions, the sloppy generalities, the soupy abstractions,
all claiming that obedience to objective reality is the same as the
obedience to the State, that there is no difference between a law of
nature and a bureaucrat's directive, that a hungry man is not free,
that man must be released from the tyranny of food, shelter and
clothing— all of it, for years, that the day might come when Nat
Taggart, the realist, would be asked to consider the will of Cuffy
Meigs as a fact of nature, irrevocable and absolute like steel, rails
and gravitation, to accept the Meigs made world as an objective,
unchangeable reality— then to continue producing abundance in that
world. There was the goal of all those con men of library and class-
100m, who sold their revelations as reason, their “■instincts” as sci-
ence, their cravings as knowledge, the goal of all the savages of
the non-objective, the non-absolute, the relative, the tentative, the
probable — the savages who. seeing a farmer gather a harvest, can
considei it only as a mystic phenomenon unbound by the law of
causality and created by the farmers' omnipotent whim, who then
proceed to sei/e the farmer, to chain him. to deprive him of tools,
of seeds, of water, of soil, to push him out on a banco rock and to
command: “Now grow a harvest and feed us!"

No- -she thought, expecting Jim to ask it — -it would be useless to
try to explain what she was laughing at. he would not be able to
understand it.

Hut he did not ask it. Instead, she saw him slumping and heard
him sav “terrifyingly, because his words were so irrelevant, if he did
not understand, and so monstrous, if he did, “Dagny. Pm your
brother

She drew herself up, her muscles growing rigid, as if she were
about to face a killer's gun.

“Dagnv”-- his voice was the soft, nasal, monotonous whine of a
beggar -“I want to be president of a railroad. I want it. Why can’t
1 have my wish as you always have yours 1 * Why shouldn’t I be given
the fulfillment of my desires as you always fulfill any desire of your
own 1 Why should you be happy while i suffer? Oh yes, the world
is yours, you’re the one who has the brains to run it. Then why do
you permit suffering in your world 9 You proclaim the pursuit of
happiness, but you doom me to frustration. Don’t l have the right
to demand any form oi happiness I choose? Isn’t that a debt which
you owe me? Am l not your brother?”

His glance was like a prowler’s flashlight searching her face for a
shred of pity. It found nothing but a look of revulsion,

"It’s your sin if 1 suffer! It s your moral failure! I’m your brother,
therefore Pm your responsibility, but you’ve failed to supply my
wants, therefore you’re guilty! All of mankind’s moral leaders have
said so for centuries — who are you to say otherwise? You’re so proud
of yourself, you think that you’re pure and good — but you can’t be
good, so long as Pm wretched. My misery is the measure of your
sin. My contentment is the measure of your virtue. I want this kind
of world, today’s world, it gives me my share of authority, it allows
me to feel important — make it work for me!— do something!— how
do l know what?— it’s your problem and your duty! You have the

839

privilege of strength, but 1 — I have the right of weakness! That’s a
moral absolute! Don’t you know it! Don’t you? Don’t you?”

His glance was now like the hands of a man hanging over an abyss,
groping frantically for the slightest fissure of doubt, but slipping on
the clean, polished rock of her face.

“You bastard,” she said evenly, without emotion, since the words
were not addressed to anything human.

It seemed to her that she saw him fall into the abyss— even though
there was nothing to see in his face except the look of a con man
whose trick has not worked.

There was no reason to feel more revulsion than usual, she
thought; he had merely uttered the things which were preached,
heard and accepted everywhere; but this creed was usually ex-
pounded in the third person, and Jim had had the open effrontery
to expound it in the first. She wondered whether people accepted
the doctrine of sacrifice provided its recipients did not identify the
nature of their own claims and actions.

She turned to leave.

“No! No! Wait!” he cried, leaping to his feet, with a glance at his
wrist watch. “It’s time now! There’s a particular news broadcast that
1 want you to hear!”

She slopped, held by curiosity.

He pressed the switch ot the ladio, watching hei face openly, in-
tently, almost insolently. His eyes had a look of fear and of oddly
lecherous anticipation.

“Ladies and gentlemen’*’ the voice of the radio speaker leaped
forth abruptly; it had a tone of panic. “News of a shocking develop-
ment has just reached us from Santiago, ( hiie!”

She saw the jerk of Taggart's head and a sudden anxiety in his
bewildered Irown, as if something about the words and voice were
not what he had expected

“A special session of the legislature of the People’s Slate of C hile
had been called for ten o’clock this morning, to pass an act ol utmost
importance to the people of Chile. Argentina and other South Amer-
ican People’s States. In line with the enlightened policy of Schor
Ramirez, the new Head of the Chilean State — who came to power
on the moral slogan that man is his brother’s keeper- -the legislature
was to nationalize the Chilean properties of d’Anconia Copper, thus
opening the way for the People’s State of Argentina to nationalize
the rest of the d’Anconia properties the world over. This, however,
was known only to a very lew of the top-level leaders of both na
tions. The measure had been kept secret in order to avoid debate
and reactionary opposition. The set/une of the multibilhon dollai
d’Anconia Copper was to come as a; munificent surprise to the
country.

“On the stroke of ten, in the exact foment when the chairman's
gavel struck the rostrum, opening the session — almost as if the gav
el's blow had set it off— the sound of a tremendous explosion rocked
the hall, shattering the glass of its windows. It came from the harboi .
a few streets away — and when the legislators rushed to the windows,
they saw a long column of flame where once there had risen the

840

familiar silhouette of the ore docks of d’Aneonia Copper. The ore
docks had been blown to bits.

“The chairman averted panic and called the session to order. The
act of nationalization was read to the assembly* to the sound of fire-
alarm sirens and distant cries, it was a gray morning, dark with rain
clouds, the explosion had broken an electric transmitter— so that the
assembly voted on the measure by the light of candles, while the red
glow of the fire kept sweeping over the great vaulted ceiling above
their heads.

“But more terrible a shock came later, when the legislators called
a hasty recess to announce to the nation the good news that the
people now owned d’Anconia Copper. While they were voting, word
had come from the closest and farthest points ot the globe that there
was no d’Anconia Copper left on earth. Ladies and gentlemen, not
anywhere. In that same instant, on the stroke of ten, by an infernal
marvel of synchronization, every property of d'Aneonia Copper on
the face of the globe, from Chile to Siam to Spain to Pottsville,
Montana, had been blown up and swept away.

“The d’Aneonia workers everywhere had been handed their last
pay checks, in cash, at nine a m , and by nine-thirty had been moved
olf the premises. The ore docks, the smellers, the laboratories, the
office buildings were demolished. Nothing was left of the d’Aneonia
ore ships which had been in port -and only lifeboats carrying the
crews were left of those ships which had been at sea. As to the
d'Aneonia mines, some were buried under tons of blasted rock, while
others were found not to be worth the price of blasting. An
astounding number of these mines, as reports pouring in seem to
indicate, had continued to be run, even though exhausted years ago.

“Among the thousands of d'Aneonia employees, the police have
louiul no one with any knowledge of how this monstrous plot had
been conceived, organized and carried out. But the cream of the
d'Aneonia staff are not here any longer. I he most efficient of the
executives, mineralogists, engineers, superintendents have van-
ished -all the men upon whom the People’s State had been counting
to carry on the work and cushion the process ol readjustment. The
most able — correction' the most selfish — <>i the men are gone. Rc-
poits from the various banks indicate that there are no d'Aneonia
accounts left anywhere; the money has been spent down to the last
penny.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the d'Aneonia fortune — the greatest for-
tune on earth, the legendary fortune ot the centuries— has ceased to
exist In place of the golden dawn ot a new age. the People's States
oi Chile and Argentina arc left with a pile of lubble and hordes of
unemployed on their hands.

“No due has been found to the fate or the whereabouts of Seflor
Francisco d’Anconia, He has vanished, leaving nothing behind him,
not even a message of farewell.’'

Thank you, my darling— thank you in the name of the last of us,
even if you will not hear it and will not care to hear . , , It was not
a sentence, but the silent emotion ot prayer in her mind, addressed
to the laughing face of a boy she had known at sixteen.

841

Then she noticed that she was clinging to the radio* as if the faint
electric beat within it still held a tie to the only living force on earth,
which it had transmitted for a few brief moments and which now
filled the room where all else was dead.

As distant remnants of the explosion’s wreckage* she noticed a
sound that came from Jim, part-moan, part-scream, part-growl — then
the sight of Jim’s shoulders shaking over a telephone and his dis^
torted voice screaming, “But, Rodrigo, you said it was safe! Ro-
drigo — oh God! — do you know how much I’d sunk into it?" — then
the shriek of another phone on his desk, and his voice snarling into
another receiver, his hand still clutching the first, “Shut your trap,
Orren! What are you to do? What do 1 care, God damn you!"

There were people rushing into the office, the telephones were
screaming and, alternating between pleas and curses, Jun kept yelling
into one receiver, “Get me Santiago! . Get Washington to get
me Santiago!"

Distantly, as on the margin of her mind, she could see what sort
of game the men behind the shrieking phones had played and lost.
They seemed far away, like tiny commas squirming on the white
field under the lens of a microscope. She wondered how they could
ever expect to be taken seriously when a Francisco d'Anconia was
possible on earth.

She saw the glare of the explosion in every face she met through
the rest of the day — and in every face she passed in the darkness of
the streets, that evening. If Francisco had wanted a worthy funeral
pyre for d’Anconia Copper, she thought, he had succeeded. There
it was, in the streets of New York C ity, the only city on earth still
able to understand it — m the faces of people, in their whimpers, the
whispers crackling tensely like small tongues of lire, the faces lighted
by a look that was both solemn and frantic, the shadings of expres-
sions appearing to sway and weave, as if cast by a distant flame,
some frightened, some angry, most of them uneasy, uncertain, expec-
tant, but all of them acknowledging a fact much beyond an industrial
catastrophe, all of them knowing what it meant, though none would
name its meaning, all of them carrying a touch of laughter, a laughter
of amusement and defiance, the bitter laughter of perishing victims
who feel that they are avenged.

She saw it tn the face of Hank Rearden. when she met him for
dinner that evening. As his tall, confident figure walked toward her- -the
only figure that seemed at home in the costly setting of a distin-
guished restaurant- -she saw the look of eagerness fighting the stern-
ness of his features, the look of a young boy still open to the
enchantment of the unexpected. He did not speak of this day’s event,
but she knew that it was the only image in his mind.

They had been meeting whenever he tame to the city, spending a
brief, rare evening together— with their jpast still alive in their silent
acknowledgment — with no future in theijr work and in their common
struggle, but with the knowledge that thtfy were allies gaining support
from the fact of each other’s existence.

He did not want to mention today's, event, he did not want to
speak of Francisco, but she noticed, as they sat at the table, that the

842

strain of a resisted smile kept pulling at the hollows of his cheeks.
She knew whom he meant, when he said suddenly, his voice soft
and low with the weight of admiration, “He did keep his oath,
didn't he?"

“His oathV * she asked, startled, thinking of the inscription on the
temple of Atlantis.

“He said to me, ‘l swear— by the woman I love — that l am your
friend.’ He was."

“He is.”

He shook his head. “I have no right to think of him. 1 have no
right to accept what he’s done as an act in my defense. And yet . .

He stopped.

“But it was. Hank. In defense of all of us — and of you, most
of all"

He looked away, out at the city. They sat at the side of the room,
with a sheet of glass as an invisible protection against the sweep of
space and streets sixty floors below. The city seemed abnormally
distant: it lay flattened down to the pool of its lowest stones A few
blocks away, its tower merging into darkness, the calendar hung at
the level of their faces, not as a small, disturbing rectangle, but as
an enormous screen, eerily clos<* and large, flooded by the dead,
white glow of light projected through an empty film, empty but for
the letters: September 2.

“Rearden Steel is now working at capacity." he was saying indif-
ferently. “They've htted the production quotas off my mills— for the
next five minutes. 1 guess. 1 don't krtow how many of their own
regulations they’ve suspended, 1 don’t think they know it, either,
they don't bother keeping track of legality any longer, Fm sure ITn
a lawbreaker on five or six counts, which nobody could prove or
disprove -all 1 know is that the gangster of the moment told me to
go lull steam ahead. 1 ' He shrugged “When another gangster kicks
him out tomorrow. I'll probably be shut down, as penalty for illegal
operation. But according to the plan of the present split-second,
they've begged me to keep pouring my Metal, in any amount and
by any means I choose."

She noticed the occasional, surreptitious glances that people were
throwing in their direction. She had noticed it before, ever since her
broadcast, ever since the two ot them had begun to appear m public
together, instead of the disgrace he had dreaded, there was an air
of awed uncertainty in people’s manner— uncertainty of their own
moral precepts, awe in the presence of two persons who dared to
be certain of being right. People were looking at them with anxious
curiosity, with envy, with respect, with the fear of offending an un-
known, proudly rigorous standard, some almost with an air ot apol-
ogy that seemed to say: “Please forgive us for being married.” There
were some who had a look of angry malice, and a few who had a
look of admiration.

“Dagny," he asked suddenly, “do you suppose he’s in New York?"

“No. I've called the Wayne-Falkland. They told me that the lease
on his suite had expired a month ago and he did not renew it."

“They’re looking lor him ail over the world," he said, smiling.

843

“They’ll never find him.” The smile vanished. “Neither will I.” His
voice slipped back to the flat, gray tone of duty: “Well, the mills are
working, but Tm not. I’m doing nothing but running around the
countty like a scavenger, searching for illegal ways to purchase raw
materials. Hiding, sneaking, lying — just to get a few tons of ore or
coal or copper. They haven’t lifted their regulations off my raw mate-
rials. They know that I'm pouring more Metal than the quotas they
give me could produce. They don’t care.” He added, “They think
I do.”

“Tired, Hank?”

“Bored to death.”

There was a time, she thought, when his mind, his energy, his
inexhaustible resourcefulness had been given to the task of a pro-
ducer devising better ways to deal with nature; now, they were
switched to the task of a criminal outwitting men. She wondered
how long a man could endure a change of that kind.

“It’s becoming almost impossible to get iron ore,” he said indifici-
ently, then added, his voice suddenly alive, “Now it’s going to be
completely impossible to get copper.” Ho was grinning.

She wondered how long a man could continue to work against
himself, to work when his deepest desire was not to succeed, but
to fail.

She understood the connection of his thoughts when he said. “I’ve
never told you. but I’ve met Ragnar Danneskjold ”

“He told me.”

"What? Where did you ever — ” He stopped. “Ot eouise,” he said,
his voice tense and low “He would be one ot them You would
have met him. Dagny, what are they like, those men who . . . No.
Don’t answer me.” In a moment he added, “So I've met one of
their agents.”

“You've met two of them.”

His response was a span of total stillness. “Of course,” he said
dully. “I knew it ... I just wouldn't admit to myself that 1 knew
He was their recruiting agent, wasn't he?”

“One ot their earliest and best.”

He chuckled, it was a sound of bitterness and longing 4 That night
when they got Ken Danagger ... I thought that they had not sent
anyone after me. . . ”

The effort by which he made his face grow rigid, was almost like
the slow, resisted turn ot a key locking a sunlit room he could not
permit himself to examine. After a while, he said impassively,
‘'Dagny. that new rail we discussed last month- I don't think HI be
able to deliver it. They haven’t lifted their regulations ofl my output,
they’re still controlling my salts arid disposing of my Metal as they
please. But the bookkeeping is in such a' snarl that I’m smuggling a
few thousand tons into the black markqt every week. 1 think they
know it. They’re pretending not to. TTic^ don’t want to antagonize
me, right now. But, you see. I've been shipping every ton I could
snatch, to some emergency customers of mine. Dagny, I was in Min-
nesota last month. I've seen what’s going on there. The country will
starve, not next year, but this winter, unless a few of us act and act

844

fast. There are no grain reserves left anywhere. With Nebraska gone,
Oklahoma wrecked, North Dakota abandoned, Kansas barely sub-
sisting — there isn’t going to be any wheal this winter, not for the
city of New York nor for any Eastern city. Minnesota is our last
granary. They’ve had two bad years in succession, but they have a
bumper crop this fall — and they have to be able to harvest it. Have
you had a chance to take a look at the condition of the farm-equip-
ment industry? They’re not big enough, any of them, to keep a staff
of efficient gangsters in Washington or to pay percentages to pull-
peddlers. So they haven't been getting many allocations of materials.
Two-thirds ol them have shut down and the rest are about to. And
farms are perishing all over the country — for lack of tools. You
should have seen those farmers in Minnesota. They’ve been spending
more time fixing old tractors that can t be fixed than plowing their
fields. I don’t know how they managed to survive till last spring. I
don’t know how they managed to plant their wheat. But they did.
They did.” There was a look of intensity on his face, as if he were
contemplating a rare, forgotten sight: a vision of men — and she knew
what motive was still holding him to his job. “Dagny, they had to
have tools for their harvest. I’ve been selling all the Metal I could
steal out of my own mills to the manufacturers of farm equipment.
On credit. They’ve been sending the equipment to Minnesota as fast
as they could put it out. Selling it in the same way— illegally and on
credit But they will be paid, this fall, and so will I. Charity, hell!
We’re helping producers — and what tenacious producers! — not lousy;
mooching ‘consumers.’ We’re giving loans, not alms. We're support-
ing ability , not need. I'll be damned it I'll stand by and let those men
be dcstioved while the pull-peddlers grow rich!”

He was looking at the image of a sight he had seen m Minnesota:
the silhouette of an abandoned factory, with the light of the sunset
streaming, unopposed, through the holes of its windows and the
cracks of its roof, with the remnant of a sign: Ward Harvester
Company.

“Oh, 1 know,” he said, “We'll save them this winter, but the loot-
ers will devour them next year. Still, we’ll save them this winter. . , .
Well, that’s why I won’t be able to smuggle any rail for you. Not in
the immediate future— and there's nothing left to us but the immedi-
ate future. I don’t know what is the use of feeding a country, if it
loses its railroads— but what is the use of railroads where there is
no food? What is the use, anyway 0 ”

“It’s all right. Hank. We’ll last with such rail as we have, for — ”
She stopped.

“For a month?”

“For the winter — l hope.”

Cutting across their silence, a shrill voice reached them from an-
other table, and they turned to look at a man who had the jittery
manner of a cornered gangster about to reach for his gun. “An act
of anti-social devStructton,” he was snarling to a sullen companion,
“at a time when there’s such a desperate shortage of copper! . . .
We can’t permit it! We can’t permit it to be true!”

Rearden turned abruptly to look off, at the city. 4 Td give anything

845

to know where he is,” he said, his voice low. “Just to know where
he is, right now, at this moment.”

“What would you do, if you knew it?”

He dropped his hand in a gesture of futility. “I wouldn't approach
him. The only homage I can stilj pay him is not to ciy for forgiveness
where no forgiveness is possible.”

They remained silent. They listened to the voices around them, to
the splinters of panic trickling through the luxurious room.

She had not been aware that the same presence seemed to be an
invisible guest at every table, that the same subject kept breaking
through the attempts at any other conversation. People sat in a man-
ner, not quite of cringing, but as if they found the room too large
and too exposed — a room of glass, blue velvet, aluminum and gentle
lighting. They looked as il they had come to this room at the price
of countless evasions, to let it help them pietcnd that theirs was still
a civilized existence- -but an act of primeval violence had blasted
the nature of (heir world into the open and they were no longer able
not to see.

“How could he? How could he?” a woman was demanding with
petulant terror. “He had no ritfht to do it!”

“ft was an accident,” said a young man with a staccato voice and
an odor of public payroll. “It was a chain ol coincidences, as any
statistical curve of probabilities can easily prove. It is unpatriotic to
spread rumors exaggerating the power of the people’s enemies ”

“Right and wrong ts all very well for academic eonveisations.”
said a woman with a schoolroom voice and a barroom mouth, “but
how can anybody take his own ideas seriously enough to destroy a
fortune when people need it?”

“I don’t understand it,” an old man was saying with quavering
bitterness. “After centuries ot efforts to curb man’s innate brutality,
after centuries of teaching, training and indoctrination with the gen-
tle and the humane!”

A woman’s bewildered voice rose uncertainly and trailed off: “I
thought we were living in an age of brotherhood ...”

“I’m scared,” a young girl war, repeating, “Pm scared . . oh, 1
don't know! . . . Pm just scared .

“He couldn't have done it!” . . . “He did!” . . . “But why?” . .“I
refuse to believe it!” . . . “It’s not human!” . . . “But why 7 ” . . .
“Just a worthless playboy!” . . . “But why?”

The muffled scream of a woman across the room and some half
grasped signal on the edge of Dagny's vision came simultaneously
and made her whirl to look at the city.

The calendar was run by a mechanism locked in a room behind
the screen, unrolling the same film year after year projecting the
dales in steady rotation, in changeless rhythm, never moving but on
the stroke of midnight. The speed of D^gny's turn gave her time to
see a phenomenon as unexpected as if a planet had reversed its orbit
in the sky, she saw the words “September 2” moving upward and
vanishing past the edge of the screen.

Then, written across the enormous page, stopping time, as a last

846

message to the world and to the world's motor which was New York,
she saw the lines of a sharp, intransigent handwriting:

Brother, you asked for it!

Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d’Anconia

She did not know which shock was greater: the sight of the mes-
sage or the sound of Rearden’s laughter— Rearden. standing on his
feet, in full sight and hearing of the room behind him, laughing above
their moans of panic, laughing in greeting, m salute, in acceptance
of the gift he had tried to reject, in iclease, in triumph, in surrender.

* *

On the evening of September 7, a coppei wire broke in Montana,
stopping the motor of a loading crane on a spur track of Taggart
Transcontinental, at the rim of the Stanfoid Copper Mine.

The mine had been working on three shifts, its days and nights
blending into a single stretch of struggle to lose no minute, no drop
of copper it would squeeze from the shelves of a mountain into the
nation's industrial desert The crane broke down at the task ot load-
ing a liain: it stopped abruptly and hung still against the evening sky,
between a string ol empty cars and piles of suddenly immovable ore.

The men of the railroad and of the mine stopped in dazed bewil-
derment: they found that in all the complexity of their equipment,
among the drills, ihe motors, the derricks, the delicate gauges, the
ponderous floodlights beating down into the pits and ridges of a
mountain — there was no wite to mend the crane. They stopped, like
men on an ocean liner propelled by ten-thousand -horsepower gener-
ators. but perishing for lack of a safety pin.

The station agent, a young man with a swift body and a brusque
voice, stripped the wiring from the station building and set the crane
in motion again - and while the ore went clattering to till the cars,
the light of candles came trembling through the dusk from the win-
dows of the station.

“Minnesota, Eddie,” said Dagny grimly, dosing the drawer of her
special file. “Tell the Minnesota Division to ship hall their slock of
wire to Montana.” “But good God. Dagny 1 — with the peak of the
harvest rush approaching “They'll hold through it — 1 think. We
don’t dare lose a single supplier of copper.”

“But 1 have!” screamed James Taggart, when she reminded him
once more. “1 have obtained foi you the top priority on copper wire,
the first claim, the uppermost ration level, Fvc given you all the
cards, certificates, documents and requisitions— what else do you
warn'*” “The copper wire.” “!'ve done all 1 could! Nobody can
blame me!”

She did not argue. The afternoon newspaper was lying on bis
desk— and she was staring at an item on the back page: An Emer-
gency State Tax had been passed in California for the relief of the
state’s unemployed, in the amount of fifty per cent of any local cor-
poration’s gross income ahead of other taxes; the California oil com-
panies had gone out of business.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Rearden.” said an unctuous voice over a long-
distance telephone line from Washington, “l just wanted to assure
you that you will not have to worry.” “About what?’' asked Rearden,

847

baffled. “About that temporary bit of confusion in California. We’ll
straighten it out in no time, it was an act of illegal insurrection, their
state government had no right to impose local taxes detrimental to
national taxes, we’ll negotiate an equitable arrangement immedi-
ately — but in the meantime, if you have been disturbed by any unpa-
triotic rumors about the California oil companies, I just wanted to
tell you that Rcarden Steel has been placed in the top category of
essential need, with first claim upon any oil available anywhere in
the nation, very top category, Mr. Rcarden — so I just wanted you
to know that you won’t have to worry about the problem of fuel
this winter!"

Rearden hung up the telephone receiver, with a frown of worry,
not about the problem of fuel and the end of the California oil
fields — disasters of this kind had become habitual — but about the
fact that the Washington planners found it necessary to placate him.
Tins was new; he wondered what it meant. Through the years of his
struggle, he had learned that an apparently causeless antagonism was
not hard to deal with, but an apparently causeless solicitude was an
ugly danger. The same wonder struck him again, when, walking down
an alley between the mill structures, he caught sight of a slouching
figure whose posture combined an air of insolence with an air of
expecting to be swatted: it was his brother Philip.

Ever since he had moved to Philadelphia, Rearden had not visited
his former home and had not heard a word from his family, whose
bills he went on paying Then, inexplicably, twice in the last few
weeks, he had caught Philip wandering through the mills for no ap-
parent reason. He had been unable to tell whether Philip was sneak-
ing to avoid him or waiting to catch his attention; it had looked like
both. He had been unable to discover any clue to Philip's purpose,
only some incomprehensible solicitude, of a kind Philip had never
displayed before.

The first time, in answer to his startled “What are >ou doing
here?”— Philip had said vaguely. “Well, 1 know that you don’t like
me to come to your office." “What do you want?” “Oh. nothing . .
but . . . well. Mother is worried about you." “Mother can call me
any time she wishes." Philip had not answered, but had proceeded
to question him, in an unconvincingly casual manner, about his work,
his health, his business; the questions had kept hitting oddly beside
the point, not questions about business, but more about his. Rear-
den’s, feelings toward business. Rearden had cut him short and
waved him away, but had been left with the small, nagging sense of
an incident that remained inexplicable. *

The second time, Philip had said, as,, sole explanation, “We just
want to know how you feel.” “Who’s v^e?" “Why . . Mother and

I. These are difficult times and . . . well ^Mother wants to know how
you feel about it all.” “Tell her that 1 don’t.” The words had seemed
to hit Philip in some peculiar manner, almost as if this were the one
answer he dreaded. “Get out of here,” Rearden had ordered wearily,
“and the next time you want to see me, make an appointment and
come to my office. But don’t come unless you have something to

848

say. This is not a place where one discusses feelings, mine or any-
body else’s.”

Philip had not called for an appointment — but now there he was
again, slouching among the giant shapes of the furnaces, with an
air of guilt and snobbishness together, as if he were both snooping
and slumming.

“But 1 do have something to say! 1 do!” he cried hastily, in answer
to the angry frown on Rearden’s face.

“Why didn't you come to my office?”

“You don't want me in your office.”

“I don’t want you here, either.”

“Bui I’m only . . .I’m only trying to be considerate and not to
take your time when you're so busy and . . you are very busy,
aren't you?”

“And?”

“And . . well, 1 just wanted to catch you in a spare moment . . ,

to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“! . . . Well, 1 need a job.”

He said it belligerently and drew back a little. Rearden stood
looking at him blankly.

“Henry, I want a job. I mean, here, at the mills. 1 want you to
gi\e me something to do. 1 need a job. 1 need to earn my living. I'm
tired of alms ” He was groppmg tor something to say, his voice both
offended and pleading, as if the necessity to justify the plea were an
unfair imposition upon him “1 want a livelihood of my own. I'm
not asking you lor charity. I'm asking you to give me a chance!”

“This is a factory. Philip, not a gambling joint.”

“Uh?”

“We don’t take chances or give them.”

“I'm asking you to give me a job\"

“Why should I?”

“Because I need il r ”

Rcai den pointed to the red spuits ot tlamc shooting from the black
shape ot a furnace, shooting safely into space four hundred ket of
steel-clay-and-steanvembodied thought above them. “1 needed that
iurnace. Philip. It wasn't niv need that gave it to me.”

Philip s face assumed a look of not having heard. “You’re not
officially supposed to hire anybody, but that's just a technicality, if
you’ll put me on, my fiiends will okay it without any trouble and — ”
Something about Rcarden’s eyes made him stop abruptly, then ask
m an angrily impatient voice, “Well, what’s the matter? What have
I said that's wrong?”

“What you haven't said.”

“1 beg your pardon?”

“What you're squirming to leave un mentioned.”

“What?”

“That you'd be of no use to me whatever.”

“Is that what you — ” Philip started with automatic righteousness,
hut stopped and did not finish.

“Yes,” said Rearden, smiling, “//wix’s what 1 think of first.”

849

Philip’s eyes oozed away; when he spoke, his voice bounded as if
it were darting about at random, picking stray sentences: “Everybody
is entitled to a livelihood . . . How am 1 going to get it, if nobody
gives me my chance?”

“How did 1 get mine?”

“I wasn’t born owning a steel plant.”

“Was I?”

“1 can do anything you can — if you’ll teach me.”

“Who taught me?”

“Why do you keep saying that? I’m not talking about you!”

“I am.”

In a moment. Philip muttered. “What do you have to worry about?
It’s not your livelihood that’s in question!”

Rearden pointed to the figures of men in the steaming rays of the
furnace. “Can you do what they’re doing?”

“i don’t see what you’re — ”

“What will happen if 1 put you there and you ruin a heat of steel
for me?"

“What’s more important, that vour damn steel gets poured or that
1 eat?”

“How do you propose to eat if the steel doesn't get poured?”

Philip's face assumed a look of reproach “I’m not in a position
to argue with you right now. since you hold the upper hand.”

“Then don’t argue.”

“Uh?”

“Keep your mouth shut and get out ol here.”

“Rut l meant—” He stopped.

Rearden chuckled. “You meant that it’s I who should keep my
mouth shut, because I hold the upper hand, and should give in to
you, because you hold no hand at all?”

“That's a peculiarly crude way of stating a moral principle ”

“But that’s what your moral principle amounts to. doesn’t it?”

“You can’t discuss morality in materialistic terms.”

“We’re discussing a job in a steel plant -and. boy 1 is that a malcn
alistic place!”

Philip’s body drew a shade tighter together and his eyes became
a shade more glazed, as if in fear of the place around him. in resent-
ment of its sight, in an effort not to concede its reality. He said, in
the soft, stubborn whine of a voodoo incantation. “It’s a moral im-
perative, universally conceded in our day and age. that every man is
entitled to a job.” His voice rose: ‘Tin entitled to it!”

“You are? Cio on, then, collect your claim ”

“Uh?”

“Collect your job. Pick it off the busfi where you think it grows.”

“I mean — ” {

“You mean that it doesn’t? You meafo that you need it, but can’t
create it? You mean that you’re entitled to a iob which / must create
for you?”

“Yes!”

“And if 1 don’t?”

The silence went stretching through second after second. “1 don’t

850

understand you,” said Philip: his voice had the angry bewilderment
of a man who recites the formulas of a well -tested role, but keeps
getting the wrong cues in answer. “1 don’t understand why one can’t
talk to you any more. I don’t understand what sort of theory you’re
propounding and—”

“Oh yes, you do.”

As if refusing to believe that the formulas could fail, Philip burst
out with: “Since when did you take to abstract philosophy? You’re
only a businessman, you’re not qualified to deal with questions of
principle, you ought to leave it to the experts who have conceded
for centuries — ’

“Cut it, Philip. What’s the gimmick?”

“Gimmick?”

“Why the sudden ambition?”

“Well, at a time like this . .

“Like what?”

“Well, every man has the right to have some means of support
and . . . and not be left to be tossed aside . . When things are so
uncertain, a man’s got to have some security . . . some foothold . . .

I mean, at a time like this, if anything happened to you. I’d have
no — ”

“What do you expect to happen to me?”

“Oh, I don’t! I don’t!” The cry was oddly, incomprehensibly genu-
ine. “J don’t expect anything to happen! . . . Do you?”

“Such as what?”

“How do I know? . . . But I've got nothing except the pittance
you give me and . . , and you might change your mind any time.”

“1 might.”

‘‘And I haven't any hold on you at all.”

“Why did it take you that many years to realize it and start wor-
rying? Why now 9 ”

“Because . . . because you’ve changed. You . . you used to have
a sense of duty and moral responsibility, but . . you’re losing it.
You’re losing it, aren't you?”

Kearden stood studying him silently: there was something peculiar
in Philip’s manner of sliding toward questions, as if his words were
accidental, but the too casual, the faintly insistent questions were the
key to his purpose.

“Well. I’ll be glad to take the burden off your shoulders, if I'm a
burden to you!” Philip snapped suddenly. “Just give me a job. and
vour conscience won't have to bother you about me any longer!”

it doesn't.”

“That’s what l mean! You don’t care. You don't care what be-
comes of any of us, do you?”

“Of whom?”

“Why . . . Mother and me and . . . and mankind in general. But
I'm not going to appeal to your better self. I know that you’re ready
to ditch me at a moment’s notice, so — ”

“You’re lying, Philip. Thai’s not what you’re worried about. If it
were, you’d be angling for a chunk of cash, not lor a job, not — ”

H5\

“No! I want a job!” The cry was immediate and almost frantic.
“Don't try to buy me off with cash! I want a job!"

“Pull yourself together, you poor louse. Do you hear what
you’re saying?”

Philip spit out his answer with impotent hatred: “You can’t talk
to me that way!”

“Can you?"

“1 only — ”

“To buy you off? Why should I try to buy you off— instead of
kicking you out, as I should have, years ago?”

“Well, after all. I’m your brother!”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“One’s supposed to have some sort of leelmg for one’s brother.”

“Do you?"

Philip’s mouth swelled petulantly: he did not answer: he waited;
Rearden let him wait. Philip muttered, “You’re supposed ... at
least ... to have some consideration for my feelings . . but you

haven’t.”

“Have you for mine?”

“Yours? Your feelings?" It was not malice in Philip’s voice, but
worse: it was a genuine, indignant astonishment. “You haven’t any
feelings. You’ve never felt anything at all. You’ve never suffered !”

It was as if a sum of years hit Rearden in the face, by means ot
a sensation and a sight: the exact sensation of what he had felt in
the cab of the first train’s engine on the John Halt Line— -and the
sight of Philip’s eyes, the pale, halt-liquid eyes piesentmg the utter
most of human degiadation: an uncontested pain, and. with the ob-
scene insolence of a skeleton toward a living being, demanding that
his pain be held as the highest of values. You’ve never suffered, the
eyes were saying to him accusingly— while he was seeing the night
in his office when his ore mines were taken away from him— the
moment when he had signed the Gift Certificate surrendering Reai-
den Metal— the month of days inside a plane that searched for the
remains of Dagny’s body. You’ve never suffered, the eyes were say-
ing with self-righteous scorn — while he remembered the sensation of
proud chastity with which he had fought through those moments,
refusing to surrender to pain, a sensation made of his love, of his
loyalty of his knowledge that joy is the goal of existence, and joy is
not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason
is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment’s torture.
You’ve never suffered, the dead stare of the eyes was saying, you’ve
never felt anything, because only to suffer is to feel— there’s no such
thing as joy, there’s only pain and the, absence of pain: only pain
and the zero, when one feels nothing- -[puffer. I’m twisted by suffer-
ing, I’m made of undiluted suffering, that’s my purity, that’s my
virtue — and yours, you the untwisted ope, you the uncomplaining,
yours is to relieve me of my pain — cut your unsuffering body* to
patch up mine, cut your unfeeling soul U> stop mine from feeling -
and we’H achieve the ultimate ideal, th<r triumph over life, the zero!
He was seeing the nature of those who, for centuries, had not re-

852

coiled from the preachers of annihilation — he was seeing the nature
of the enemies he had been fighting all his life.

“Philip,’’ he said, “get out of here/’ His voice was like a ray of
sunlight in a morgue, il was the plain, dry, daily voice of a business-
man, the sound of health, addressed to an enemy one could not
honor by anger, nor even by horror “And don’t ever try to enter
these mills again, because there will be orders at every gate to throw
you out, if you try it.”

“Well, after all,” said Philip, in the angry and cautious tone of a
tentative threat, “I could have my friends assign me to a job here
and compel you to accept it!”

Rcardcn had started to go. but he stopped and turned to look at
his brother.

Philip’s moment of grasping a sudden revelation was not accom-
plished by means of thought, but by means of that dark sensation
which was his only mode of consciousness: he tell a sensation of
terror, squeezing his throat, shivering down into his stomach — he
was seeing the spread of the mills, with the roving streamers of flame,
with the ladles of molten metal sailing through space on delicate
cables, with open pits the color of glowing coal, with cranes coming
at his head, pounding past, holding tons ol steel by the invisible
power of magnets— and he knew that he was afraid of this place,
afraid to the death, that he dared not move without the protection
and guidance of the man before him — then he looked at the tall,
straight figure standing casually still, the figure with the unflinching
eyes whose sight had cut through rock and flame to build this place —
and then he knew how easily the man he was pioposing to compel
could let a single bucket of metal tilt over a second ahead of its time
or let a single crane drop its load a foot short ol its goal, and there
would be nothing left of him. ol Philip the claimant— and his only
protection lay in the fact that his mind would think of such actions,
but the mind ol Hank Rearden would not.

“But we'd better keep it on a friendly basis.' " said Philip.

“You’d better.” said Rearden and walked away.

Men who worship pain - thought Rearden. staring at the image of
Ihe enemies he had never been able to understand -they're men
who worship pain. It seemed monstrous, yet peculiarly devoid of
importance. He felt nothing. It was like trying to summon emotion
toward inanimate objects, toward refuse sliding down a mountainside
to crush him. One could flee from the slide or build retaining walls
against it or be crushed — but one could not grant any anger, indigna-
tion or moral concern to the senseless motions of the unliving; no,
worse, he thought — the anti-living.

The same sense of detached unconcern remained with him while
he sat in a Philadelphia courtroom and watched men perform the
motions which were to grant him his divorce. He watched them utter
mechanical generalities, recite vague phrases of fraudulent evidence,
play an intricate game of stretching words to convey no facts and
no meaning. He had paid them to do it— he whom the law permitted
no other way to gain his freedom, no right to state the facts and
plead the truth — the law which delivered his fate, not to objective

853

rules objectively defined, but to the arbitrary mercy of a judge with
a wizened f$ce and a look of empty cunning. ,

Lillian was not present in the courtroom; her attorney made ges-
tures once in a while, with the energy of letting water run through
his fingers. They all knew the verdict in advance and they knew its
reason; no other reason had existed for years, where no standards,
save whim, had existed. They seemed to regard it as their ngbrtul
prerogative; they acted as if the purpose of the procedure were not
to try a case, but to give them jobs, as if their jobs were to recite
the appropriate formulas with no responsibility to know what the
formulas accomplished, as if a courtroom were the one place where
questions of right and wrong were irrelevant and they, the men in
charge ot dispensing justice, were safely w ise enough to know that no
justice existed. They acted like savages performing a ritual devised to
set them free oi objective reality.

But the ten years of his marriage had been real, he thought — and
these were the men who assumed the power to dispose of it, to
decide whether he would have a chance of contentment on earth or
be condemned to torture for the rest of his lifetime. He remembered
the austerely pitiless respect he had felt for his contract of marriage,
for all his contracts and all h»s legal obligations - and he saw' what
sort of legality his scrupulous observance was expected to serve.

He noticed that the puppets of the courtroom had started by glanc-
ing at him in the sly, wise manner of fellow conspirators sharing a
common guilt, mutually sale from moral condemnation. Then, when
they 7 observed that he was the only man in the room who looked
steadily straight at anyone's lace, he saw resentment growing in then-
eyes. Incredulously, he realized what it was that had been expected
of him: he, the victim, chained, bound, gagged and left with no re-
course save to bribery, had been expected to believe that the farce
he had purchased was a process of law, that the edicts enslaving him
had moral validity, that he was guilty of corrupting the integrity of
the guardians of justice, and that the blame was his, not theirs. It
was like blaming the victim of a holdup tor corrupting the integrity
of the thug. And yet — he thought— through all the generations of
political extortion, it was not the looting bureaucrats who had taken
the blame, but the chained industrialists, not the men who peddled
legal favors, but the men who were forced to buy them; and through
all those generations of crusades against corruption, the remedy hail
always been, not the liberating of the victims, but the granting of
wider powers for extortion to the extortionists. The only guilt of the
victims, he thought, had been that they accepted it as guilt.

When he walked out of the courtroom -into the chilly drizzle of a
gray afternoon, he felt as if he had beefi divorced, not only from
Lillian, but from the whole of the human? society that supported the
procedure he had witnessed. \

The face of his attorney, an elderly man of the old-fashioned
school, wore an expression that made it look as if he longed to take
a bath. “Say, Hank,” he asked as sole comment, “is there something
the looters are anxious to get from you right now?” “Not that 1
know of. Why?” “The thing went too smoothly. There were a few

854

points at which I expected pressure and hints for some extras, but
the boys sailed past and took no advantage of it. Looks to me as if
orders had come lrom on high to treat you gently and let you have
your way. Are they planning something against your mills? 1 ’ “Not
that 1 know of,” said Reardcn — and was astonished to hear it in his
mind: Not that 1 care.

it was on the same afternoon, at the mills, that he saw the Wet
Nurse hurrying toward him— a gangling, coltish figure with a peculiar
mixture of brusqueness, awkwardness and decisiveness.

“Mr. Rearden, 1 would like to speak to you.” His voice was diffi-
dent, yet oddly hrm.

“Go ahead.”

“There’s something l want to ask \ou.” The boy’s face was solemn
and taut. “1 want you to know that I know you should refuse me,
but 1 want to ask it just the same . . . and . . and if it's presumptuous,
then just tell me to go to hell.”

“Okay. Try it.”

“Mr. Rearden, would you give me a job?” It was the effort to
sound normal that betrayed the days ot struggle behind the question.
“I want to quit what I’m doing and go to work 1 mean, real work —
in steel-making, like 1 thought I'd started to. once I want to earn
my keep. I’m tired ot being a bedbug.”

Rearden could not resist smiling and reminding him. in the tone
ot a quotation, “Now why use such words, Non-Absolute? It we
don’t use ugly words, we won't have any ugliness and- But he
saw the desperate earnestness ot the boy's face 'and stopped, his
smile vanishing.

“I mean it, Mr. Rearden And 1 know what the word means and
it’s the right word. I'm tired ol being paid, with your money, to do
nothing except make it impossible tor you to make any money at
all. 1 know that anyone who works today is only a sucker tor bastards
like me. but . . . well, God damn it. I'd rather be a sucker, if that’s
all theie’s left to be!” His voice had risen to a ciy. “1 beg your
pardon, Mr Rearden,” he said slitlly. looking away In a moment,
he went on in his woodenly unemotional tone. "1 want to get our of
the Deputy-Direetor-oMXslribuiion racket. 1 don't know that I'd be
of much use to you. I've got a college diploma m metallurgy, but
that’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. But l think I’ve learned
a little about the work in the two years I've been here- -and if you
could use me at all, as a sweeper or scrap man or whatever you’d
trust me with, Pd tell them where to put the deputy directorship and
I’d go to work for you tomorrow, next week, this minute or whenever
you say.” He avoided looking at Rearden. not in a manner of eva-
sion, but as if he had no right to do it.

“Why were you atraid to ask me?” said Rearden gently.

The boy glanced at him with indignant astonishment, as if the
answer were self-evident. “Because after the way l started here and
the way I acted and what Pm deputy of, if 1 come asking you for
favors, you ought to kick me in the teeth!”

“You have learned a great deal in the two years you’ve been
here.”

855

“No, I — ” He glanced at Rearden, understood, looked away and
said woodenly, “Yeah ... if that’s what you mean. 1 '

“Listen, kid, l’d give you a job this minute and I’d trust you with
more than a sweeper’s job, if it were up to me. But have you forgot-
ten the Unification Board? I'm not allowed to hire you and you’re
not allowed to quit. Sure, men are quitting all the time, and we’re
hiring others under phony names and fancy papers proving that
they’ve worked here for years. You know it, and thanks for keeping
your mouth shut. But do you think that if I hired you that way, your
friends in Washington would miss it?”

The boy shook his head slowly.

“Do you think that if you quit their service to become a sweeper,
they wouldn’t understand your reason?”

The boy nodded.

“Would they let you go?”

The boy shook his head. After a moment, he said in a tone of
forlorn astonishment, “I hadn’t thought of that at all, Mr. Rearden.
I forgot them. I kept thinking of whether you’d want me or not and
that the only thing that counted was your decision.”

“I know.”

“And ... it is the only thing that counts, in fact.”

“Yes, Non- Absolute, in fact."

The boy’s mouth jerked suddenly into the brief, mirthless twist ot
a smile. “I guess I’m tied worse than any sucker . .

“Yes, There's nothing you can do now. except apply to the Unifi-
cation Board for permission to change your job. I'll support your
application, if you want to try— only l don't think they'll grant it. I
don’t think they’ll let you work for me.”

“No. They won't.”

“If you maneuver enough and lie enough, they might permit you
to transfer to a private job — with some other steel company.”

“No! I don’t want to go anywhere else! I don't want to leave this
place!” He stood looking off at the invisible vapor ol rain over the
flame of the furnaces. After a while, he said quietly, “I’d better slay
put, I guess. I’d better go on being a deputy looter. Besides, if 1 left,
God only knows w'hat soil ot bastard they’d saddle you with in my
place!” He turned. “They’re up to something, Mr. Rearden. I don’t
know' what it is, but they’re getting ready to spring something on
you.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But they’ve been watchjng every opening here, in
the last few weeks, every desertion, and dipping their own gang in.
A queer sort of gang, too — real goons, sopic of them, that I’d swear
never stepped inside a steel plant before] I’ve had orders to get as
many of ‘our boys’ in as possible. 'ITicy wouldn’t tell me why. I <jon’t
know what it is they’re planning. I’ve tried to pump them, but they’re
acting pretty cagey about it. I don’t think they trust me any more.
I’m losing the right touch, I guess. All I know is they’re getting set
to pull something here.”

“Thanks for warning me.”

“I’ll try to get the dope on it. I’ll try my damndest to get it in

856

time.” He turned brusquely and started off, but stopped. “Mr. Rear-
den, if it were up to you, you would have hired me?”

“1 would have, gladly and at once.”

“Thank you, Mr. Reardon,” he said, his voice solemn and low,
then walked away.

Reardon stood looking after him, seeing, with a tearing smile of
pity, what it was that the ex-relativist, the cx-pragmatist, the ex-
amorahst was carrying away with him for consolation.

* r

On the afternoon of September 11 , a copper wire broke in Minne-
sota, stopping the belts of a gram elevator at a small country station
of Taggart Transcontinental.

A flood of wheat was moving down the highways, the roads, the
abandoned trails of the countryside, emptying thousands of acres of
farmland upon the fragile dams of the railroad’s stations, ft was
moving day and night, the first trickles growing into streams, then
livers, then torrents — moving on palsied trucks with coughing, tuber-
cular motors— on wagons pulled by the rusty skeletons of starving
horses— on carts pulled by oxen — on the nerves and last energy of
men who had lived through two years of disaster for the triumphant
reward ot this autumn's giant har\e*l. men who had patched their
trucks and carts with wire, blankets, ropes and sleepless nights, to
make them hold together for this one more journey, to carry the
grain and collapse at destination, hut to give their owners a chance
at survival.

Every year, at this season, another movement had gone clicking
across the country, drawing freight cars from all corners of the conti-
nent to the Minnesota Division of iaggart Transcontinental, the beat
of tram wheels preceding the creak of the wagons, like an advance
echo rigorously planned, ordered and timed to meet the flood. The
Minnesota Division drowsed through the year, to come to violent
life for the sounds of the harvest; fourteen thousand freight cars had
lammed its yards each year: fifteen thousand were expected this time.
The litst of the wheat trains had started to channel the Hood into
the hungry flour mills, then bakeries, then stomachs of the nation —
hut every train, car and storage elevator counted, and there was no
minute or inch of space to spare.

Eddie Willers watched Dagny’s lace as she went through the cards
ot her emergency file; he could tell the content of the cards by her
expression. “The Terminal.” she said quietly, closing the tile. “Phone
the Terminal downstairs and have them ship half their stock of wire
to Minnesota.” Eddie said nothing and obeyed.

He said nothing, the morning when he put on her desk a telegram
from the Taggart office in Washington, informing them of the direc*
live which, due to the critical shortage of copper, ordered govern-
ment agents to seize all copper mines and operate them as a public
utility. “Well,** she said, dropping the telegram into the wastebasket,
“that’s the end of Montana.”

She said nothing when James Taggart announced to her that he
was issuing an order to discontinue all dining cars on T aggart trains.
“We can’t afford it any longer,” he explained, “we’ve always lost

857

money on those goddamn diners, and when there's no food to gel,
when restaurants are closing because they can’t grab hold of a pound
of horse meat anywhere, how can railroads be expected to do it?
Why in hell should we have to feed the passengers, anyway? They’re
lucky if we give them transportation, they’d travel in cattle cars if
necessary, let 'em pack their own box lunches, what do we care?- -
they’ve got no other trains to take!”

The telephone on her desk had become, not a voice of business,
but an alarm suen for the desperate appeals of disaster. “Miss Tag-
gart. we have no copper wire!” “Nails, Miss Taggart, plain nails,
could you tell somebody to send us a keg of nails?” “Can you find
any paint. Miss Taggart, any sort of waterproof paint anywhere?”

But thirty million dollars of subsidy money from Washington had
been plowed into Project Soybean — an enormous acreage in Louisi-
ana. where a harvest of soybeans was ripening, as advocated and
organized by Emma Chalrneis, for (he purpose ot reconditioning the
dietary habits ot the nation, Emma Chalmers, better known as Kip’s
Ma, was an old sociologist who had hung about Washington for
years, as other women of her age and type hang about barrooms.
For some reason which nobody could define, the death of her son
in the tunnel catastrophe had given her in Washington an aura of
martyrdom, heightened by her recent conversion to Buddhism. “The
soybean is a much moic sturdy, nutritious and economical plant than
all the extravagant foods which our wasteful, self-indulgent diet has
conditioned us to expect.” Kip’s Ma had said over the radio; her
voice always sounded as if it were falling in drops, not of water, but
of mayonnaise. “Soybeans make an excellent substitute for bread
meat, cereals and coffee — and il all ot us were compelled to adopt
soybeans as our staple diet, it would solve the national food crisis
and make it possible to feed more people. The greatest food for the
greatest number — that’s my slogan. At a time of desperate public
need, it’s our duty to sacrifice our luxurious tastes and eat our way
back to prosperity by adapting ourselves to the simple, wholesome
foodstuff on which the peoples of the Orient have so nobly subsisted
for centuries. There’s a great deal that we could learn trom the
peoples of the Orient.”

“Copper tubing. Miss Taggart, could you get some copper tubing
for us somewhere?” the voices were pleading over her telephone
“Rail spikes. Miss Taggart!” “Screwdrivers, Miss Taggart!” “Light
bulbs. Miss Taggart, there's no electric light bulbs to be had any-
where within two hundred miles of us!”

But five million dollars was being spdnt by the office of Morale
Conditioning on the People’s Opera ^Company, which traveled
through the country, giving free performances to people who, on one
meal a day, could not afford the energy |o walk to the opera house
Seven million dollars had been granted ko a psychologist in charge
of a project to solve the world crisis by ^research into the nature of
brother-love. Ten million dollars had Eefen granted to the manufac-
turer of a new electronic cigarette lighter — but there were no ciga-
rettes in the shops of the country. There were flashlights on the
market, but no batteries; there were radios, but no tubes; there were

858

cameras, but no film. "Hie production of airplanes had been declared
“temporarily suspended." Air travel for private purposes had been
forbidden, and reserved exclusively for missions of “public need.”
An industrialist traveling to save his factory was not considered as
publicly needed and could not get aboard a plane; an official travel-
ing to collect taxes was and could.

“People are stealing nuts and bolts out of rail plates. Miss Taggart,
stealing them at night, and our stock is running out, the division
storehouse is bare, what are we to do. Miss Taggart?"

But a super-color-four-foot-screen television set was being erected
tor tourists in a People's Park in Washington -and a super-cyclotron
for the study of cosmic rays was being erected at the State Science
Institute, to be completed in ten years

‘The trouble with out modern world," Dr. Robert Stadler said
over the iadio, at the ceremonies launching the construction of the
cyclotron, “is that too many people think too much. It is the cause
ol all our current fears and doubts. An enlightened citizenry should
abandon the superstitious worship of logic and the outmoded reli-
ance on reason. Just as laymen leave medicine to doctors and elec-
tronics to engineers', so people who are not qualified to think should
leave all thinking to the experts and have faith in the experts' higher
authority Only experts are able to understand the discoveries of
modem science, which have proved that thought is an illusion and
that the mind is a myth."

“This age of misery is God's punishment to man tor the sin of
relying on his mind!" snarled the triumphant voices of mystics of
every sect and sort, on street corners, in ram-soaked tents, m crum-
bling temples “This world ordeal is the result of man’s attempt to
live by reason! this is where thinking, logic and science have brought
you! And there’s to be no salvation until men realize that their
mortal mind is impotent to solve their problems and go back to faith,
taith in God. faith in a higher authority!"

And confronting her daily there was the final product of it all, the
heir and collectoi — Cully Meigs, the man impervious to thought.
Cliffy Meigs strode through the offices of Taggart Transcontinental,
wearing a semi-military tunic and slapping a shiny leather briefcase
against his shiny leather leggings. He earned an automatic pistol in
one pocket and a rabbit’s foot in the other.

Cuffy Meigs tried to avoid her; his manner was part scorn, as if
he considered her an impractical idealist, part superstitious awe. as
if she possessed some incomprehensible power with which he pre-
ferred not to tangle. He acted as if her presence did not belong to
his view of a railroad, yet as if hers were the one presence he dared
not challenge. There was a touch of impatient resentment in his
manner toward Jim, as it it were Jim's duty to deal with her and to
protect him; just as he expected Jim to keep the railroad in running
order and leave him free for activities of more practical a nature, so
he expected Jim to keep her in line, as part of the equipment.

Beyond the window of her office, like a patch of adhesive plaster
stuck over a wound on the sky, the page of the calendar hung blank
m the distance. The calendar had never been repaired since the night

859

of Francisco’s farewell. The officials who had rushed to the tower,
that night, had knocked the calendar’s motor to a stop, while tearing
the film out of the projector. They had found the small square of
Francisco’s message, pasted into the strip of numbered days, but who
had pasted it there, who had entered the locked room and when and
how, was never discovered by the three commissions still investigat
ing the case. Pending the outcome ot their efforts, the page hung
blank and still above the city.

It was blank on the afternoon of September 14, when the tele-
phone rang in her office. “A man from Minnesota,” said the voice
of her secretary.

She had told her secretary that she would accept all calls of this
kind. They were the appeals for help and her only source of informa
tion. At a time when the voices of railroad officials uttered nothing
but sounds designed to avoid communication, the voices of nameless
men were her last link to the system, the last sparks ol reason and
tortured honesty flashing briefly through the miles of Taggart track.

“Miss Taggart, it is not my place to call you, but nobody else
will,” said the voice that came on the wire, this time; the voice
sounded young and too calm. “In another day or two, a disaster’s
going to happen here the like ot which they’ve never seen, and they
won’t be able to hide it any longer, only it will be too late by then,
and maybe it's too late already.”

“What is it? Who are you?”

“One of your employees of the Minnesota Division, Miss Taggart.
In another day or two, the trains will stop running out ot here — and
you know what that means, at the height of the harvest. At the
height of the biggest harvest we’ve ever had. lhey’ll stop, because
we have no cars. The harvest freight cars have not been sent to us
this year.”

“What did you say?” She felt as il minutes went by between the
words of the unnatural voice that did not sound like her own.

“The cars have not been sent. Fifteen thousand should have been
here by now. As tar as l could learn, about eight thousand cars is
all we got. I’ve been calling Division Headquarters for a week.
They’ve been telling me not to worry. Last time, they told me to
mind my own damn business. Every shed, silo, elevator, warehouse,
garage and dance hall along the track is tilled with wheat. At the
Sherman elevators, there’s a line of farmers' trucks and wagons two
miles long, wailing on the road. At Lakewood Station, the square is
packed solid and has been for three nights. They keep telling us it’s
only temporary, the cars are coming an# wc*ll catch up. We won t.
There aren’t any cars coming. I’ve called everyone I could. I know,
by the way they answer. They know, arid not one of them wants to
admit it. They’re scared, scared to movq or speak or ask or answer.
All they’re thinking of is who will be blamed when that harvest rots
here around the stations — and not of who’s going to move it. Ma>;bc
nobody can, now. Maybe there’s nothing you can do about it, either.
But I thought you’re the only person left who’d want to know and
that somebody had to tell you.”

”1 , . She made an effort to breathe. ”1 see . . . Who are you?’’

860

“The name wouldn’t matter. When I hang up, I will have become
a deserter. I don’t want to stay here to see it when it happens. I
don’t want any part of it any more. Good luck to you, Miss Taggart.”
She heard the click. ‘"Thank you,” she said over a dead wire.

The next time she noticed the office around her and permitted
herself to feel, it was noon of the following day. She stood in the
middle of the office, running stiff, spread fingers through a strand of
hair, brushing it back off her face — and for an instant, she wondered
where she was and what was the unbelievable thing that had hap-
pened in the last twenty hours. What she fell was horror, and she
knew that she had felt it from the first words of the man on the
wire, only there had been no time to know it
There was not much that remained in her mind of the last twenty
hours, only disconnected bits, held together by the single constant
that had made them possible — by the soft, loose faces of men, who
lought to hide from themselves that they knew the answers to the
questions she asked.

From the moment when she was told that the manager of the Car
Service Department had been out of town tor a week and had left
no address where one could reach him — she knew that the report of
the man from Minnesota was true. Then came the faces of the assis-
tants in the Car Service Department, who would neither confirm the
report nor deny it, but kept showing her papers, orders, forms* file
cards that bore words in the English language, but no connection to
intelligible facts. “Were the freight cars sent to Minnesota?'" “Form
357W is filled out in every particular, as required by the office of
the Co-ordinator m conformance with the instructions of the comp-
troller and by Directive 1 1-49V* "Were the freight cars sent to Min-
nesota?’' “The entries for the months of August and September have
been processed by — ” “Were the freight cars sent to Minnesota?”
“My files indicate the locations of freight cars by state, date, classifi-
cation and — ” “Do you know whether the cars were sent to Minne-
sota?” “As to the interstate motion of freight cars, I would have to
refer you to the files ol Mr. Henson and of--"

"I here was nothing to learn from the files, lhere were careful en-
tries. each conveying four possible meanings, with references which
led to references which led to final reference which was missing from
the files. It did not take her long to discover that the cars had not
been sent to Minnesota and that the order had come from Cuffy
Meigs— but who had carried it out, who had tangled the trail, what
steps had been taken by w hat compliant men to preserve the appear-
ance of a safely normal operation, without a single cry of protest to
arouse some braver man's attention, who had falsified the reports,
and where the cars had gone— seemed, at first, impossible to Learn.

'Ihrough the hours of that night -while a small, desperate crew
under the command of Eddie Willers kept calling every division
point, every yard, depot, station, spur and siding of Taggart Trans-
continental for every freight car in sight or reach, ordering them to
unload, drop, dump, scuttle anything and proceed to Minnesota at
once, while they kept calling the yards, stations and presidents of
every railroad still half in existence anywhere across the map. beg-

861

ging for cars for Minnesota — she went through the task of tracing
from face to coward’s face the destination of the freight cars that
had vanished.

She went from railroad executives to wealthy shippers to Washing-
ton officials and back to the railroad— by cab, by phone, by wire —
pursuing a trail of half-uttered hints. The trail approached its end
when she heard the pinch-lipped voice of a public relations woman
in a Washington office, saying resentfully over the telephone wire,
“Well, after all, it is a matter ot opinion whether wheat is essential
to a nation’s welfare — there are those of more progressive views who
feel that the soybean is, perhaps, of far greater value” — and then,
by noon, she stood in the middle of her office, knowing that the
freight cars intended for the wheat of Minnesota had been sent,
instead, to carry the soybeans from the Louisiana swamps of Kip’s
Mas project.

The first story of the Minnesota disaster appeared in the newspa-
pers three days later. It reported that the fanners who had waited
in the streets of Lakewood for six days, with no place to store their
wheat and no trains to carry it, had demolished the local courthouse,
the mayor’s home and the railroad station. Then the stones vanished
abruptly and the newspapers kept silent, then began to print admoni-
tions urging people not to believe unpatriotic rumors.

While the Hour mills and grain markets ot the country were
screaming over the phones and the telegraph wires, sending pleas to
New York and delegations to Washington, while strings of freight
cars from random corners of the continent wcie crawling like rusty
caterpillars across the map in the direction of Minnesota — the wheat
and hope of the country were wailing to perish along an empty track,
under the unchanging green light of signals that called for motion
to trains that were not there.

At the communication desks of Taggart Transcontinental, a small
crew kept calling for freight cars, repeating, like the crew of a sinking
ship, an S.O.S. that remained unheard. There were freight cars held
loaded for months in the yards of the companies owned by the
friends of pull-peddlers, who ignored the frantic demands to unload
the cars and release them. ‘You can tell that railroad to--" followed
by untransmissible words, was the message of the Smather Brothers
of Arizona in answer to the S.O.S. ot New York.

In Minnesota, they were seizing cars from every siding, from the
Mesabi Range, from the ore mines of Paul Larkin where the cats
had stood waiting for a dribble of iron; They were pouring wheat
into ore cars, into coal cars, into boarded stock cars that went spilling
thin gold trickles along the track as th^y clattered off. They were
pouring wheat into passenger coaches, oyer seats, racks and fixtures,
io send it off, to get it moving, even if? it went moving into track-
side ditches in the sudden crash of breaking springs, in the explosions
sef off by burning journal boxes. *

They fought for movement, for movement with no thought of des
tination, for movement as such, like a paralytic under a stroke, strug-
gling in wild, stiff, incredulous jerks against the realization that
movement was suddenly impossible. There were no other railroads:

862

James Taggart had killed them; there were no boats on the Lakes:
Paul Larkin had killed them. There was only the single line of rail
and a net of neglected highways.

'The trucks and wagons of waiting farmers started trickling blindly
down the roads, with no maps, no gas, no feed for horses — moving
south, south toward the vision of flour mills awaiting them some-
where, with no knowledge of the distances ahead, but with the
knowledge of death behind them — moving, to collapse on the roads,
in the gullies, in the breaks of rotted bridges. One farmer was found,
half a mile south of the wreck of his truck, lying dead in a ditch,
face down, still clutching a sack of wheat on his shoulders. Then rain
clouds burst over the prairies of Minnesota; the rain went eating the
wheat into rot at the waiting railroad stations; it went hammering
the piles spilled along the roads, washing gold kernels into the soil.

The men in Washington wcie last to be reached by the panic.
They watched, not the news from Minnesota, but the precarious
balance of their friendships and commitments; they weighed, not the
fate of the harvest, but the unknowable result of unpredictable emo-
tions in unthinking men of unlimited power. They waited, they
evaded all pleas, they declared, “Oh, ridiculous, there's nothing to
worry about! Those Taggart people have always moved that wheat
on schedule, lhe\T! find some way to move it 1 ”

Then, when the State Chief Executive of Minnesota sent a request
to Washington for the assistance of the Army against the riots he
was unable to control- three directives burst forth within two hours,
slopping all trains in the country, commandeering all cars to speed
to Minnesota. An order signed by Wesley Mouch demanded the
immediate release of the freight cars held in the service of Kip’s Ma.
But by that time, it was too late. Ma s freight cars were m California,
where the soybeans had been sent to a progressive concern made
up of sociologists preaching the cult of Oriental austerity, and of
businessmen formerly in the numbers racket

In Minnesota, farmers were setting tire to then own farms, they
weie demolishing grain elevators and the homes of county officials,
they were fighting along the track of the railroad, some to tear it
up, some to defend it with their lives — and, with no goal to reach
save violence, they were dying in the streets ot gutted towns and in
the silent gullies of a roadless night.

Then there was only the acrid stench of giain rotting in half-smol-
dering piles — a few columns of smoke rising from the plains, standing
still in the air over blackened ruins — and, in an office in Pennsylva-
nia, Hank Reardon sitting at his desk. Uxiking at a list of men who
had gone bankrupt: they were the manufacturers of farm equipment,
who could not be paid and would not be able to pay him.

The harvest of soybeans did not reach the markets of the country;
it had been reaped prematurely, it was moldy and unfit for
consumption.

* *

On the night of October 15, a copper wire broke in New York
City, in an underground control tower of the Taggart Terminal, ex-
tinguishing the lights of the signals.

m

It was only the breach of one wire, but it produced a short circuit
in the interlocking traffic system, and the signals of motion or danger
disappeared from the panels of the control towers and from among
the strands of rail. The red and green lenses remained red and green,
not with the living radiance of sight, but with the dead stare of glass
eyes. On the edge of the city, a cluster of trains gathered at the
entrance to the Terminal tunnels and grew through the minutes of
stillness, like blood damned by a clot inside a vein, unable to rush
into the chambers of the heart.

Dagny, that night, was sitting at a table in a private dining room
of the Wayne-Falkland, The wax of candles was dripping down on
the white camellia and laurel leaves at the base of the silver candle-
sticks, arithmetical calculations were penciled on the damask linen
tablecloth, and a cigar butt was swimming in a linger bowl. The six
men in formal dinner jackets, facing her about the table, were Wesley
Mouch, Eugene Lawson, Dr. Floyd Ferris, Clem Weatherby, James
Taggart and Cuffy Meigs.

"‘Why?" she had asked, when Jim had told her that she had to attend
that dinner. '‘Well . . . because our Board of Directors is to meet next
week/’ “And?” “You’re interested in what’s going to be decided about
our Minnesota Line, aren't you?” “Is that going to be decided at the
Board meeting?” “Well, not exactly ” “Is it going to be decided at
this dinner?” “Not exactly, but . . . oh. why do you always have to
be so definite? Nothing's ever definite. Besides, they insisted that
they wanted you to come.” “Why?” “Isn’t that sufficient?”

She did not ask why those men chose to make all their crucial
decisions at parlies of this kind; she knew that they did. She knew
that behind the clattering, lumbering pretense of their council ses-
sions, committee meetings and mass debates, the decisions wen.
made in advance, in furtive informality, at luncheons, dinners and
bars, the graver the issue, the more casual the method of settling it
It was the first time that they had asked her. the outsider, the enemy,
to one of those secret sessions: it was, she thought, an acknowledg-
ment of the fact that they needed her and, perhaps the first step ol
their surrender; it was a chance she could not leave unlaken.

But as she sat in the candlelight ol the dining room, she felt certain
that she had no chance, she felt restless!) unable to accept that cer-
tainty, since she could not grasp its reason, yet lethargically reluctant
to pursue any inquiry.

“As, l think, you will concede. Miss Taggart, there now seems to
be no economic justification for the continued existence of a railroad
fine in Minnesota, which . . “And <$ven Miss Taggart will, I’m
sure, agree that certain temporary retrenchments seem to be indi
caled, until . . “Nobody, not even Miss Taggart, will deny that
there are times when it is necessary to sacrifice the parts for the sake
of the whole . . As she listened to the bicntions of her name tossed
into the conversation at half-hour intervals, tossed perfunctorily, with
the speaker’s eyes never glancing in tyer direction, she wondered
what motive had made them want her fto be present. It was nof an
attempt to delude her into believing th^t they were consulting her,

864

but worse: an attempt to delude themselves into believing that she
had agreed. They asked her questions at times and interrupted her
before she had completed the first sentence of the answer. They
seemed to want her approval, without having to know whether she
approved or not.

Some crudely childish form of self-deception had made them
choose to give to this occasion the decorous setting of a formal
dinner, they acted as if they hoped to gain, from the objects of
gracious luxury, the power and the honor ol which those objects had
once been the product and symbol — they acted, she thought, like
those savages who devour the corpse of an adversary in the hope of
acquiring his strength and his virtue.

She regretted that she was dressed as she was. ‘it's formal.” Jim
had told her, “but don't overdo it . . . what 1 mean is, don’t look
too rich . . . business people should avoid any appearance of arro-
gance these days . . . not that you should look shabby, but if you
could just seem to suggest . . , well, humility ... it would please
them, you know, it would make them feel big.” “Really?” she had
said, turning away.

She wore a black dress that looked as if it were no more than a piece
of cloth crossed over her breasts and falling to her feet in the soft folds
of a Grecian tunic; it was made of satin, a satin so light and thin that it
could have served as the stuff of a nightgown. 1 he luster of the doth,
streaming and shifting with her movements, made it look as if the light
ol the room she entered were her personal property, sensitively obedi-
ent to the motions of her body, wrapping her in a sheet of radiance
more luxurious than the texture of brocade, underscoiing the pliant
fragility of her figure, giving her an air of so natural an elegance that it
could afford to be scornfully casual She wore a single piece of jewelry,
a diamond clip at the edge of the black neckline, that kept Hashing with
the imperceptible motion of her breath, like a transformer converting
a flicker into fire, making one conscious, not of the gems, but the living
heat behind them; it flashed like a military decoration, like wealth worn
as a badge of honor. She wore no othei ornament, only the sweep of a
black velvet cape, mote arrogantly, ostentatiously patrician than any
spread of sables.

She regretted it now, as she looked at the men before her; she
felt the embarrassing guilt of pointlessness, as if she had tried to
defy the figures in a waxworks. She saw a mindless resentment in
their eyes and a sneaking trace ot the lifeless, sexless, smutty leer
with which men look at a poster advertising burlesque.

“It’s a great responsibility/* said Eugene Lawson, “to hold the
decision of life or death over thousands of people and to sacrifice
them when necessary, but we must have the courage to do it.” His
soft lips seemed to twist into a smile.

“The only factors to consider are land acreage and population
figures,” said Dr. Ferris in a statistical voice, blowing smoke rings at
the ceiling. “Since it is no longer possible to maintain both the Min-
nesota Line and the transcontinental traffic of this railroad, the
choice is between Minnesota and those states west of the Rockies
which were cut off by the failure of the Taggart Tunnel, as well as

865

the neighboring states of Montana, Idaho, Oregon, which means,
practically speaking, the whole of the Northwest. When you compute
the acreage and the number of heads in both areas, it's obvious
that we should scuttle Minnesota rather than give up our lines of
communication over a third of a continent.'’

“I won’t give up the continent," said Wesley Mouch, staring down
at his dish of ice cream, his voice hurt and stubborn.

She was thinking of the Mesabi Range, the last ot the major
sources of iron ore, she was thinking of the Minnesota farmers, such
as were left of them, the best producers of wheat in the country —
she was thinking that the end ot Minnesota would end Wisconsin,
then Michigan, then Illinois — she was seeing the red breath of the
factories dying out over the industrial East — as against the empty
miles of western sands, of straggly pastures and abandoned ranches.

“The figures indicate," said Mr. Weatherby primly, “that the con-
tinued maintenance of both areas seems to be impossible. The rail-
way track and equipment of one has to be dismantled to provide
the material for the maintenance of the other."

She noticed that Clem Weatherby, their technical expert on rail-
roads, was the inan of least influence among them, and Ouffy
Meigs — of most. Cuffy Meigs sat sprawled in his chair, with a look
of patronizing tolerance for their game of wasting time on discus-
sions. He spoke little, but when he did, it was to snap decisively,
with a contemptuous grin, “Pipe down. Jimmy 1 " or. “Nuts, Wes.
you’re talking through your hat!" vSlie noticed that neither Jim nor
Mouch resented it. They seemed to welcome the authority of his
assurance; they were accepting him as their master.

“We have to be practical," Dr. Ferris kept saying. “We have to
be scientific."

“I need the economy of the country as a whole," Wesley Mouch
kept repealing. “I need the production of a nation."

“Is it economics that you’re talking about? Is it production?" she
said, whenever her cold, measured voice was able to seize a brief
stretch of their time. “If it is, then give us leeway to save the Eastern
states. That's all that’s left ot the country -and of the world. If you
let us save that, we’ll have a chance to rebuild the rest. If not, it’s
the end. Let the Atlantic Southern lake care of such transcontinental
traffic as still exists. Let the local railroads take care ot the North-
west. But let Taggart Transcontinental drop everything else — yes,
everything— and devote all our resources, equipment and rad to the
traffic of the Eastern states. Let us shrink back to the start of this
country, but let us hold that start. We’ll run no trains west of the
Missouri. We’ll become a local rail road-4- the local of the industrial
East. Let us save our industries. There's: nothing left to save tn the
West. You can run agriculture for centimes by manual labor and
oxcarts. But destroy the last of this country’s industrial plant — and
centuries of effort won’t be able to rebuild it or to gather the eco-
nomic strength to make a start. How do ^ou expect our industries —
or railroads-— to survive without steel? How do you expect any steel
to be produced if you cut off the supply of iron ore? Save Minnesota,
whatever’s left of it. The country? You bave no country to save, if

866

its industries perish. You can sacrifice a leg or an arm. You can’t
save a body by sacrificing its heart and brain. Save our industries.
Save Minnesota. Save the Eastern vSeaboard."

It was no use. She said it as many times, with as many details,
statistics, figures, proofs, as she could force out of her weary mind
into their evasive hearing. It was no use. They neither refuted nor
agreed; they merely looked as if her arguments were beside the
point. There was a sound of hidden emphasis in their answers, as if
they were giving her an explanation, but in a code to which she had
no key.

“There’s trouble in California," said Wesley Mouch sullenly.
“Their slate legislatuie's been acting pretty huffy. Theic’s talk of
seceding from the Union."

“Oregon is overrun by gangs of deserters," said Clem Weatherby
cautiously. “They murdered two tax collectors within the last three
months "

“The importance of industry to a civilization has been grossly over-
emphasized," said Dr, Ferris dreamily “What is now known as the
People’s State of India has existed for centuries without any indus-
trial development whatever."

“People could do with fewer material gadgets and a sterner disci-
pline of privations," said Eugene Lawson eagerly. “It would be good
lor them "

“Oh hell, are you going to let that dame talk you into letting the
nchest country on earth slip through your fingers?" said Cuffy Meigs,
leaping to his feet. “It’s a fine time to give up a whole continent —
and in exchange for what? For a dinky little state that’s milked dry,
anyway! I say ditch Minnesota, but hold onto your transcontinental
dragnet. With trouble and the riots everywhere, you won't be able
to keep people in line unless you have transportation — troop trans-
portation- unless you hold your soldiers within a few days’ journey
of any point on the continent. This is no time to retrench. Don't get
yellow, listening to all that talk. You've got the country m your
packet. Just keep it there."

“In the long run--" Mouch started uncertainly

“In the long run, we’ll all be dead," snapped Cuffy Meigs. He was
pacing restlessly. “Retrenching, hell! There's plenty of pickings left
in California and Oregon and all those places. What I’ve been think-
ing is, we ought to think of expanding — the way things are, there's
nobody to stop us. it’s there tor the taking — Mexico, and Canada
maybe — it ought to be a cinch."

Then she saw the answer; she saw the secret premise behind their
words With all of their noisy devotion to the age of science, their
hysterically technological jargon, their cyclotrons, their sound rays,
these men were moved forward, not by the image of an industrial
skyline, but by the vision of that form of existence which the industri-
alists had swept away — the vision of a fat, unhygienic rajah of India,
with vacant eyes staring in indolent stupor out of stagnant layers of
flesh, with nothing to do but run precious gems through his fingers
and, once in a while, stick a knife into the body of a starved, toil-
dazed, germ-eaten creature, as a claim to a tew grains of the crea-

867

ture’s rice, then claim it from hundreds of millions of such creatures
and thus let the rice grains gather into gems.

She had thought that industrial production was a value not to be
questioned by anyone; she had thought that these men’s urge to
expropriate the factories of others was their acknowledgment of the
factories’ value. She, born of the industrial revolution, had not held
as conceivable, had forgotten along with the tales of astrology and
alchemy, what these men knew in their secret, furtive souls, knew
not by means of thought, but by means of that nameless muck which
they called their instincts and emotions; that so long as men struggle
to stay alive, they’ll never produce so little but that the man with
the club won’t be able to seize it and leave them still less, provided
millions of them are willing to submit — that the harder their work
and the less their gain, the more submissive the fiber of their spirit-
that men who live by pulling levers at an electric switchboard, aie
not easily ruled, but men who live by digging the soil with their
naked fingers, are — that the feudal baron did not need electronic
factories. in order to drink his brains away out of jeweled goblets,
and neither did the rajahs of the People’s State of India.

She saw what they wanted and to what goal theii “instincts,**
which they called unaccountable, were leading them. She saw that
Eugene Lawson, the humanitarian, took pleasure at the prospect of
human starvation — and Dr. Ferris, the scientist, was dreaming of the
day when men would return to the hand-plow.

Incredulity and indifference were her only reaction: incredulity,
because she could not conceive of what would bring human beings
to such a state — indifference, because she could not regard those
who reached it, as human any longer. They went on talking, but she
was unable to speak or to listen. She caught herself feeling that her
only desire was now to get home and tall asleep

“Miss Taggart," said a politely rational, faintly anxious voice — and
jerking her head up, she saw the courteous ligure of a waiter, “the
assistant manager of the Taggart Terminal is on the telephone, re
questing permission to speak to you at once. He says it’s an
emergency.

It was a relief to leap to her feet and get out of that room, even
if in answer to the call of some new disaster. It was a relief to
hear the assistant manager’s voice, even though it was saying, “The
interlocker system is out. Miss Taggart. The signals are dead. There
are eight incoming trams held up and six outgoing. We can’t move
them in or out of the tunnels, wc can’t find the chief engineer, we
can’t locate the breach in the circuit, we have no copper wire lor
repairs, we don’t know what to do. we*-” ‘i’ll be right down," she
said, dropping the receiver.

Hurrying to the elevator, then half*runnmg through the stately
lobby of the Wayne-Falkland, she felt IJerself returning to life at the
summons of the possibility of action.

Taxicabs were rare, these days, and bone came in answer to the
doorman’s whistle. She started rapidly down the street, forgetting
what she wore, wondering why the touch of the wind seemed too
cold and too intimately close.

868

Her mind on the Terminal ahead, she was startled by the loveliness
of a sudden sight: she saw the slender figure of a woman hurrying
toward her, the ray of a lamppost sweeping over lustrous hair, naked
arms, the swirl of a black cape and the flame of a diamond on her
breast, with the long, empty corridor of a city street behind her and
skyscrapers drawn by lonely dots of light. The knowledge that she
was seeing her own reflection in the side mirror of a florist's window,
came an instant too late: she had felt the enchantment of the full
context to which that image and city belonged. ITien she felt a stab
of desolate loneliness, much wider a loneliness than the span of an
empty street — and a stab of anger at herself, at the preposterous
contrast between her appearance and the context of this night and
age.

She saw a taxi turn a corner, she waved to it and leaped in, slam-
ming the door against a feeling which she hoped to leave behind
her. on the empty pavement by a florist’s window. But she knew —
in self-mockery, in bitterness, in longing -that this feeling was the
sense of expectation she had felt at her first ball and at those rare
times when she had wanted the outward beauty of existence to match
its inner splendor. What a time to think of it! she told herself m
mockery— not now! she cried to herself in anger— but a desolate
voice kept asking her quietly to the rattle of the taxi's wheels: You
who believed you must live for your happiness, what do you now
have left ol it what are you gaining from your struggle? — yes! say
it honestly: what’s in it for you ’—or are you becoming one of those
abject altruists who has no answer to that question any longer? . . .
Not now’— she ordered, as the glowing entrance to the Taggart Ter-
minal llaicd up m the rectangle of the taxi’s windshield

The men m the Terminal managers office were like extinguished
signals, us if here, too, a circuit were broken and there were no living
current to make them move. They looked at her with a kind of
inanimate passivity, as if it made no difference whether she let them
slay still or threw a switch to set them m motion

ihe Terminal manager was absent. The chief engineer could not
he found; he had been seen at the Terminal two hours ago, not
since. r Ihe assistant manager had exhausted his power of initiative
by volunteering to call her. The others volunteered nothing. The
signal engineer was a college-boyish man in his thirties, who kept
saying aggressively, “But this has never happened before. Miss Tag-
gart! The interlocker has never failed. It’s no! supposed to fail. We
know our jobs, we can take care of it as will as anybody can — but
not if it breaks down when it s not supposed to r She could not tell
whether the dispatcher, an elderly man with years of railroad work
behind him, still retained his intelligence but chose to hide it. or
whether months of suppressing it had choked it for good, granting
him the safety of stagnation

u We don’t know what to do. Miss Taggart.” “We don’t know
whom to call for what sort of permission. ' “ There are no rules to
cover an emergency of this kind ‘ “ There aren’t even anv rules about
who’s to lay down the rules for it!”

She listened, she reached for the telephone without a word of

m

explanation* she ordered the operator to get her the operating vice-
president of the Atlantic Southern in Chicago, to get him at his home
and out of bed, if necessary.

“George? Dagny Taggart,” she said, when the voice of her com-
petitor came on the wire. “Will you lend me the signal engineer ol
your Chicago terminal, Charles Murray, for twenty-four hours? . . .
Yes . . . Right . . . Put him aboard a plane and get him here as fast
as you can. Tell him we’ll pay three thousand dollars. . . . Yes, for
the one day. ... Yes, as bad as that . . .Yes, I’ll pay him in cash,
out of my own pocket; if necessary. I’ll pay whatever it takes to
bribe his way aboard a plane, but get him on the first plane out ot
Chicago . . . No, George, not one — not a single mind left on Taggart
Transcontinental . . . Yes, I’ll get all the papers, exemptions, excep-
tions and emergency permissions. . . Thanks, George. So long.”

She hung up and spoke rapidly to the men before her, not to hear
the stillness of the room and of the Terminal, where no sound of
wheels was beating any longer, not to hear the bitter words which
the stillness seemed to repeal: Not a single mind left on Taggart
Transcontinental.

‘ Get a wrecking train and crew ready at once,” she said. “Send
them out on the Hudson Line, with orders to tear down every foot
of copper wire, any copper wire, lights, signals, telephone, every thing
that’s company property. Have it here by morning.” “But, Miss Tag-
gart! Our service on the Hudson Line is only temporarily suspended
and the Unification Board has refused us permission to dismantle
the line!” “I’ll be responsible. ' “But how are we going to get the
wrecking train out of here, when there aren't any signals?” “There
will be signals in half an hour.” “How?" “C ome on.” she said, rising
to her tcet.

They followed her as she hurried down the passenger platforms,
past the huddling, shifting groups of travelers by the motionless
trains. She hurried down a narrow catwalk, through a ma/e of rail,
past blinded signals and frozen switches, with nothing but the beat
of her satin sandals to fill the great vaults of the underground tunnels
of Taggart Transcontinental, with the hollow creaking of planks
under the slower steps of men trailing her like a reluctant echo
she hurried to the lighted glass tube of Tower A, that hung in the
darkness like a crown without a body, the crown ot a deposed ruler
above a realm ot empty tracks.

The tower director was too expert a man at too exacting a job to
be able wholly to conceal the dangerous burden of intelligence. He
understood what she wanted him to do from her first few words and
answered only with an abrupt “Yes. ma'am,” but he was bent over
his charts by the time the others camd following her up the iron
stairway, he was grimly at work on the npst humiliating job of calcu*
lation he had ever had to perform in hisHong career. She knew how
fully he understood it, from a single glance he threw at her, a glance
of indignation and endurance that matched some emotion he had
caught in her face. “Well do it first and feet about it afterwards,”
she said, even though he had made no domment. “Yes, ma’am,” he
answered wooden ly.

870

His room, on the top of an underground tower, was like a glass
verandah overlooking what had once been the swiftest, richest and
most orderly stream in the world- He had been trained to chart the
course of over ninety trains an hour and to watch them roll safely
through a maze of tracks and switches in and out of the Terminal,
under his glass walls and his fingertips. Now, for the first time, he
was looking out at the empty darkness of a dried channel.

Through the open door of the relay room, she saw the tower men
standing grimly idle — the men whose jobs had never permitted a
moment's relaxation — standing by the long rows that looked like
vertical copper pleats, like shelves of books and as much of a monu-
ment to human intelligence. The pull of one of the small levers,
which protruded like bookmarks from the shelves, threw thousands
of electric circuits into motion, made thousands of contacts and
broke as many others, set dozens of switches to clear a chosen course
and dozens of signals to light it, with no erroi left possible, no
chance, no contradiction— an enormous complexity ot thought con-
densed into one movement of a human hand to set and insure the
course of a train, that hundreds of trains might sately rush by. that
thousands of tons of metal and lives might pass in speeding streaks,
a breath away from one another, protected by nothing but a thought,
ihe thought of the man who devised the levers. Bui they — she looked
at the face of her signal engineer— -they believed that that muscular
contraction of a hand was the only thing required to move the traf-
fic — and now the tower men stood idle — and on the great panels in
front of Ihe tower director, the red and green lights, which had
Hashed announcing the progress of trains at a distance of miles, were
now so many glass beads— like the glass beads for which another
breed ol savages had once sold the island of Manhattan.

“C 'all all of your unskilled laborers,” she said to the assistant man-
ager. “the section hands, trackwalkers, engine wipers, whoever s in
the Tciminal right now. and have them come here at once. '

"th'fv'"

“Here,” she said, pointing at the tracks outside the tower “Call
all your switchmen, too. Phone your storehouse and have them bring
here every lantern they can lay their hands on. any sort of lantern,
conductors' lanterns, storm lanterns, anything.”

“ f.anterm , Miss Taggart?’'

“Get. going,”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What is it we're doing. Miss Taggart?” asked the dispatcher.

“We're going to move trains and we're going to move them
manually.”

"Manually?" said the signal engineer.

“Yes. brother! Now why should you be shocked?” She could not
resist it. “Man is only muscles, isn’t he? We’re going back — back
to where there were no interlocking systems, no semaphores, no
electricity — back to the time when train signals were not steel and
wire, but men holding lanterns. Physical men, serving as lampposts.
You've advocated it long enough — you got what you wanted- Oh,
you thought that your tools would determine your ideas? But it

871

happens to be the other way around — and now you’re going to see
the kind of tools your ideas have determined!”

But even to go back took an act of intelligence — she thought,
feeling the paradox of her own position, as she looked at the lethargy
of the faces around her.

“How will we work the switches. Miss Taggart?”

“By hand.”

“And the signals?”

“By hand.”

“How?”

“By placing a man with a lantern at every signal post.”

“How? There’s not enough clearance.”

“We’ll use alternate tracks.”

“How will the men know which way to throw the switches.”

“By written orders.”

“Uh?”

“By written orders— just as in the old days ” She pointed to the
tower director. “He’s working out a schedule ot how to move the
trains and which tracks to use. He'll write out an order for every
signal and switch, he’ll pick some men as runners and they’ll keep
delivering the orders to every post -and it will take hours to do
what used to take minutes, but we ll get those waiting trains into the
Terminal and out on the road.”

“We’re to work it that way all night?”

“And all day tomoi row— until the engineer who's got the brains
for it, shows you how to repair the interlocker.”

“There’s nothing in the union contracts about men standing with
lanterns. Ill e re's going to he trouble. The union will object.”

“Let them come to me ”

“The Unification Board will object."

“I'll be responsible ”

“Well. 1 wouldn’t want to be held lor giving the orders

“Til give the orders.”

She stepped out on the landing of the iron stairway that hung on
the side ot the tower; she was fighting for sell-control. It seemed to
her for a moment as if she, loo, were a precision instrument ot hn:h
technology, left wiLhout electric cunenl, trying to run a transconti
nental railroad by means ol her two hands. She looked out at the
great, silent darkness ot the Taggart underground — and she tell a
stab of burning humiliation that she should now see it brought down
to the level where human lampposts would stand m its tunnels as ii^
last memorial statues.

She could barely distinguish the faces of the men when they gath-
ered at the foot ot the tower. 1 hey came streaming silently ihiough
the darkness and stood without moving Jn the bluish rnutk, with blue
bulbs on the walls behind them and patches of light falling on thou
shoulders from the tower’s windows. S|ie could see the greasy gar-
ments, the slack, muscular bodies, the limply hanging arms of men
drained by the unrewarding exhaustion! of a labor that required.no
thought. These were the dregs of the railroad, the younger men who
could now seek no chance to rise and the older men who had never

872

wanted to seek it. They stood in silence, not with the apprehensive
curiosity of workmen, but with the heavy indifference of convicts.

“lire orders which you are about to receive have come from me,”
she said, standing above them on the iron stains, speaking with reso-
nant clarity. “The men who’ll issue them are acting under my instruc-
tions. The interlocking control system has broken down. It will now
be replaced by human labor. Train service will be resumed at once.”

She noticed some faces in the crowd staring at her with a peculiar
look: with a veiled resentment and the kind of insolent curiosity that
made her suddenly conscious of being a woman. Then she remem-
bered whal she wore, and thought that it did look preposterous —
and then, at the sudden stab of some violent impulse that felt like
defiance and like loyalty to the full, real meaning of the moment,
she threw her cape back and stood in the raw glare of light, under
the sooted columns, like a figure at a formal reception, sternly erect,
haunting the luxury of naked arms, of glowing black satin, ot a dia-
mond flashing like a military cross.

“The tower director will assign switchmen to their posts. He will
select men for the job of signaling trains by means of lanterns and
for the task of transmitting his orders. Trains will — ”

She was fighting to drown a bitter voice that seemed to be saying:
That’s all they’re fit for, these men. il even that . . . there’s not a
single mind left anywhere on Taggart Transcontinental. . . .

“Trains will continue to be moved in and out of the Terminal.
You will remain at your posts unlil — ”

Then she stopped. It was his eyes and hair that she saw first— the
luthlessly perceptive eyes, the streaks of haii shaded from gold to
topper that seemed to reflect the glow of sunlight in the murk of
the underground - she saw John Galt among the chain gang of the
mindless, John Galt in greasy overalls and rolled shirt sleeves, she
saw his weightless way of standing, his face held lifted, his eyes
looking at her as if he had seen this moment many moments ago.

“What’s the matter. Miss Taggart *”

It was the sott voice of the tower director, who stood by her side,
with some sort of paper m his hand —and she thought it was strange
to emerge from a span of unconsciousness which had been the span
of the sharpest awareness she had ever experienced, only she did
not know how long it had lasted or where she was or why. She had
been aware of Gait’s face, she had been seeing, in the shape of his
mouth, in the planes of his cheeks, the crackup of that implacable
seienity which had always been his. but he still retained it in his
look o! acknowledging the breach, ot admitting that this moment
was loo much even for him.

She knew that she went on speaking, because those around her
looked as if they were listening, though she could not hear a sound,
she went on speaking as if carrying out a hypnotic order given to
herself some endless time ago, knowing only that the completion of
that order was a form of defiance against him, neither knowing nor
hearing her own words.

She felt m if she were standing in a radiant silence where sight
was her only capacity and his face was its only object, and the sight

873

of his face was like a speech in the form of a pressure at the base
of her throat. It seemed so natural that he should be here, it seemed
so unendurably simple — she felt as if the shock were not his pres-
ence, but the presence of others on the tracks of her railroad, where
he belonged and they did not. She was seeing those moments aboard
a train when, at its plunge into the tunnels, she had felt a sudden,
solemn tension, as if this place were showing her in naked simplicity
the essence of her railroad and of her life, the union of consciousness
and matter, the frozen form of a mind's ingenuity giving a physical
existence to its purpose; she had felt a sense of sudden hope, as if
this place held the meaning of all of her values, and a sense of secret
excitement, as if a nameless promise were awaiting her under the
ground — it was right that she should now meet him here, he had
been the meaning and the promise — she was not seeing his clothing
any longer, nor to what level her railroad had leduccd him — she was
seeing only the vanishing torture of the months when he had been
outside her reach — she was seeing in his face the confession of what
those months had cost him — the only speech she heard was as if she
were saying to him; Tins is the reward for all my days — and as if he
were answering: For all of mine.

She knew that she had finished speaking to the strangers when
she saw that the lower director had stepped forward and was saying
something to them, glancing at a list in his hand. Then, drawn by a
sense ol irresistible certainty, she found herself descending the stairs,
slipping away from the crowd, not toward the platforms and the exit,
but into the darkness of the abandoned tunnels. You will follow me,
she thought — and felt as if the thought were not m words, but in the
tension of her muscles, the tension of her will to accomplish a thing
she knew to be outside her power, vet she knew with certainty that
it would be accomplished and by her wish . . . no, she thought, not
by her wish, but by its total rightness. You will follow me —it was
neither plea nor prayer nor demand, hut the quiet statement ol a
fact, it contained the whole of her power of knowledge and the
whole of the knowledge she had earned through the years. You will
follow me, if we are what we are, you and 1, if we live, if the world
exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can’t let it slip
by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and
unreached. You will follow me — she felt an exultant assurance, which
was neither hope nor faith, but an act of worship for the logic of
existence.

She was hurrying down the remnants of abandoned rails, down
the long, dark corridors twisting through granite. She lost the sound
of the director’s voice behind her. Then she felt the beat of her
arteries and heard, in answering rhythm, the beat of the city above
her head, but she felt as if she heard th4 motion of her blood as a
sound filling the silence, and the motion of the city as the beat inside
her body — and, far behind her, she heatd the sound of steps. She
did not glance back. She went faster. {

She went past the locked iron door where the remnant of his
motor was still hidden, she did not stop, |>ut a faint shudder was her
answer to the sudden glimpse of the unity and logic in the events of

874

the last two years. A string of blue lights went on into the darkness,
over patches of glistening granite, over broken sandbags spilling
drifts on the rails, over rusty piles of scrap metal. When she heard
the steps coming closer, she stopped and turned to look back.

She saw a sweep of blue light flash briefly on the shining strands
of Galt's hair, she caught the pale outline of his face and the dark
hollows of his eyes. The face disappeared, but the sound of his steps
served as the link lo the next blue light that swept across the line
of his eyes, the eyes that remained held level, directed ahead — and
she felt certain that she had stayed in his sight from the moment he
had seen her at the tower.

She heard the beat of the city above them — these tunnels, she had
once thought, were the roots of the city and of all the motion reach-
ing to the sky— but they, she thought, John Galt and she, were the
living power within these roots, they were the start and aim and
meaning— he, too, she thought, heard the beat of the city as the beat
of his body.

She threw her cape back, she stood defiantly straight, as he had
seen her stand on the steps of the tower— as he had seen her for
the first lime, ten years ago, here, under the ground — she was hearing
the words of his confession, not as words, but by means of that
heating which made it so difficult to breathe: You looked like a
symbol of luxury and you belonged in the place that was its
source . . . you seemed to bring the enjoyment of life back lo its
rightful owners , . . you had a look of energy and of its reward,
together . . . and 1 was the first man who had ever stated in what
manner these two were inseparable. . . .

The next span of moments was like flashes of light in stretches of
blinded unconsciousness — the moment when she saw his face, as he
stopped beside her. when she saw the unaslomshed calm, the leashed
intensity, the laughter of understanding in the dark green eyes — the
moment when she knew what he saw in hei face, by the tight, drawn
harshness of his lips — the moment when she felt his mouth on hers,
when she felt the shape of his mouth both as an absolute shape and
as a liquid filling her body — then the motion of his lips down the
line of her throat, a drinking motion that left a trail of bruises —
then the sparkle of her diamond clip against the trembling copper
ot his hair.

Then she was conscious of nothing but the sensations of her body,
because her body acquired the sudden power lo let her know her
most complex values by direct perception. Just as her eyes had the
power to translate wave lengths of energy into sight, just as her ears
had the power to translate vibrations into sound, so her body now
had the power to translate the energy that had moved all the choices
of her life, into immediate sensory perception. It was not the pressure
of a hand that made her tremble, but the instantaneous sum of its
meaning, the knowledge that it was his hand, that it moved as if her
flesh were his possession, that its movement was his signature of
acceptance under the whole of that achievement which was herself—
it was only a sensation of physical pleasure, but it, contained her,
worship of him, of everything that was his person and his life — from

875

the night of the mass meeting in a factory in Wisconsin, to the Atlan-
tis of a valley hidden in the Rocky Mountains, to the triumphant
mockery of the green eyes of the superlative intelligence above a
worker’s figure at the foot of the tower — it contained her pride in
herself and that it should be she whom he had chosen as his mirror,
that it should be her body which was now giving him the sum of his
existence, as his body was giving her the sum of hers. These were
the things it contained — but what she knew was only the sensation
of the movement of his hand on her breasts.

He tore off her cape and she felt the slenderness of her own body
by means of the circle of his arms, as if his person were only a tool
for her triumphant awareness of herself, but that self were only a
tool for her awareness of him. It was as if she were reaching the
limit of her capacity to feel, yet what she felt was like a cry of
impatient demand, which she was now incapable of naming, except
that it had the same quality of ambition as the course of her life,
the same inexhaustible quality of radiant greed.

He pulled her head back lor a moment, to look straight into her
eyes, to let her see his, to let her know the full meaning of their
actions, as if throwing I he spotlight of consciousness upon them for
the meeting of their eyes in a moment of intimacy greater than the
one to come.

Then she felt the mesh of builap striking the skin of her shoulders,
she found herself lying on the broken sandbags, she saw the long,
tight gleam of her stockings, she felt his mouth piessed to her ankle,
then rising in a tortured motion up the line of her leg, as if he wished
to own its shape by means of his lips, then she felt her teeth sinking
into the flesh of his arm. she felt the sweep of his elbow knocking
her head aside and his mouth seizing her lips with a pressure more
viciously painful than hers — then she felt, when it hit her throat, that
which she knew only as an upward streak of motion that released
and united her body into a single shock of pleasure— then she knew
nothing but the motion of his body and the driving greed I hat went
reaching on and on, as if she were not a person any longer, only a
sensation of endless reaching for the impossible —then she knew that
it was possible, and she gasped and lay still, knowing that nothing
more could be desired, ever.

He lay beside her, on his back, looking up at the darkness of the
granite vault above them, she saw him stretched on the jagged slant
of sandbags as if his body were fluid in relaxation, she saw the black
wedge of her cape flung across the rails at their feet, there were
beads of moisture twinkling on the vault, shifting slowly, running
into invisible cracks, like the lights of ;t distant traffic. When he
spoke, his voice sounded as if he were qujetly continuing a sentence
in answer to the questions in her mind, a«j if he had nothing to hide
from her any longer and what he owed h$r now was only the act of
undressing his soul, as simply as he *vouk| have undressed his body.

. . this is how I’ve watched you for; ten years . . , from here,
from under the ground under your feet . . . knowing every move
you made in your office at the top of the building, but never seeing
you, never enough ... ten years of nights, spent waiting to catch a

876

glimpse of you, here, tin the platforms, when you boarded a train , - .
Whenever the order came down to couple your car, I’d know of it
and wait and see you come down the ramp, and wish you didn’t
walk so fast ... it was so much like you. that walk. I’d know it
anywhere . . . your walk and those legs of yours ... it was always
your legs that I’d sec first, hurrying down the ramp, going past me
as I looked up at you from a dark side track below. ... I think 1
could have molded a sculpture of your legs, 1 knew them, not with
my eyes, but with the palms of my hands when I watched you go
by . . . when I turned back to my work . . . when 1 went home just
before sunrise for the three hours of sleep which 1 didn’t get . . .”

’i love you,’* she said, her voice quiet and almost toneless except
for a fragile sound of youth.

He closed his eyes, as if letting the sound travel through the years
behind them. “Ten years, Dagny . . . except that once there were a
lew weeks when 1 had you before me, in plain sight, within reach,
not hurrying away, but held still, as on a lighted stage, a private
stage for me to watch , . . and 1 watched you tor hours through
many evenings ... in the lighted window of an office that was called
the John Galt Line. . . . And one night — ”

Her breath was a faint gasp. “Was it you, that night?”

“Did you see me 9 ”

“1 saw your shadow ... on the pavement . . . pacing back and
forth ... it looked like a struggle ... it looked like — ” She stopped:
she did not want to say “torture,”

“It was,” he said quietly. ‘That night, I wanted to walk in, to face
you, to speak, to . . . That was the night I came closest to breaking
my oath, when I saw you slumped across your desk, when 1 saw you
broken by the burden you were carrying-—”

“John, that night, it was you that 1 was thinking ot . . only I

didn’t know it . . .”

“But, you see, / knew it."

. . it was you, all my life, through everything 1 did and everything
l wanted . .

“I know it.”

“John, the hardest was not when l left you in the valley ... it
was — ”

“Your radio speech, the day you returned?”

“Yes! Were you listening?”

“Of course. I’m glad you did it. It was a magnificent thing to do.
And l — l knew it, anyway.”

“You knew . . . about Hank Rearden?”

“Before l saw you in the valley,”

“Was it . . . when you learned about him, had you expected it?”

“No.”

“Was it . , . ?” She stopped.

“Hard? Yes. But only for the first few days. That next night . - .
Do you want me to tell you what I did the night after I learned it?”

“Yes.”

“I had never seen Hank Rearden, only pictures of him in the
newspapers. I knew that he was in New York, that night, at some

877

conference of hig industrialists. I wanted to have just one look at
him. I went to wait at the entrance of the hotel where that confer-
ence was held. There were bright lights under the marquee of the
entrance* but it was dark beyond, on the pavement, so I could see
without being seen, there were a few loafers and vagrants hanging
around, there was a drizzle of rain and we clung to the walls of the
building. One could tell the members of the conference when they
began filing out, by their clothes and their manner— ostentatiously
prosperous clothes and a manner of ovei bearing timidity, as if they
were guiltily trying to pretend that they were what they appeared to
be for that moment. There were chauffeurs driving up their cars,
there were a few reporters delaying them for questions and hangers-
on trying to catch a word from them. They were worn men, those
industrialists, aging, flabby, frantic with the effort to disguise uncer-
tainty. And then I saw him. He wore an expensive trenchcoat and
a hat slanting across his eyes. He walked swiftly, with the kind of
assurance that has to be earned, as he’d earned it Some of his fellow
industrialists pounced on him with questions, and those tycoons were
acting like hangers-on around him. 1 caught a glimpse of him as he
stood with his hand on the door of his car. his head lifted, I saw the
brief flare of a smile under the slanting brim, a confident smile,
impatient and a little amused. And then, lor one instant, l did what
1 had never done before, what most men wreck their lives on doing- -
I saw that moment out of context, I saw the world as he made it
look, as if it matched him, as if he were its symbol — I saw a world
of achievement, of unenslaved energy, of unobstructed drive through
purposeful ) ears to the enjoyment of one’s reward -I saw, as I stood
in the rain in a crowd of vagrants, what my years would have brought
me, if that world had existed, and I felt a desperate longing — he was
the image of everything I should have been . . . and he had every-
thing that should have been mine. . . . But it was only a moment.
Then I saw the scene in full context again and in all of its actual
meaning— I saw what price he was paying for his brilliant ability,
what torture he was enduring in silent bewilderment, struggling to
understand what / had understood- -I saw that the world he sug-
gested. did not exist and was yet to be made, f saw him again for
what he was, the symbol of my battle, the unrewarded hero whom
/ was to avenge and to release — and then . . . then I accepted what
l had learned about you and him. I saw that it changed nothing, that
1 should have expected it — that it was right. 1 ’

He heard the faint sound of her moan and he chuckled softly.

“Dagny, it’s not that I don’t suffer, it’s that I know the unimpor-
tance of suffering, I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside,
not to be accepted as part of one’s soul .'and as a permanent scar
across one's view of existence. Don’t feeljsorry for me. It was gone
right then.”

She turned her head to look at him |n silence, and he smiled,
lifting himself on an elbow to look do\yn at her face as she lay
helplessly still. She whispered, “You’ve been a track laborer, here —
here! — for twelve years , ,

“Yes.”

878

u Ever since—”

“Ever since I quit the Twentieth Century.”

“The night when you saw rne tor the first time . . . you were
working here, then?”

“Yes. And the morning when you offered to work for me as my
cook, I was only your track laborer on leave of absence. Do you see
why 1 laughed as l did?”

She was looking up at his face; hers was a smile of pain, his — of
pure gaiety. “John . .

“Say it But say it all.”

“You were here . . all those years , .

“Yes.”

“. . . all those years . . . while the railroad was perishing . . . while
1 was searching for men of intelligence . . while I was struggling to
hold on to any scrap ol it I could find ...”

. . while you were combing the country tor the inventor of my
motor, while you were feeding James Taggart and Wesley Mouch,
while you were naming your best achievement after the enemy whom
you wanted to destroy.”

She closed her eyes

“I was here all those years,” he said, “within your reach, inside
your own realm, watching your struggle, your loneliness, your long-
ing, watching you in a battle you thought you were fighting for me,
a battle in which you were supporting my enemies and taking an
endless defeat —I was here, hidden by nothing but an error of vour
sight, as Atlantis is hidden from men by nothing but an optical illu-
sion— I was here, waiting for the day when you would see. when you
would know that by the code of the world you were supporting, it's
to the darkest bottom of the underground that all the things you
valued would have to be consigned and that it’s there that you would
have to look. I was here. 1 was waiting for you. I love you, Dagny.

1 love you more than my life. I who have taught men how life is to
be loved. I've taught them also never to expect the unpaid for — and
what I did tonight, 1 did it with full knowledge that I would pay tor
it and that mv life might have to be the price.”

“No!”

He smiled, nodding. “Oh yes. You know that you’ve broken me
lor once, that 1 broke the decision 1 had set for myself — but 1 did it
consciously, knowing what it meant, 1 did it, not in blind surrender
to the moment, but with full sight of the consequences and full will-
ingness to bear them. 1 could not let this kind of moment pass us
by, it was ours, my love, we had earned it. But you’re not ready to
quit and join me — you don’t have to tell me, I know — and since l
chose to take what I wanted before it was fully mine. I’ll have to
pay for it, I have no way of knowing how or when, 1 know only that
if l give in to an enemy. I’ll take the consequences.” He smiled in
answer to the look on her face. “No, Dagny, you’re not my enemy
in mind — and that is what brought me to this — but you are in fact,
in the course you’re pursuing, though you don’t see it yet, but I do.
My actual enemies are of no danger to me. You are. You’re the only

879

one who can lead them to find me. They would never have the
capacity to know what I am, but with your help — they will.”

“Nor

“No, not by your intention. And you’re free to change your course,
but so long as you follow it, you’re not free to escape its logic. Don’t
frown, the choice was mine and it’s a danger 1 chose to accept. 1 am
a trader, Dagny, in all things. I wanted you, 1 had no power to
change your decision, I had only the power to consider the price
and decide whether I could afford it. 1 could. My life is mine to spend
or to invest — and you, you're” — as if his gesture were continuing his
sentence, he raised her across his arm and kissed her mouth, while
her body hung limply in surrender, her hair streaming down, her
head falling back, held only by the pressure of his lips — “you’re the
one reward 1 had to have and chose to buy. I wanted you, and if
my life is the price. I’ll give it. My life — but not my mind.”

There was a sudden glint of hardness in his eyes, as he sat up and
smiled and asked, “Would you want me to join you and go to work -
Would you like me to repair that interlocking signal system of yours
within an hour?”

“No!” The cry was immediate — in answer to the flash of a sudden
image, the image of the men in the private dining room of the
Wayne-Falkland.

He laughed. “Why not?”

“1 don't want to see you working as their serf’”

“And yourself?”

“1 think that they're crumbling and that I’ll win. I can stand it just
a little longer.”

“True, it’s just a little longer— not till you win. but till you learn "

“I can’t let it go!” It was a cry of despair.

“Not yet,” he said quietly.

He got up, and she rose obediently, unable to speak.

“I will remain here, on my job,” he said. “But don't try to see
me. You’ll have to endure what I’ve endured and wanted to spare
you — you’ll have to go on, knowing where I am, wanting me as I’ll
want you, but never permitting yourself to approach me. Don’t seek
me here. Don’t come to my home. Don’t ever let them see us to-
gether. And w'hen you reach the end, when you’re ready to quit,
don't tell them, just chalk a dollar sign on the pedestal of Nat Tag-
gart’s statue — where it belongs — then go home and wait. I’ll come
for you in twenty-four hours.”

She inclined her head in silent promise.

But when he turned to go, a sudden shudder ran through her
body, like a first jolt of awakening or a Jast convulsion of life, and
it ended in an involuntary cry: “Where i$re you going?”

“To be a lamppost and stand holding^ lantern till dawn — which
is the only work your world relegates mfi to and the only work it’s
going to get” ■

She seized his arm, to hold him, to follow, to follow him blindly,
abandoning everything but the sight of his face. “John!”

He gripped her wrist, twisted her hand and threw it off. “No,”
he said.

880

Then he took her hand and raised it to his lips and the pressure
of his mouth was more passionate a statement than any he had
chosen to confess. Then he walked away, down the vanishing line of
rail, and it seemed to her that both the rail and the figure were
abandoning her at the same time.

When she staggered out into the concourse of the Terminal, the
first blast of rolling wheels went shuddering through the walls of the
building, like the sudden beat of a heart that had stopped. The tem-
ple of Nathaniel Taggart was silent and empty, its changeless light
beating down on a deserted stretch of marble. Some shabby figures
shuffled across it, as if lost in its shining expanse. On the steps of
the pedestal, under the statue of the austere, exultant figure, a ragged
bum sat slumped in passive resignation, like a wing-plucked bird with
no place to go, resting on any chance cornice.

She fell down on the steps of the pedestal, like another derelict,
her dust-smeared cape wrapped tightly about her, she sat still, her
head oil her arm, past crying or feeling or moving.

It seemed to her only that she kept seeing a figure with a raised
arm holding a light, and it looked at times like the Statue of Liberty
and then it looked like a man with sun-streaked hair, holding a
lantern against a midnight sky, a red lantern that stopped the move-
ment of the world.

“Don’t take it to heart, lady, whatever it is,” said the bum. in a
tone of exhausted compassion. “Nothing’s to be done about it,
anyway. . . . What’s the use, lady'* Who is John Galt?'*

Chapter V! THE CONCERTO OF DELIVERANCE

On October 20. the steel workers' union ot Rearden Steel demanded
a raise in wages.

Hank Rearden learned it from the newspapers: no demand had
been presented to him and it had not been considered necessary to
inlorni him. The demand was made to the Unification Board; it was
not explained why no other steel company was presented with a
similar claim. He was unable to tell whether the demanders did or
did not represent his workers, the Board’s rules on union elections
having made it a matter impossible to define. He learned only that
the group consisted of those newcomers whom the Board had slipped
into his mills in the past few months.

On October 23, the Unification Board rejected the union's peti-
tion. ietusing to giant the raise. It any hearings had been held on the
matter, Rearden had not known about it. He had not been consulted,
informed 01 notified. He had waited, volunteering no questions.

On October 25, the newspapers of the country, controlled by the
same men who controlled the Board, began a campaign of commiser-
ation with the workers of Rearden Steel. They printed stories about
l he refusal of the wage raise, omitting any mention of who had re-
fused it or who held the exclusive legal power to refuse, as if count-
ing on the public to forget legal technicalities under a barrage of
stories implying that an employer was the natural cause of all miser-

881

ies suffered by employees. They printed a story describing the hard-
ships of the workers of Rearden Steel under the present rise in the
cost of their living — next to a story describing Hank Rearden’s
profits, of five years ago. They printed a story on the plight of a
Rearden worker’s wife trudging from store to store in a hopeless
quest for food — next to a story about a champagne bottle broken
over somebody’s head at a drunken party given by an unnamed steel
tycoon at a fashionable hotel: the steel tycoon had been Orren Boyle,
but the story mentioned no names, inequalities still exist among
us,” the newspapers were saying, “and cheat us of the benefits of
our enlightened age.” “Privations have worn the nerves and temper
of the people. The situation is reaching the danger point. We fear
an outbreak of violence/’ “We fear an outbreak of violence,” the
newspapers kept repeating.

On October 28, a group of the new workeis at Rearden Steel
attacked a foreman and knocked the tuyeres off a blast furnace. Two
days later, a similar group broke the ground-floor windows of the
administration building A new worker smashed the gears of a crane,
upsetting a ladle of molten metal within a yard of five bystanders.
“Guess I went nuts, worrying about my hungry kids/' he said, when
arrested. “This is no time to theorize about who’s right or wrong,”
the newspapers commented. “Our sole concern is the fact that an
inflammatory situation is endangering the steel output of the
country.”

Rearden watched, asking no questions. He waited, as if some final
knowledge were in the process of unraveling before him, a process
not to be hastened or stopped. No — he thought through the early
dusk of autumn evenings, looking out the window of his office — no.
he was not indifferent to his mills; but the feeling which had once
been passion for a living entity was now like the wistful tenderness
one feels for the memory of the loved and dead. The special quality
of what one feels for the dead, he thought, is that no action is possi
ble any longer.

On the morning of October 31, he received a notice informing
him that all of his property, including his bank accounts and safety
deposit boxes, had been attached to satisfy a delinquent judgment
obtained against him in a trial involving a deficiency in his personal
income tax of three years ago. It was a formal notice, complying
with every requirement of the law — except that no such deficiency
had ever existed and no such trial had ever taken place.

“No,” he said to his indignation-choked attorney, “don’t question
them, don’t answer, don't object.” “But this is fantastic!” “Any more
fantastic than the rest?” “Hank, do you want me to do nothing? To
take it lying down?” “No, standing up. Afid I mean, standing. Don’t
move. Don’t act.” “But they’ve left you helpless.” “Have they?” he
asked softly, smiling. *

He had a few hundred dollars in cash,* left in his wallet, nothing
else. But the odd, glowing warmth in hfc mind, like the feel of a
distant handshake, was the thought that in a secret safe of his
bedroom there lay a bar of solid gold, given to him by a gold-
haired pirate.

882

Next day, on November 1, he received a telephone call from Wash-
ington, from a bureaucrat whose voice seemed to come sliding down
the wire on its knees in protestations of apology. “A mistake, Mr.
Rearden! It was nothing but an unfortunate mistake! That attach-
ment was not intended for you. You know how it is nowadays, with
the inefficiency of all office help and with the amount of red tape
we’re tangled in, some bungling fool mixed the records and pro-
cessed the attachment order against you — when it wasn’t your case
at all, it was, in fact, the case of a soap manufacturer! Please accept
our apologies, Mr. Rearden, our deepest personal apologies at the
top level.” The voice slid to a slight, expectant pause. “Mr.
Rearden . . . ?” “I’m listening.” “1 can’t tell you how sorry we are
to have caused you any embarrassment or inconvenience. And with
all those damn formalities that we have to go through— you know
how it is, red tape! — it will take a few days, perhaps a week, to
deprocess that order and to lift the attachment . . . Mr. Rearden?”
“I heard you.” “We’re desperately sorry and ready to make any
amends within our power. You will, of course, be entitled to claim
damages for any inconvenience this might cause you, and we are
prepared to pay. We won’t contest it. You will, of course, file such
a claim and — ” “I have not said that.” “Ub? No, you haven't . . . that
is . . . well, what have you said, Mr. Rearden?” “1 have said nothing.”

Late on the next afternoon, another voice came pleading from
Washington. This one did not seem to slide, but to bounce on the
telephone wire with the gay virtuosity of a tighl-rope walker. It intro-
duced itself as Tinky Holloway and pleaded that Rearden attend a
conference, “an informal little conference, just a lew of us, the top-
level few.” to be held in New York, at the Wayne-Falkland Hotel,
day after next.

“There have been so many misunderstandings in the past few
weeks!” said Tinky Holloway. “Such unfortunate misunderstandings^-
and so unnecessary! We could straighten everything out in a jiffy,
Mr. Rearden, if we had a chance to have a little talk with you. We're
extremely anxious to see you.”

“You can issue a subpoena for me any time you wish.”

“Oh. no! no! no!” The voice sounded frightened. “No, Mr. Rear-
den — why think of such things? You don’t understand us, we’re anx-
ious to meet you on a friendly basis, we’re seeking nothing but your
voluntary co-operation.” Holloway paused tensely, wondering
whether he had heard the faint sound of a distant chuckle; he waited,
but heard nothing else. “Mr. Rearden?”

“Yes?”

“Surely, Mr. Rearden, at a time like this, a conference with us
could be to your great advantage.”

“A conference — about what?”

“You’ve encountered so many difficulties — and we're anxious to
help you in any way we can.”

“I have not asked for help.”

“These are precarious times, Mr. Rearden, the public mood is so
uncertain and inflammatory, so . . . dangerous . . . and we want to
be able to protect you.”

883

“I have not asked for protection.''

“But surely you realize that we’re in a position to be of value to
you, and if there's anything you want from us, any ...”

“There isn't,”

“But you must have problems you’d like to discuss with us.”

“I haven't.”

“Then . . . well, then” — giving up the attempt at the play of grant-
ing a favor, Holloway switched to an open plea— “then won t you
just give us a hearing?”

“If you have anything to say to me.”

“We have, Mr. Rearden. we certainly have! That's all weTe asking
for — a hearing. Just give us a chance. Just come to this conference.
You wouldn’t be committing yourself to anything — " He said it invol-
untarily. and stopped, hearing a bright, mocking stab of life in Rear-
den’s voice, an unpromising sound, as Rearden answered:

“1 know it.”

“Well, 1 mean . . . that is . well, then, will you come?”

“All right,” said Rearden. “I’ll come.”

He did not listen to Holloway’s assurances of gratitude, he noted
only that Holloway kept repeating. “At seven p.m, November fourth,
Mr. Rearden . . . November fourth . . .” as if the date had some
special significance.

Rearden dropped the receiver and lay back in his chair, looking
at the glow of furnace flames on the ceiling ol his office He knew
that the conference was a trap: he knew also that he was walking
into it with nothing for any trappers to gam.

Tinky Holloway dropped the receiver, in his Washington office,
and sat up tensely, frowning. Claude Slagenhop, president of Friends
of Global Progress, who had sat in an armchair, nervously chewing
a matchstick, glanced up at him and asked, “Not so good?”

Holloway shook his head. “He’ll come, but . . no, not so good ”
He added, “1 don’t think he’ll take it.”

“That’s what my punk told me.”

“I know.”

“The punk said we’d better not try it.”

“God damn your punk! We’ve got to! Well have to risk it!”

The punk was Philip Rearden who, weeks ago, had reported to
Claude Slagenhop: “No, he won’t let me in, he won’t give me a job.
I've tried, as you wanted me to. I've tried niy best, but it’s no use,
he won’t let me set foot inside his mills And as to his frame of
mind — listen, it’s bad. It’s worse than anything 1 expected I know
him and I can tell you that you won’t have a chance. He’s pretty
much at the end of his rope. One more squeeze will snap it. You
said the big boys wanted to know. Tell the$n not to do it. Tell them
he . . . Claude, God help us, if they do itJthey’U lose him!” “Well,
you’re not of much help,” Slagenhop hadj&aid dryly, turning away.
Philip had seized his sleeve and asked, his- voice shrinking suddenly
into open anxiety, “Say, Claude . . . according to . . . to Directive
10-289 ... if he goes, there's . . . there’s to be no heirs?” “That’S
right.” “They'd seize the mills and , . and everything?” “That’s the
law.” “But . . . Claude, they wouldn’t do fhat to me, would they?”

884

“They don’t want him to go. You know that Hold him, if you can.”
“But 1 can’ll You know I can’t! Because of my political ideas and . . .
and everything I’ve done for you, you know what he thinks of me!

I have no hold on him at all!” “Well, that’s your tough luck.”
“Gaude!” Philip had cried in panic. “Claude, they won’t leave me
out in the cold, will they? 1 belong, don’t 1? They’ve always said I
belonged, they’ve always said they needed me . . . they said they
needed men like me, not like him, men with my . . . my sort of
spirit, remember? And after all I’ve done for them, after all my faith
and service and loyalty to the cause — ” “You damn fool,” Slagenhop
had snapped, “of what use are you to us without himV ’

On the morning of November 4, Hank Rearden was awakened by
the ringing of the telephone. He opened his eyes to the sight of a
dear, pale sky, the sky of early dawn, in the windows of his bedroom,
a sky the delicate color of aquamarine, with the first rays of an
invisible sun giving a shade of porcelain pink to Philadelphia’s an-
cient roof tops. For a moment, while his consciousness had a purity
to equal the sky’s, while he was aware ot nothing but himself and
had not yet reharncssed his soul to the burden of alien memories,
he lay still, held by the sight and by the enchantment of a world to
match it, a world where the style of existence would be a continu-
ous morning.

The telephone threw him back into exile - it was screaming at
spaced intervals, like a nagging, chronic cry for help, the kind of cry
that did not belong in his world He lifted the receiver, frowning.
“Hello?”

“Good morning, Henry.” said a quavering voice; it was his mother.

“Mother — at this hour?” he asked dryly.

“Oh, you’re always up at dawn, and I wanted to catch you before
you went to the office.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“I’ve got to see you. Henry, I've got to speak to you. Today.
Sometime today. It’s important.”

“Has anything happened?”

“No . . . yes . . . that is . . . I’ve got to have a talk with you in
person. Will you come?”

“Fm sorry, I can’t. I have an appointment in New York tonight.
If you want me to come tomorrow — ’’

“No! No, not tomorrow. It's got to be today. It’s got to.” There
was a dim tone of panic in her voice, but it was the stale panic of
chronic helplessness, not the sound ot an emergency — except for an
odd echo of fear in her mechanical insistence.

“What is it. Mother?”

“1 can’t talk about it over the telephone. I’ve got to see you.”

“Then if you wish to come to the office — ”

“No! Not at the office! I’ve got to see you alone, where we can
talk. Can’t you come here today, as a favor? It’s your mother who’s
asking you a favor. You’ve never come to see us at all. And maybe
you’re not the one to blame for it, either. But can’t you do it for
me this once, if I beg you to?”

“AH right. Mother. I’ll be there at four o’clock this afternoon.”

885

“That will foe fine, Henry, Thank you, Henry. That will foe fine."

It seemed to him that there was a touch of tension in the air of
the mills, that day. It was a touch too slight to define — hut the mills,
to him, were like the face of a loved wife where he could catch
shades of feeling almost ahead of expression. He noticed small clus-
ters of the new workers, just three or four of them huddling together
in conversation — once or twice too often He noticed their manner,
a manner suggesting a poolroom corner, not a factory. He noticed
a few glances thrown at him as he went by, glances a shade too
pointed and lingering. He dismissed it: it was not quite enough to
wonder about — and he had no time to wonder

When he drove up to his former home, that afternoon, he stopped
his air abruptly at the foot of the hill. He had not seen the house
since that May 15, six months ago. when he had walked out of it—
and the sight brought back to him the sum of all he had felt in ten
years of daily home-coming: the strain, the bewilderment, the gray
weight of unconfessed unhappiness, the stern endurance that forbade
him to confess it. the desperate innocence of the effort to understand
his family . . the effort to be just

He walked slowly up the path toward the door. He felt no emo-
tion, only the sense of a great, solemn clarity. He knew that this
house was a monument of guilt— of his guilt toward himself

He had expected to see his mother and Philip; he had not expected
the third person who rose, as they did, at his entrance into the living
room: it was Lillian

He stopped on the threshold. They stood looking at his face and
at the open door behind him. Their faces had a look of fear and
cunning, the look of that blackmail-through virtue which he had
learned to understand, as if they hoped to get away wilh it by means
of nothing but his pity, to hold him trapped, when a single step back
could take him out ot their reach.

They had counted on his pity and dreaded his anger; they had not
dared consider the third alternative: his indifference

“What is she doing here?" he asked, turning to his mother, his
voice dispassionately flat.

“Lillian’s been living here ever since your divorce," she answered
defensively. “I couldn’t let her starve on the city pavements, could
i?"

The look m his mother's eyes was halt-plea, as if she were begging
him not to slap her face, half-triumph, as if she had slapped his. He
knew her motive: it was not compassion, there had never been much
love between Lillian and her, it was their common revenge against
him, it was the secret satisfaction of spending his money on the ex-
wife he had refused to support

Lillian’s head was poised to bow in greeting, with the tentative
hint of a smile on her lips, half-timid, half^brash. He did not pretend
to ignore her; he looked at her, as if he ^were seeing her fully, yet
as if no presence were being registered in his mind. He said nothing,
closed the door and stepped into the room.

His mother gave a small sigh of uneasy relief and dropped hastily

m .

into the nearest chair, watching hint, nervously uncertain of whether
he would follow her example.

"What was it you wanted?” he asked, sitting down.

His mother sat erect and oddly hunched, her shoulders raised, her
head half-lowered. "Mercy. Henry.” she whispered.

"What do you mean?”

"Don’t you understand me?”

"No.”

"Well” — she spread her hands in an untidily fluttering gesture of
helplessness — "Well . . .” Her eyes darted about, struggling to escape
his attentive glance. "Well, there are so many things to say and . ,
and I don’t know how to say them, but . . . well, there’s one practical
matter, but it’s not important hv itself it's not why 1 called
you here .

"What is it?”

"The practical matter? Our allowance checks™ -Philip’s and mine.
It’s the first of the month, but on account of that attachment order,
the checks couldn’t come through. You know that, don't you?”

"I know it.”

"Well, what are we going to do?”

"1 don’t know.”

"I mean, what are you going to do about it?”

"Nothing ”

Hjs mother sat staring at him, as it counting the seconds of silence.

Nothing, Henry?"

"1 have no power to do anything ”

They were watching his face with a kind of searching intensity: he
(elt certain that hts mothei had told him the truth, that immediate
financial worry was not their purpose, that it was only the symbol
of a much wider issue.

"But, Henry, we’re caught short.”

"So was I.”

"But can't you send us some cash or something*"

"They gave me no warning, no tune to get any cash.”

‘Then . . . Look, Henry, the thing was so unexpected, it scared
people. 1 guess -ihe grocery store refuses to give us credit, unless
vou ask tor it. I think they want vou to sign a credit card or some-
thing. So will you speak to them and arrange it?”

"1 will not."

"You won’t?" She choked on a small gasp. "Why?”

"1 will not assume obligations that 1 can t fulfill.”

"What do you mean?”

"I will not assume debts 1 have no way of repaying.”

‘What do you mean, no way? JTiat attachment is only some sort
of technicality, it's only temporary, everybody knows that!”

"Do they? I don’t.”

"But, Henry — a grocery bill! You’re not sure you'll be able to pay
a grocery bill, you, with all the millions you own?”

T’m not going to defraud the grocer by pretending that I own
those millions.’*

"What are you talking about? Who owns them?”

887

“Nobody.”

“What do you mean?”

. “Mother* I think you understand me fully. I think you understood
it before I did. There isn’t any ownership left in existence or any
property. It's what you approved of and believed in for years. You
wanted me tied. I’m tied. Now it’s too late to play any games
about it.”

“Are you going to let some political ideas of yours — ” She saw
the look on his face and stopped abruptly.

Lillian sat looking down at the floor, as if afraid to glance up at
this moment. Philip sat cracking his knuckles.

His mother dragged her eyes into focus again and whispered,
“Don’t abandon us, Henry.” Some faint stab of life in her voice told
him that the lid of her real purpose was cracking open. “These are
terrible times, and we’re scared. That's the truth of it, Henry, we’re
scared, because you’re turning away from us. Oh, I don't mean just
that grocery bill, but that’s a sign — a year ago you wouldn't have let
that happen to us. Now . . . now you don't care.” She made an
expectant pause. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Well . . . well, 1 guess the blame is ours. That’s what 1 wanted
to tell you— that we know we’re to blame. We haven’t treated you
right, all these years We've been unfair to you. we've made you
suffer, we’ve used you and given you no thanks in return. We’re
guilty, Henry, we’ve sinned against you, and wc confess it. What
more can we say to you now? Will you find it in your heait to
forgive us?”

“What is it you want me to do?” he asked, in the dear, flat tone
of a business conference.

“I don’t know! Who am I to know? But that’s not what I’m talking
of right now. Not of doing , only of feeling. It’s your feeling that I’m
begging you for, Henry — just your feeling — even if we don’t deserve
it. You’re generous and strong. Will you cancel the past, Henry?
Will you forgive us f> ”

The look of terror in her eyes was real. A year ago. he would
have told himself that this was her way of making amends; he would
have choked his revulsion against her words, words which conveyed
nothing to him but the fog of the meaningless; he would have vio-
lated his mind to give them meaning, even if he did not understand;
he would have ascribed to her the virtue of sincerity in her own
terms, even if they were not his. But he was through with granting
respect to any terms other than his own.

“Will you forgive us?”

“Mother, it would be best not to speal^ of that. Don’t press me
to tell you why. I think you know it a,4 well as 1 do. If there’s
anything you want done, tell me what i^ is. There’s nothing else
to discuss.” t

“But I don't understand you! f don’t! That’s what l called you
here for — to ask your forgiveness! Are you going to refuse to an-
swer me?”

“Very well. What would it mean, my forgiveness?”

888 -

“Uh?”

“I said, what would it mean?”

She spread her hands out in an astonished gesture to indicate the
self-evident. “Why, it ... it would make us feel better.”

“Will it change the past?”

“It would make us feel better to know that you’ve forgiven it.”

“Do you wish me to pretend that the past has not existed?”

“Oh God, Henry, can’t you see? All we want is only to know that
you . . . that you feel some concern for us.”

“I don’t feel it. Do you wish me to fake it'*”

“But that’s what I’m begging you for — to jeel it!”

“On what ground?”

“Ground?”

“In exchange for what?”

“Henry, Henry, it’s not business we’re talking about, not steel
tonnages and bank balances, it's feelings— and you talk like a
trader!”

“I am one.”

What he saw in her eyes was terror — not the helpless terror of
struggling and failing to understand, but the terror of being pushed
toward the edge where to avoid understanding would no longer be
possible.

“Look. Henry,” said Philip hastily. “Mother can’t understand
those things. We don’t know how to approach you We can’t speak
your language.”

“f don’t speak youis ”

“What she’s trying to say is that we’re sorry We’re terribly sorry
that we've hurt you. You think we're not paying tor it. but we are.
We're suffering remorse.”

The pain m Philip's face was real. A year ago, Reardon would
have felt pity. Now. he knew' that they had held him through nothing
but his reluctance to hurt them, his fear of their pain. He was not
afraid of it any longer.

“We’re soriy, Henry. We know we’ve harmed you. We wish we
could atone for it. But what can wc do? The past is past. We can’t
undo it.”

“Neither can l.”

“You can accept our repentance,” said Lillian, in a voice glassy
with caution. “I have nothing to gain from you now. 1 only want you
to know that whatever I’ve done, Lve done it because l loved you.”

He turned away, without answering.

“Henry!” cried his mother. “What’s happened to you? What's
changed you like that? You don’t seem to be human any more! You
keep pressing us for answers, when we haven’t any answers to give.
You keep beating us with logic — what’s logic at a time like this? —
what’s logic when people are suffering?*’

“We can’t help it!” cried Philip.

“We’re at your mercy,” said Lillian.

They were throwing their pleas at a face that could not be reached.
They did not know — and their panic was the last of their struggle to
escape the knowledge — that his merciless sense of justice, which had

889

been their only hold on him, which had made him take any punish-
ment and give them the benefit of every doubt, was now turned
against them— that the same force that had made him tolerant, was
now the force that made him ruthless — that the justice which would
forgive miles of innocent errors of knowledge, would not forgive a
single step taken in conscious evil.

“Henry, don’t you understand us?" his mother was pleading.

“I do,” he said quietly.

She looked away, avoiding the clarity of his eyes. “Don’t you care
what becomes of us?"

“I don't,"

"Aren't you human?" Her voice grew shrill with anger. "Aren’t
you capable of any love at all? It's your heart I'm trying to reach,
not your mind! Love is not something to argue and reason and bar-
gain about! It s something to give! To feel! Oh God, Henry can't
you teel without thinking?"

"1 never have."

In a moment, her voice came back, low and dioning: "We’re not
as smart as you are. not as strong. If we’ve sinned and blundered,
it’s because we're helpless. We need you, you’re all we've got — and
we’re losing you — and we’re afraid. These are terrible times, and
getting worse, people are scared to death, scared and blind and not
knowing what to do. How are we to cope with it, if you leave us 1 ’
We’re small and weak and we'll be swept like driftfeood m that
terror that’s running loose in the world. Maybe we had our share ol
guilt for it, maybe we helped to bring it about, not knowing any
better, but what’s done is done— and we can't stop it now It you
abandon us, we're lost. If you give up and vanish, like all those men
who —

It was not a sound that stopped her, it was only a movement ol
his eyebrows, the brief, swift movement of a check mark. Then they
saw r him smile; the nature of the smile was the most terrifying ol
answers.

"So that's what you’re afraid of," he said slowly.

"You can’t quit!" his mother screamed in blind panic. "You can't
quit now! You could have, fast year, but not now! Not today! You
can’t turn deserter, because now they take it out on your family!
They’ll leave us penniless, they'll sei/e everything, they’ll leave us
to starve, they'll — "

"Keep still!" cried Lillian, more adept than the others at reading
danger signs in Rearden's face.

His face held the remnant of a smile, add they knew that he was
not seeing them any longer, but it was ndjt in their power to know
why his smile now vseemed to hold pain and|an almost wistful longing,
or why he was looking across the room.* at the niche of the far-
thest window.

He was seeing a finely sculptured face held composed under the
lashing of his insults, he was hearing a v^ice that had said to him-
quietly, here, in this room: "It is against die sin of forgiveness that
I wanted to warn you," You who had known it them he thought . .
but he did not (hush the sentence in his mind, he let it end in the

890

bitter twist of his smile, because he knew what he had been about
to think: You who had known it then — forgive me.

There it was— he thought, looking at his family— the nature of
their pleas for mercy, the logic of those feelings they so righteously
proclaimed as non-logical — there was the simple, brutal essence of
all men who speak of being able to feel without thought and of
placing mercy over justice.

They had known what to fear; they had grasped and named, before
he had, the only way of deliverance left open to him; they had under-
stood the hopelessness of his industrial position, the futility of his
struggle, the impossible burdens descending to crush him; they had
known that in reason, in justice, in sell-preservation, his only course
was to drop it all and run— yet they wanted to hold him, to keep
him in the sacrificial furnace, to make him let them devour the last
of him in the name of mercy, forgiveness and broiher-canmbal love.

"If you still want me to explain it, Mother,*' he said very quietly,
“il you’re still hoping that I won't be cruel enough to name what
vou’re pretending not to know, then here's what's wrong with your
idea of forgiveness: You regret that you've huit me and, as your
atonement for it, you ask that 1 offei myself to total immolation.”

“Logic!” she screamed. "There you go again with your damn logic!
ft’s pity that we need, pity, not logic 1 ”

He rose to his teet.

‘Wait! Don’t go! Henry, don’t abandon us! Don’t sentence us to
perish! Whatever we arc, we're human! We want to live!”

"Why. no--” he started in quiet astonishment and ended in quiet
hoiror, as the thought struck him fully . "I don't think you do. If you
did, you would have known how to value me ”

As if in silent proof and answer, Philip’s lace went slowly into an
expression intended as a smile of amusement, yet holding nothing
but fear and malice. “You won't be able to quit and run away.” said
Philip. “You can’t run away without money.”

It seemed to strike its goal. Rearden stopped short, then chuckled.
" Thanks, Philip.” he said.

”Uh?” Philip gave a nervous jerk of bewilderment.

“So that’s the purpose of the attachment order. That's what your
friends are afraid of. J knew they were getting set to spring some-
thing on me today. 1 didn’t know that the attachment was their idea
ot cutting off escape.” He turned incredulously to look at his mother.
"And that's why you had to see me today / before the conference in
New York.”

‘Mother didn’t know it 1 ” cried Philip, then caught himself and
cried louder. “1 don't know what you’re talking about! I haven’t said
anything! I haven't said it!” His fear now seemed to have some much
less mystic and much more practical quality.

’Don’t worry, you poor little louse, l won't tell them that you've
told me anything. And if you were trying—”

He did not finish; he looked at the three faces before him, and a
sudden smile ended his sentence, a smile of weariness, of pity, of
incredulous revulsion. He was seeing the final contradiction, the gro-
tesque absurdity at the end of the irrationahsls’ game; the men in

891

Washington had hoped to hold him by prompting these three to try
for the role of hostages.

“You think you're so good, don’t you?” It was a sudden cry and
it came from Lillian; she had leaped to her feet to bar his exit; her
face was distorted, as he had seen it once before, on that morning
when she had learned the name of his mistress. “You’re so good!
You’re so proud of yourself! Well, / have something to tell you!”

She looked as if she had not believed until this moment that her
game was lost. The sight of her face struck him like a last shred
completing a circuit, and in sudden clarity he knew what her game
had been and why she had married him.

If to choose a person as the constant center of one’s concern, as
the focus of one’s view of life, was to love — he thought — then it was
true that she loved him; but if, to him, love was a celebration of
one’s self and of existence — then, to the self-haters and life-haters,
the pursuit of destruction was the only form and equivalent of love.
It was for the best of his virtues that Lillian had chosen him, for his
strength, his confidence, his pride — she had chosen him as one
chooses an object of love, as the symbol of man’s living power, but
the destruction of that power had been her goal.

Fie saw them as they had been at their first meeting: he, the man
of violent energy and passionate ambition, the man of achievement,
lighted by the flame of his success and flung into the midst of those
pretentious ashes who called themselves an intellectual elite, the
burned-out remnants of undigested culture, feeding on the afterglow
of the minds of others, offering their denial of the mind as their only
claim to distinction, and a craving to control the world as their only
lust — she, the woman hanger-on of that elite, wearing their shopworn
sneer as her answer to the universe, holding impotence as superiority
and emptiness as virtue — he. unaware of their hatred, innocently
scornful of their posturing fraud — she, seeing him as the danger to
their world, as a threat, as a challenge, as a reproach.

The lust that drives others to enslave an empire, had become, in
her limits, a passion for power over him. She had set out to break
him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroy-
ing it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the
measure of hers, as if— he thought with a shudder — as if the vandal
who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it,
as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother
who had given it birth.

He remembered her hammering derision of his work, his mills, his
Metal, his success, he remembered her desire to see him drunk, just
once, her attempts to push him into infidelity, her pleasure at the
thought that he had fallen to the level of some sordid romance, her
terror on discovering that that romance h|ad been an attainment, not
a degradation. Her line of attack, whiclf he had found so baffling,
had been constant and dear — it was his jself-esteem she had sought
to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the
mercy of anyone’s will; it was his moral purity she had struggled to
breach, it was his confident rectitude she had wanted to shatter by

892

means of the poison of guilt— as if, were he to collapse, his depravity
would give her a right to hers.

For the same purpose and motive, for the same satisfaction, as
others weave complex systems of philosophy to destroy generations,
or establish dictatorships to destroy a country, so she, possessing no
weapons except femininity, had made it her goal to destroy one man.

Yours was the axle of life — he remembered the voice of his lost
young teacher — what, then, is theirs?

“I have something to tell you!” cried Lillian, with the sound of
that impotent rage which wishes that words were brass knuckles.
“You’re so proud of yourself, aren’t you? You’re so proud of your
name! 'Rearden Steel, Rearden Metal, Rearden Wife! That’s what f
was, wasn’t 1? Mrs. Rearden! Mrs. Henry Rearden!” The sounds she
was making were now a string of cackling gasps, an unrecognizable
corruption of laughter. “Well, l think you’d like to know that your
wife’s been laid by another man! I’ve been unfaithful to you, do you
hear me? I’ve been unfaithful, not with some great, noble lover, but
with the scummiest louse, with Jim Taggart! Three months ago! Be-
fore your divorce! While I was your wife! While 1 was still your
wife!”

He stood listening like a scientist studying a subject of no personal
relevance whatever. There, he thought, was the final abortion of the
creed ot collective interdependence , the creed o( non-identity, non-
property, non-fact: the belief that the moral stature of one is at the
mercy of the action of another

“I’ve been unfaithful to you! Don't you hear me, you stainless
Puritan? l*vc slept with Jim Taggart, you incorruptible hero! Don't
you hear me? . . . Don't you hear me? . . - Don’t you . . . ?”

He was looking at her as he would have looked if a strange woman
had approached him on the street with a personal confession — a look
like the equivalent of the words: Why tell it to me?

Her voice trailed off. He had not known what the destruction of
a person would be like; but he knew that he was seeing the destruc-
tion of Lillian He saw it in the collapse of her face, in the sudden
slackening of features, as if there were nothing to hold them to-
gether, in the eyes, blind, yet staring, staring inward, filled with that
terror which no outer threat can equal. It was not the look of a
person losing her mind, but the look of a mind seeing total defeat
and, in the same instant, seeing her own nature for the first time—
the look of a person seeing that after years of preaching non-
existence, she had achieved it.

He turned to go. His mother stopped him at the door, seizing his
arm. With a kx>k of stubborn bewilderment, with the last of her
effort at self-deceit, she moaned in a voice of tearfully petulant re-
proach. “Are you really incapable of forgiveness?”

“No, Mother,” he answered, “I’m not. 1 would have forgiven the
past — if, today, you had urged me to quit and disappear.”

There was a cold wind outside, tightening his overcoat about him
like an embrace, there was the great, fresh sweep of country stretch-
ing at the foot of the hill, and the clear, receding sky of twilight.
Like two sunsets ending the day, the red glow of the sun was a

893

straight, still band in the west, and the breathing red band in the
east was the glow of his mills.

The feel of the steering wheel under bis hands and of the smooth
highway streaming past, as he sped to New York, had an oddly
bracing quality. It was a sense of extreme precision and of relaxation,
together, a sense of action without strain, which seemed inexplicably
youthful— tin til he realized that this was the way he had acted and
had expected always to act, in his youth — and what he now felt was
like the simple, astonished question; Why should one ever have to
act in any other manner?

It seemed to him that the skyline of New York, when it rose
before him, had a strangely luminous clarity, though its shapes were
veiled by distance, a clarity that did not seem to rest in the object,
but felt as if the illumination came from him. He looked at the great
city, with no tie to any view or usage others had made of it, it was
not a city of gangsters or panhandlers or derelicts or whores, it was
the greatest industrial achievement in the history of man, its only
meaning was that which it meant to him, there was a personal quality
in his sight of it, a quality of possessiveness and of unhesitant pcrcep-
tion, as if he were seeing it for the first time — or the last.

He paused in the silent corridor of the Wayne-Falkland. at the
door of the suite he was to enter; it took him a long moment’s effort
to lift his hand and knock: it was the suite that had belonged to
Francisco d’Anconia.

There were coils of cigarette smoke weaving through the an of
the drawing room, among the velvet drapes and bare, polished tables.
With its costly furniture and the absence of all personal belongings,
the room had that air of dreaiy luxury which pertains to transient
occupancy, as dismal as the air of a flophouse. Five figures rose in
the fog at his entrance: Wesley Mouch. Eugene Lawson, James Tag-
gart, Dr. Floyd Ferris and a slim, slouching man who looked like a
rat-faced tennis player and was introduced to him as Tinky
Holloway.

‘"All right,” said Rearden, cutting off the greetings, the smiles, the
offers of drinks and the comments on the national emergency, “what
did you want?”

“We're here as your friends, Mr. Rearden,” said Tinky Holloway,
“purely as your friends, for an informal conversation with a view to
closer mutual teamwork.”

“We’re anxious to avail ourselves of your outstanding ability,”
said Lawson, “and your expert advice on the country’s industrial
problems.”

“It’s men like you that we need in Washington,” said Dr. Ferris.
“There’s no reason why you should have Remained an outsider for
so long, when your voice is needed at t^e top level of national
leadership.”

The sickening thing about it, thought ? Rearden, was that the
speeches were only half-lies; the other half, }n their tone of hysterical-
urgency, was the unstated wish to have it somehow be true. “What
did you want?” he asked. «

“Why . . « to listen to you, Mr. Rearden,” said Wesley Mouch, the

894

jerk of his features imitating a frightened smile; the smile was faked,
the fear was real. “We ... we want the benefit of your opinion on
the nation’s industrial crisis,”

“1 have nothing to say.”

“But, Mr, Rearden,” said Dr. Ferris, “all we want is a chance to
co-operate with you.”

*Tve told you once, publicly, that I don’t co-operate at the point
of a gun.”

“Can’t we bury the hatchet at a time like this?” said Lawson
beseechingly.

“The gun? Go ahead.”

“Uh?”

“It’s you who’re holding it. Bury it, if you think you can.”

“That . . . that was just a figure of speech,” Lawson explained,
blinking. “1 was speaking metaphorically.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Can’t we all stand together for the sake of the country in this
hour of emergency?” said Dr. Ferris. “Ca n’t we disregard our differ-
ences of opinion? We’re willing to meet you halfway. If there's any
aspect of our policy which you oppose, just tell us and we’ll issue a
directive la — ”

“Cut it, boys. I didn't corne here to help you pretend that I'm not
in the position I’m tn and that any halfway is possible between us.
Now come to the point You’ve prepared some new gimmick to
spring on the steel industry. What is iC”

“As a matter of fact,” said Mouch, “we do have a vital question
to discuss in regard to the steel industry', bul . . . but your language.
Mr. Rcarden!''

“We don't want to spring anything on you,” said Holloway. “We
asked you here to discuss it with you.”

“1 came here to take orders. Give them.”

“But, Mr. Rcarden, we don’t want to look at it that way We don’t
want to give you orders. We want your voluntary consent.”

Rcarden smiled. “1 know it.”

“You do?” Holloway started eagerly, but something about Rear-
den’s smile made him slide into uncertainty. “Well, then — ”

“And you, brother,” said Rcarden, “know that that is the flaw in
your game, the fatal flaw that will blast it sky-high. Now do you tell
me what clout on my head you're working so hard not to let me
notice— or do l go home?”

“Oh no, Mr. Rcarden!” cried Lawson, with a sudden dart of his
eyes to his wrist watch. “You can't go now!— That is, I mean, you
wouldn’t want to go without hearing what wc have to say.”

“Then let me hear it.”

He saw them glancing at one another. Wesley Mouch seemed
afraid to address him; Mouch’s face assumed an expression of petu-
lant stubbornness, like a signal of command pushing the others for-
ward; whatever their qualifications to dispose of the fate of the steel
industry, they had been brought here to act as Mouch’s conversa-
tional bodyguards. Rearden wondered about the reason for the pres*

895

ence of Janies Taggart; Taggart sat in gloomy silence, sullenly sipping
a drink, never glancing in his direction.

“We have worked out a plan,” said Dr. Ferris too cheerfully,
“which will solve the problems of the steel industry and which will
meet with your full approval, as a measure providing for the general
welfare, while protecting your interests and insuring your safety in
a—”

“Don’t try to tell me what Fm going to think. Give me the facts.”

“It is a plan which is fair, sound, equitable and — ”

“Don’t tell me your evaluation. Give me the facts ”

“It is a plan which — ” Dr. Ferris stopped; he had lost the habit
of naming facts.

“Under this plan,” said Wesley Mouch. “we will grant the industry
a five per cent increase in the price of steel.” He paused triumphantly.

Reardcn said nothing.

“Of course, some minor adjustments will be necessary,” said Hol-
loway airily, leaping into the silt* nee as onto a vacant tennis court.
“A certain increase in prices will have to be granted to the producers
of iron ore — oh, three per cent at most— -in view of the added hard-
ships which some of them. Mr. Larkin of Minnesota, for instance,
will now encounter, inasmuch as they’ll have to ship their ore by the
costly means of trucks, since Mr. James Taggart has had to sacrifice
his Minnesota branch Ime to the public welfare. And, of course, an
increase m freight rates will have to be granted to the country’s
railroads — let's say, seven per cent, roughly speaking— in view of the
absolutely essential need tor — ”

Holloway stopped, like a player emerging from a whirlwind activ-
■ ity to notice suddenly that no opponent was answering his shots.

“But there will be no increase in wages,” said Dr. Ferris hastily
“An essential point of the plan is that we will grant no increase in
wages to the steel workers, m spile of their insistent demands. We
do wish to be fair to you. Mr. Rearden, and to protect your inter-
ests — even at the risk of popular resentment and indignation."

“Of course, if we expect labor to make a sacrifice,” said Lawson,
“we must show them that management, too, is making certain sacri-
fices for the sake of the country. The mood of labor in the steel
industry is extremely tense at present, Mr. Reardcn, it is dangerously
explosive and . . . and in order to protect you from . . . from ...”
He stopped,

“Yes?” said Rearden. “From?”

“From possible . . . violence, certain measures arc necessary,
which . . . Look, Jim”--he turned suddenly} to James Taggart— “why
don’t you explain it to Mr. Rearden. as a jfellow industrialist?”

“Well, somebody’s got to support the raSroads,” said Taggart sul-
len^ not looking at him. “The country nfeds railroads and some-
body’s got to help us carry the load, and if; we don’t get an increase
in freight rates — ”

“No, no, no!” snapped Wesley Mouch. !Tell Mr. Rearden about *
the working of the Railroad Unification Plan.”

“Well, the Plan is a full success,” said T&ggart lethargically, “ex-
cept for the not fully controllable element of time. It is only a ques-

8 %

tion of time before our unified teamwork puts every railroad in the
country back on its feet. The Plan, Pm in a position to assure you,
would work as successfully for any other industry.”

“No doubt about that,” said Rcarden, and turned to Mouch. “Why
do you ask the stooge to waste my time? What has the Railroad
Unification Plan to do with me?”

“But, Mr. Rearden,” cried Mouch with desperate cheerfulness,
“that’s the pattern we’re to follow! That’s what we called you here
to discuss!”

“What?”

“The Steel Unification Plan!”

There was an instant of silence, as of breaths drawn after a plunge.
Rearden sat looking at them with a glance that seemed to be a
glance of interest.

“In view of the critical plight of the steel industry,” said Mouch
with a sudden rush, as if not to give himself time to know what
made him uneasy about the nature ot Reardon’s glance, “and since
steel is the most vitally, crucially basic commodity, the foundation
of our entire industrial structure, drastic measures must be taken to
preserve the country’s steel-making facilities, equipment and plant.”
The tone and impetus of public speaking carried him that far and no
farther. “With this objective in view, our Plan is . . . our Plan is . . .”

“Our Plan is really very simple,” said Tinky Holloway, striving to
prove it by the gaily bouncing simplicity of his voice. “Well lift all
restrictions from the production of steel and every company will
produce all it can, according to its ability. But to avoid the waste
and danger of dog-eat-dog competition, all the companies will de-
posit their gross earnings into a common pool, to be known as the
Steel Unification Pool, in charge of a special Board. At the end of
the year, the Board will distribute these earnings by totaling the
nation’s steel output and dividing it by the number of open hearth
furnaces in existence, thus arriving at an average which will be fair
to all — and every company will be paid according to its need. The
preservation of its furnaces being its basic need, every company will
be paid according to the number of furnaces it owns.”

He stopped, waited, then added. “That’s it, Mr. Rearden,” and
getting no answer, said. “Oh, there’s a lot of wrinkles to be ironed
out, but . . . but that’s it.”

Whatever reaction they had expected, it was not the one they saw.
Rearden leaned back in his chair, his eyes attentive, but fixed on
space, as if looking at a not too distant distance, then he asked, with
an odd note of quietly impersonal amusement, “Will you tell me just
one thing, boys, what is it you’re counting on?"

He knew that they understood. He saw, on their faces, that stub-
bornly evasive look which he had once thought to be the look of a
liar cheating a victim, but which he now knew to be worse: the look
of a man cheating himself of his own consciousness. They did not
answer. They remained silent, as if struggling, not to make him forget
his question, but to make themselves forget that they had heard it.

“U's a sound, practical Plan!” snapped James Taggart unexpect-

897

edly, with an angry edge of sudden animation in his voice. “It will
work! It has to work! We want it to work!”

No one answered him.

“Mr, Rearden . . . ?” said Holloway timidly.

“Well, let me see,” said Rearden. “Orren Boyle’s Associated Steel
owns 60 open-hearth furnaces, one-third of them standing idle and
the rest producing an average of 3<X) tons of steel per furnace pei
day. I own 20 open-hearth furnaces, working at capacity, producing
750 tons of Rearden Metal per furnace per day. So we own 80
‘pooled’ furnaces with a ‘pooled’ output ot 27,000 tons, which makes
an average of 337.5 tons per furnace. Each day of the year, I produc-
ing 15,000 tons, will be paid for 6,750 tons. Boyle, producing 12,000
tons, will be paid for 20,250 tons. Never mind the other members of
the pool, they won’t change the scale, except to bring the average
still lower, most of them doing worse than Boyle, none of them
producing as much as I. Now how long do you expect me lo last
under your Plan?”

There was no answer, then Lawson cried suddenly, blindly, righ-
teously, “In time of national peril, it is your duty to serve, sutler
and work for the salvation of the country!”

“I don’t see why pumping my earnings into Otren Boyle's pocket
is going to save the country.”

“You have to make certain sacrifices to the public welfare!”

“I don't see why Orren Boyle is more 'the public than I am.”

“Oh, it’s not a question of Mr. Boyle at all! It’s much wider than
any one person. It's a matter of preserving the country’s natural
resources— such as factories — and saving the whole of the nation's
industrial plant. We cannot permit the ruin of an establishment as
vast as Mr. Boyle’s. The country needs it.”

“I think,” said Rearden slowly, “that the country needs me much
more than it needs Orren Boyle ”

“Bqt of course!” cned Lawson with startled enthusiasm. “The
country needs you, Mr. Rearden! You do realize that, don't you?”

But Lawson’s avid pleasure at the familiar formula of self-immola-
tion, vanished abruptly at the sound of Rearden's voice, a cold, trad-
er’s voice answering: “1 do.”

“It’s not Boyle alone who’s involved,” said Holloway pleadingly.
“The country’s economy would not be able to stand a major disloca-
tion at the present moment. There are thousands of Boyle’s workers,
suppliers and customers. What would happen to them if Associated
Steel went bankrupt?”

“What will happen to the thousands of my workers, suppliers and
customers when / go bankrupt?” ;

“Vow, Mr. Rearden?” said Holloway incredulously. “But you’re
the richest, safest and strongest industrialist in the country at this
moment!”

“What about the moment after next?”

“Uh?”

“How long do you expect me to be able to produce at a loss?”

“Oh, Mr, Rearden, I have complete faith in you!”

“To hell with your faith! How do you expect me to do it?”

RQR

“You’ll manage! ”

“How?”

There was no answer.

44 We can’t theorize about the future,” cried Wesley Mouch, “when
there’s an immediate national collapse to avoid! We’ve got to save
the country’s economy! We’ve got to do something!” Rearden ’s im-
perturbable glance of curiosity drove him to heedlessness. “If you
don’t like it, do you have a better solution to offer?”

“Sure*” said Rearden easily, if it’s production that you want, then
get out of the way, junk all of your damn regulations, let Orren
Boyle go broke, let me buy the plant of Associated Steel — and it
will be pouring a thousand ions a day from every one of its sixty
turnaces.”

“Oh, but . . . but we couldn’t!” gasped Mouch. “That would be
monopoly!”

Reaiden chuckled. “Okay." he said indifferently, “then let my
mills superintendent buy it. He’ll do a better job than Boyle.”

“Oh, but that would be letting the strong have an advantage over
the weak! We couldn’t do that!”

“Then don’t talk about saving the country’s economy,”

“All we want is — ” He stopped.

“All you want is production without men who're able to produce,
isn't it?”

“That . . . that’s theory. That’s just a theoretical extreme. All we
want is a temporary adjustment."

“You've been making those temporary adjustments for years.
Don't you see that you've run out of lime?”

“That’s just theo . . His voice trailed off and stopped.

“Well, now, look here,” said Holloway cautiously, “it's not as if
Mr. Boyle were actually . . . weak. Mr. Boyle is an extremely able
man. It’s just that he’s suffered some unfortunate reverses, quite
beyond his control. He had invested large sums in a public-spirited
project to assist the undeveloped peoples of South America, and that
copper crash of theirs has dealt him a severe financial blow. So it’s
only a matter of giving him a chance to recover, a helping hand to
bridge the gap, a bit of temporary assistance, nothing more. All we
have to do is just equalize the sacrifice— then everybody will recover
and prosper.”

“You’ve been equalizing sacrifice for over a hundred” — he stopped—
“for thousands of years.” said Rearden slowly. “Don’t you sec that
you're at the end of the road?”

“That’s just theory!” snapped Wesley Mouch.

Rearden smiled. “I know 7 your practice.” he said softly. “It’s your
theory (hat I’m trying to understand.”

He knew that the specific reason behind the Plan was Orren Boyle;
he knew that the working of an intricate mechanism, operated by
pull, threat, pressure, blackmail — a mechanism like an irrational add-
ing machine run amuck and throwing up any chance sum at the
whim of any moment — had happened to add up to Boyle’s pressure
upon these men to extort for him this last piece of plunder. He knew
also that Boyle was not the cause of it or the essential to consider,

899

that Boyle was only a chance rider, not the builder, of the infernal
machine that had destroyed the world, that it was not Boyle who
had made it possible, nor any of the men in this room. They, too,
were only riders on a machine without a driver, they were trembling
hitchhikers who knew that their vehicle was about to crash into its
final abyss — and it was not love or fear of Boyle that made them
cling to their course and press on toward their end, it was something
else, it was some one nameless element which they knew and evaded
knowing, something which was neither thought nor hope, something
he identified only as a certain look in their faces, a furtive look
vSaying: 1 can get away with it. Why? — he thought. Why do they think
they can?

“We can't afford any theories!" cried Wesley Mouch. “We've got
to act!”

“Well, then. I’ll offer you another solution. Why don't you take
over my mills and be done with it?"

The jolt that shook them was genuine terror.

“Oh no!" gasped Mouch.

“We wouldn’t think of it!" cried Holloway.

“We stand for free enterprise!" cried Dr. Ferris.

“We don’t want to harm you!'’ cried Lawson. “We’re your friends,
Mr. Rearden. Gin’t we all work together? We're your friends."

There, across the room, stood a table with a telephone, the same
table, most likely, and the same instrument— and suddenly Rearden
felt as if he were seeing the convulsed figure of a man bent over
that telephone, a man who had then known what he, Rearden, was
now beginning to learn, a man fighting to refuse him the same re-
quest which he was now refusing to the present tenants of this
room — he saw the finish of that fight, a man’s tortured face lifted to
confront him and a desperate voice saying steadily: “Mr. Rearden,
l swear to you ... by the woman 1 love . . . that 1 am your friend."

This was the act he had then called treason, and this was the man
he had rejected in order to go on serving the men confronting him
now. Who, then, had been the traitor? — he thought; he thought it
almost without feeling, without right to feel, conscious of nothing
but a solemnly reverent clarity. Who had chosen to give its present
tenants the means to acquire this room? Whom had he sacrificed
and to whose profit?

“Mr. Rearden!" moaned Lawson. “What’s the matter?"

He turned his head, saw I-awson’s eyes watching him fearfully and
guessed what look Lawson had caught in his face.

“We don’t want to seize your mills!" cri&i Mouch.

“We don’t want to deprive you of your property!" cried Dr. Ferris.
“You don’t understand us!"

“I’m beginning to.”

A year ago, he thought, they would have&shot him; two years ago.
they would have confiscated his property; generations ago, men of
their kind had been able to afford the luxury of murder and expropri-.
atioit, the safety of pretending to themselves and their victims that
material loot was their only objective. Bui their time was running
out and his fellow victims had gone, gone sooner than any historical

900

schedule had promised, and they, the looters, were now left to face
the undisguised reality of their own goal
“Look, boys,” he said wearily, “I know what you want. You want
to eat my mills and have them, too. And all l want to know is this:
what makes you think it’s possible?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mouch m an injured tone of
voice. “We said we didn't want your mills.”

“All right. I’ll say it more precisely. You want to eat me and have
me, too. How do you propose to do it?”

“1 don’t know how you can say that, after we’ve given you every
assurance that we consider you of invaluable importance to the coun-
try, to the steel industry, to — ”

“1 believe you. That’s what makes the riddle harder. You consider
me of invaluable importance lo the country? Hell, you consider me
ol invaluable importance even to your own necks You sit there,
trembling, because you know, that I m the last one left to save your
lives --and you know that time is as short as that. Yet you propose
a plan to destroy me, a plan which demands, with an idiot’s crude-
ness, without loopholes, detours or escape, that I work at a loss —
that 1 work, with every ton 1 pour costing me more than I'll get for
it that I teed the last of my wealth away until we all starve together.

I hat much irrationality is not possible to any man or any looter. Per
your own sake— never inind the country's or mine -you must be
counting on something What?”

He saw the gelting-away-with-il look on their faces, a peculiar
look that seemed secretive, vet resentful, as il. incredibly, it were he
who was hiding some secret from them,

“1 don’t see why you should choose to take such a defeatist view
of the situation,” said Mouch sullenly

“Defeatist? Do you really expect me to be able lo remain in busi-
ness under your Plan 9 ”

“But it’s only temporary!”

“There is no such thing as a temporary suicide ”

“But it’s only for the duration of the emergency! Only until the
country recovers!”

“How do you expect it to recover 1 ”

There was no answer.

“How do you expect me to pioducc after I go bankrupt?”

“You won’t go bankrupt. You'll always produce,” said Dr. Ferris
indifferently, neither in praise nor in blame, merely in the tone of
staling a fact of nature, as he would have said to another man: You'll
always be a bum. “You can't help H It's in your blood. Or, to be
more scientific, you’re conditioned that way.”

Rcarden sat up: it was as if he had been struggling to find the
secret combination of a lock and felt, at those words, a faint click
within, as of the first tumbler falling inlo place
“It’s only a matter of weathering this crisis” said Mouch, “of
giving people a reprieve, a chance to catch up.”

“And then?”

“Then things will improve.”

“How?”

There was no answer.

“What will improve them?”

There was no answer.

“Who will improve them?”

“Christ, Mr. Rearden, people don’t just stand still!” cried Hoi
loway. “They do things, they grow, they move forward!”

“What people?”

Holloway waved his hand vaguely. “People,” he said.

“What people? The people to whom you’re going to feed the last
of Rearden Steel, without getting anything in return? The people
who’ll go on consuming more than they produce?”

“Conditions will change.”

“Who’ll change them?”

There was no answer

“Have you anything left to loot? If you didn’t see the nature of
your policy before — it's not possible that you don’t see it now. Look
around you. All those damned People’s States all over the earth
have been existing only on the handouts which you squeezed for
them out of this country. But you — you have no place left to sponge
on or mooch from. No country on the face of the globe. This was
the greatest and last. You’ve drained it. You’ve milked it dry. Of all
that irretrievable splendor. I’m only one remnant, the last. What will
you do, you and your People's Globe, alter you've finished me?
What are you hoping for? What do you see ahead— -except plain,
stark, animal starvation?”

They did not answer. They did not look at him. Their faces wore
expressions of stubborn resentment, as if his were the plea ot a liar.

Then Lawson said softly, half in reproach, half in scorn, “Well,
after all, you businessmen have kept predicting disasters tor years,
you’ve cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us
that we’il perish — but we haven't.” He stalled a smile, but diew back
from the sudden intensity of Reardon's eyes.

Rearden had felt another click in his mind, the sharper click of
the second tumbler connecting the circuits of the lock. He leaned
forward. “What are you counting on?” he asked; his tone had
changed, it was low, it had the steady, pressing, droning sound of
a drill.

“It's only a matter of gaining time!” cried Mouth.

“There isn't any time left to gain.”

“All we need is a chance!” ciied Lawson.

“There are no chances left.” ,

“It’s only until wc recover!” cried Holloway.

“There is no way to recover.”

“Only until our policies begin to work!” ’cried L)r, Ferris.

“There is no way to make the irrational work.” There was no
answer. “What can save you now?”

“Oh, you’ll do something!” cried James Taggart.

Then — even though it was only a sentence he had heard all his
life — he felt a deafening crash within him, as*of a steel door dropping
open at the touch of the final tumbler, the one small number com-

902

pleting the sum and releasing the intricate lock, the answer uniting
all the pieces, the questions and the unsolved wounds of his life.

In the moment of silence after the crash, it seemed to him that
he heard Francisco’s voice, asking him quietly in the ballroom of
this building, yet asking it also here and now: “Who is the guiltiest
man in this room?” He heard his own answer of the past: “I sup-
pose — Janies Taggart?” and Francisco s voice saying without re-
proach: “No, Mr. Rearden, it’s not James Taggart.”— but here, in
this room and this moment, his mind answered: “1 am ”

He had cursed these looters lor their stubborn blindness 7 It was
he who had made it possible. From the first extortion he had ac-
cepted, from the first directive he had obeyed, he had given them
cause to believe that reality was a thing to be cheated, that one could
demand the irrational and someone somehow would provide it. If
he had accepted the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, if he had
accepted Directive 10-289, if he had accepted the law that those who
could not equal his ability had the right to dispose of it. that those
who had not earned were to profit, but he who had was to lose, that
those who could not think were to command, but he who could was
to obey them- -then were they illogical in believing that they existed
in an irrational universe? He had made it lor them, he had provided
it Were they illogical in believing that theirs was only to wish, to
wish with no concern lor the possible- -and that lus was to fulfill
their wishes, by means they did not have to know or name? They,
the impotent mystics, struggling to escape the responsibility of rea-
son, had known that he, the rationalist, had undertaken to serve
their whims. They had known that he had given them a blank check
on reality — his was not to ask why ? — theirs was not to ask how ? —
lot them demand that he give them a share of his wealth, then all
that he owns, then more than he owns — impossible?- -no, he’ll do
something!

He did not know that he had leaped to his feet, that he stood
staring down at James Taggart, seeing in the unbridled shapelessness
oi Taggart’s features the answer to all the devastation he had wit-
nessed through the years of his life

“What’s the matter, Mr. Rearden 7 What have I said?” Taggart
was asking with rising anxiety — but he was out of the reach of Tag-
gart’s voice.

He was seeing the progression of the years, the monstrous extor-
tions, the impossible demands, the inexplicable victories of evil, the
preposterous plans and unintelligible goals proclaimed in volumes of
muddy philosophy, the desperate wonder oi the victims who thought
that some complex, malevolent wisdom was moving the powers de-
stroying the world — and all of it had rested on one tenet behind the
shifty eyes of the victors: he'll do something! . . . We’ll get away with
it — he’ll let us — he'll do something! . . .

You businessmen kept predicting that we’d perish, but we
haven’t. ... It was true, he thought. They had not been blind to
reality, he had— -Wind to the reality he himself had created. No, they
had not perished, but who had? Who had perished to pay for their

903

manner of survival? Ellis Wyatt . . . Ken Danagger . . . Francisco
d’Anconia.

He was reaching lor his hat and coat, when he noticed that the
men in the room were trying to stop him, that their faces had a look
of panic and their voices were crying in bewilderment: "‘What's the
matter, Mr. Rearden? . . . Why? . * . But why? . . . What have we
said? . . . You’re not going! . . . You can’t go! . . . It's too early! . . .
Not yet! Oh, not yet!”

He felt as if he were seeing them from the rear window of a
speeding express, as if they stood on the track behind him, waving
their arms in futile gestures and screaming indistinguishable sounds,
their figures growing smaller in the distance, their voices fading.

One of them tried to stop him as he turned to the door. He pushed
him out of his way, not roughly, but with a simple, smooth sweep of
his arm. as one brushes aside an obstructing curtain then walked out.

Silence was his only sensation, as he sat at the wheel of his car,
speeding back down the road to Philadelphia. It was the silence of
immobility within him. as if possessing knowledge, he could now
afford to rest with no further activity of soul. He felt nothing, neither
anguish nor elation. It was as if. by an effort of years, he had climbed
a mountain to gain a distant view and, having reached the top. had
fallen to he still, to rest before he looked, free to spare himself foi
the first lime.

He was aware of the long, empty road streaming, then curving,
then streaming straight before hirn, of the effortless pressure of his
hands on the wheel and the screech of the tires on the curves. But
he felt as if he were speeding down a skyway suspended and coiling
in empty space.

The passers-by at the factories, the bridges, the power plants along
his road saw a sight that had once been natural among them: a trim,
expensively powerful car driven by a confident man. with the concept
of success proclaimed more loudly than by any electric sign, pro-
claimed by the driver’s garments, by his expert steering, by his pur-
poseful speed. They watched him go past and vanish into the haze
equating earth with night.

He saw his mills rising in the darkness, as a black silhouette against
a breathing glow. The glow was the color of burning gold, and “Rear-
den Steel” stood written across the sky in the cool, white fire ol
crystal,

He looked at the long silhouette, the curves of blast furnaces
standing like triumphal arches, the smokestacks rising like a solemn
colonnade along an avenue of honor in an imperial city, the bridges
hanging like garlands, the cranes saluting HlCc lances, the smoke wav-
ing slowly like flags. The sight broke the stillness within him and he
smiled in greeting, ft was a smile of happiness, of love, of dedication.
He had never loved his mills as he did in |hat moment, for — seeing
them by an act of his own vision, cleared c If all but his own code of
values, in a luminous reality that held n$ contradictions — he was-
seeing the reason of his love: the mills wete an achievement of his
mind, devoted to his enjoyment of existence, erected in a rational
world to deal with rational men. If those men had vanished, if that

904

world was gone, if his mills had ceased to serve his values— then the
mills were only a pile of dead scrap, to be left to crumble, the sooner
the better—* to be left, not as an act of treason, but as an act of
loyalty to their actual meaning.

The mills were still a mile ahead when a small spurt ot flame
caught his sudden attention. Among all the shades of fire in the vast
spread of structures, he could tell the abnormal and the out-of-place:
this one was too raw a shade of yellow and it was darting from a
spot where no fire had reason to be, from a structure by the gate of
the main entrance.

In the next instant, he heard the dry crack of a gunshot, then three
answering cracks in swift succession, like an angry hand slapping a
sudden assailant.

Then the black mass barring the road in the distance took shape,
it was not mere darkness and it did not recede as he came closer—
it was a mob squirming at the main gate, trying to storm the nulls.

He had time to distinguish waving arms, some with clubs, some
with crowbars, some with rifles — the yellow flames of burning wood
gushing from the window of the gatekeeper’s office— the blue cracks
of gunfire darting out of the mob and the answers spitting from the
roof ot the structures- -he had time to see a human figure twisting
backward and falling from the top of a car — then he sent his wheels
into a shrieking curve, turning into the darkness of a side road.

He was going at the rate of sixty miles an hour down the ruts of
an unpaved soil, toward the eastern gale ot the mills — and the gate
was in sight when the impact of tires on a gully threw the car off
the road, to the edge ol a ravine where an ancient slag heap lay at
the bottom. With the weight of his chest and elbow on the wheel,
pitted against two tons ol speeding metal, the curve ot his body
torccd the curve ot the car to complete its screaming halfcircle
sweeping it back onto the road and into the control of his hands. It
had taken one instant, but in the next his foot went down on the
brake, tearing the engine to a stop: for in the moment when his
headlights had swept the ravine, he had glimpsed an oblong shape,
darker than the gray of the weeds on the slope, and it had seemed to
him that a brief while blur had been a human hand waving for help.

Throwing off his overcoat, he went huirying down the side of the
ravine, lumps of earth giving way under his leet, he went catching
at the dried coils of brush, half-running, half-sliding toward the long
black form which he could now distinguish to be a human body. A
veum of cotton was swimming against the moon, he could see the
white of a hand and the shape ot an arm lying stretched in the
weeds, but the body lay still, with no sign of motion.

Si Mr. Rearden

It was a whisper struggling to be a cry, it was the terrible sound
of eagerness fighting against a voice that could be nothing but a
moan of pain.

He did not know which came first, it felt like a single shock: his
thought that the voice was familiar, a ray of moonlight breaking
through the cotton, the movement of falling down on his knees by the
white oval of a face, and the recognition. It was the Wet Nurse.

905

He felt the boy’s hand clutching his with the abnormal strength
of agony, while he was noticing the tortured lines of the face, the
drained lips, the glazing eyes and the thin, dark trickle from a small,
black hole in too wrong, too close a spot on the left side of the
boy's chest.

“Mr. Rearden ... I wanted to stop them ... I wanted to save
you . .

“What happened to you. kid?’*

“They shot me, so 1 wouldn’t talk ... I wanted to prevent" — his
hand fumbled toward the red glare in the sky— “what they're
doing ... I was too late, but I’ve tried to . . . I’ve tried . , . And . , .
Fm still able ... to talk . . . Listen, they — "

“You need help. Let’s get you to a hospital and — ”

“No! Wait! 1 ... I don't think 1 have much time left to me and . . .
and I’ve got to tell you . . Listen, that riot . . . it’s staged . on
orders from Washington . . . It's not workers . . . not your workers . . .
it's those new boys of theirs and . . . and a lot of goons hired on
the outside . . . Don’t believe a word they'll tell you about it . .

It’s a frame-up . . . it’s iheir rotten kind of frame -up . .

There was a desperate intensity in the hoy’s face, the intensity of
a crusader's battle, his voice seemed to gain a sound of life from
some fuel burning m broken spurts whhin him -and Rearden knew
that the greatest assistance he could now render was to listen.

“They . . . they’ve got a Steel Unification Plan ready . . . and they
need an excuse for it . . . because they know that the country won't
take it . . . and you won t stand for it . . They’re afraid this one's

going to be too much tor everybody . . . it's just a plan to skin you
alive, that’s all . . . So they want to make it look like you're starving
your workers . . . and the workers are running amuck and you'ie
unable to control them . . . and the government’s got to step m tor
your own protection and for public satety . . . That’s going to be
their pitch, Mr. Rearden . .

Rearden was noticing the torn flesh of the boy's hands, the drying
mud of blood and dust on his palms and his clothing, gray patches
of dust on knees and stomach, scrambled with the needles of burs.
In the intermittent fits of moonlight, he could see the trail of flat-
tened weeds and glistening smears going off into the darkness below
He dreaded to think how far the boy had crawled and for how long.

“They didn't want you to be here tonight, Mr. Real den . . . They
didn’t want you to see their ‘People’s rebellion’ . . . Afterwards . . .
you know how they screw up the evidence . . . there won’t be a
straight story to get anywhere , . . and they hope to fool the
country . . . and you . . . that they’re acting to protect you from
violence . , . Don't let them get away with ij. Mr. Rearden! . . . Tell
the country . . . tell the people . . . tell the newspapers . . . Tell them
that I told you . . . it’s under oath . . 1 sviear it . . . that makes' it
legal, doesn’t it? . . . doesn’t it? . . . that gives you a chance?”

Rearden pressed the boy’s hand in his. “Thank you, kid.”

“I . , . Fm sorry Fm late, Mr. Rearden, but . . . but they didn't
let me in on it till the last minute , . , till just before it started . . .
They called me in on a ... a strategy conference . . . there was a

906

man there by the name of Peters . . . from the Unification Board - , ►
he’s a stooge of Tinky Holloway * . . who’s a stooge of Orren
Boyle . , . What they wanted from me was . . . they wanted me to
sign a lot of passes . . , to Jet some of the goons in ... so they’d
start trouble from the inside and the outside together ... to make
it look like they really were your workers ... I refused to sign
the passes."’

“You did? After they’d let you in on their game?"

“But . . . but, of course. Mr. Rearden . . . Did you think I’d play
that kind of game?”

“No, kid, no, 1 guess not. Only — "

“What?”

“Only that’s when you stuck your neck out ”

“But 1 had to! ... I couldn't help them wreck the mills, could
J? . . . How long was I to keep from stickmg my neck out? Till they
broke yours? . . . And what would 1 do with my neck, if that's how
I had to keep it 9 . . . You . . . , you understand it, don’t you,
Mr. Rearden?”

“Yes. 1 do "

"I refused them ... 1 ran out of the office . . 1 ran to look for
the superintendent ... to tell him everything . . but I couldn’t find
him . . . and then 1 heard shots at the main gate and 1 knew it had
started ... 1 tried to phone your home . . . the phone wires were
cut ... 1 ran to get my car, 1 wanted to reach you or a policeman
or a newspaper or somebody . . . but they must have been following
me that’s when they shot me . . in the parking lot . from

behind . . . all 1 remember is falling and . . . and then, when I opened
mv eyes, they had dumped me here . . . on the slag heap . ."

“On the slag heap 0 " said Rearden slowly, knowing that the heap
was a bundled feet below.

The boy nodded, pointing vaguely down into the darkness. “Yeah . . .
down there . . . And then I ... 1 started crawling . crawling up . . .

1 wanted , . 1 wanted to last till 1 told somebody who’d tell you."

1'he pain-twisted lines ol his face smoothed suddenly into a smile;
his voice had the sound of a lifetime's triumph as he added, “i have.”
Then he jerked his head up and asked, in the tone of a child’s
astonishment at a sudden discover), “Mr. Rearden, is this how it
feels to . . . to want something very much . . very desperately
much . . and to make it°"

“Yes. kid, that’s how' it feels." Ihe boy’s head dropped back
against Reardon’s arm, the eyes closing, the mouth relaxing, as if to
hold a moment’s profound contentment. “But you can’t stop there.
You’re not through. You’ve got to hang on till l get you to a doctor
and- He was lifting the boy cautiously, but a convulsion of pain
ran through the boy’s lace, his mouth twisting to stop a cry— and
Rearden had to lower him gently back to the ground.

The boy shook his head with a glance that was almost apology.
“1 won’t make it, Mr. Rearden . . . No use fooling myself . . . i know

I’m through.” ... ,

Then, as if by some dim recoil against self-pity, he added, reciting
a memorized lesson, his voice a desperate attempt at his old, cynical,

907

intellectual tone, “What does it matter, Mr. Rearden? . . . Man is
only a collection of . . . conditioned chemicals . . . and a man’s dying
doesn’t make . . . any more difference than an animal's.*'

“You know better than that."

“Yes," he whispered. “Yes, I guess 1 do."

His eyes wandered over the vast darkness, then rose to Rearden’s
face; the eyes were helpless, longing, childishly bewildered, “1
know . . . it's crap, all those things they taught us . . . all of it.
everything they said . . . about living or . . . or dying . . . Dying . . .
it wouldn't make any difference to chemicals, but — “ he stopped,
and all of his desperate protest was only in the intensity of his voice
dropping lower to say, ‘ --but it does, to me . . And . . . and, 1

guess, it makes a difference to an animal, too . . . But they said there
are no values . . . only social customs . No values!" His hand
clutched blindly at the hole in his chest, as if trying to hold that
which he was losing. “No . . . values . , ."

Then his eyes opened wider, with the sudden calm of full frank-
ness. “I'd like to live, Mr. Rearden. God, how I'd like to!" His voice
was passionately quiet, “Not because I'm dying . . . but because I've
just discovered it tonight, what it means, really to be alive .
And . . . it's funny . do you know when 1 discovered it? ... In
the office . , . when 1 stuck my neck out . . . when 1 told the bastards
to go to hell . . . There's . . . there’s so many things I wish I'd known
sooner . . . But . . well, it’s no use crying over spilled milk " He
saw Rearden’s involuntary glance at the flattened trail below and
added, “Over spilled anything, Mr. Rearden.”

. “Listen, kid," said Rearden sternly, "I want you to do me a favor."

"Mow, Mr. Rearden?"

“Yes. Now "

“Why, of course, Mr. Real den ... if 1 can "

# “You've done me a big favor tonight, but 1 want >ou to do a still
bigger one. You've done a great job. climbing out of that slag heap.
Now will you try for something still harder'* You were willing to die
to save my mills. Will you try to live for me?*'

“For you, Mr. Rearden?"

“For me. Because I m asking you to. Because I want you to. Be-
cause we still have a great distance to climb together, you and 1."

“Does it . . . does it make a difference to you, Mr. Reai den? ’

“It does. Will you make up your mind that you want to live just
as you did down there on the slag heap? That you want to last and
live? Will you fight for it? You wanted to light my battle. Will you
fight this one with me, as our iirsl?" J

He felt the clutching of the boy’s hand: a conveyed the violent
eagerness of the answer; the voice was onjy a whisper “I'll tiy,
Mr. Rearden."

“Now help me to get you to a doctor, fusfc' relax, take it easy and
let me lift you."

“Yes, Mr. Rearden." With the jerk of a Sudden effort, the boy
pulled himself up to lean on an elbow.

“Take it easy, Tony.”

908

He saw a sudden flicker in the boy’s face, an attempt *at his old,
bright, impudent grin. “Not ‘Non-Absolute’ any more?”

“No, not any more. You’re a full absolute now, and you know it.”

“Yes. I know several of them, now. There’s one”— he pointed at
the wound in his chest— “that’s an absolute, isn’t it? And”— he went
on speaking while Rcarden was lifting him from the ground by im-
perceptible seconds and inches, speaking as if the trembling intensity
of his words were serving as an anesthetic against the pain — “and
men can’t live ... if rotten bastards . . . like the ones in
Washington ... get away with things like . . . like the one they're
doing tonight ... if everything becomes a stinking fake . . and
nothing is real . . . and nobody is anybody . . . men can’t live that
way . . . that's an absolute, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Tony, that’s an absolute ”

Reardon rose to his feet by a long, cautious effort; he saw the
tortured spasm of the boy’s features, as he settled him slowly against
his chest, like a baby held tight in his arms — but the spasm twisted
into another echo of the impudent grin, and the boy asked, “Who's
the Wet Nurse now?”

“I guess I am.”

He took the first steps up the slant of crumbling soil, his body
tensed to the task of shock absorber for his fragile burden, to the
task of maintaining a steady progression where there was no foothold
to find.

The boy’s head dropped on Reardon's shoulder, hesitantly, almost
as if this were a presumption. Rcarden bent down and pressed his
lips to the dust-streaked forehead.

The boy jerked back, laising his head with a shock of incredulous,
indignant astonishment. “Do you know what you did?” he whis-
pered, as if unable to believe that it was meant for him.

“Put your head down,” said Rcarden, “and I'll do it again.”

The boy’s head dropped and Rcarden kissed his forehead; it was
like a father’s recognition granted to a son’s battle.

The boy lay still, his face hidden, his hands clutching Rearden’s
shoulders. Then, with no hint of sound, with only the sudden beat
of faint, spaced, rhythmic shudders to show it, Rearden knew that
the boy was crying— crying in surrender, in admission of all the
things which he amid not put into the woids he had never found.

Rcarden went on moving slowly upward, step by groping step,
fighting for firmness of motion against the weeds, the drifts of dust,
the chunks of scrap metal, the refuse of a distant age. He went on,
toward the line where the red glow of his mills marked the edge of the
pit above him, his movement a fierce struggle that had to take the
form of a gentle, unhurried flow.

He heard no sobs, but he felt the rhythmic shudders, and, through
the cloth of his shirt, in place of tears, he felt the small, warm, liquid
spurts flung from the wound by the shudders. He knew that the tight
pressure of his arms was the only answer which the boy was now
able to hear and understand— and he held the trembling body as if
the strength of his arms could transfuse some part of his living power
into the arteries beating ever fainter against him.

909

Then the sobbing stopped and the boy raised his head. His face
seemed thinner and paler, but the eyes were lustrous, and he looked
up at Rearden, straining for the strength to speak.

“Mr. Rearden ... I ... I liked you very much.”

“I know it.”

The boy's features had no power to form a smile, but it was a
smile that spoke in his glance, as he looked at Rearden ’s face — as
he looked at that which he had not known he had been seeking
through the brief span of his life, seeking as the image of that which
he had not known to be his values.

Then his head fell back, and there was no convulsion in his face,
only his mouth relaxing to a shape of serenity— but there was a brief
stab of convulsion in his body, like a last cry of protest — and Rear-
den went on slowly, not altering his pace, even though he knew that
no caution was necessary any longer because what he was carrying
in his arms was now that which had been the boy’s teachers' idea
of a man — a collection of chemicals.

He walked, as if this were his form of last tribute and funeral
procession for the young life that had ended in his arms. He felt an
anger too intense to identify except as a pressure within him: it was
a desire to kill.

The desire was not directed at the unknown thug who had sent a
bullet through the boy’s body, or at the looting bureaucrats who had
hired the thug to do it, but at the boy's teachers who had delivered
him, disarmed, to the thug’s gun — at the soft, safe assassins of college
classrooms who, incompetent to answer the queries of a quest for
reason, took pleasure in crippling the young minds entrusted to
their care.

Somewhere, he thought, there was this boy’s mother, who bad
trembled with protective concern over his groping steps, while teach-
ing him to walk, who had measured his baby foimulas with a jewel-
er's caution, who had obeyed with a zealot’s fervor the latest words
of science on his diet and hygiene, protecting his unhardened body
from germs — then had sent him to bo turned into a tortured neurotic
by the men who taught him that he had no mind and must never
attempt to think. Had she fed him tainted refuse, he thought, had
she mixed poison into his food, it would have been more kind and
less fatal.

He thought of all the living species that train their young in the
art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds
who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly —
yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to
teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the pur-
pose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile
and evil, before he has started to think. I

From the first catch-phrases flung a* a child to the last, it is like
a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his
consciousness. “Don't asK so many questions, children should be
seen and not heard!" — “Who are you to think? It’s so, because 1 say
so!” — “Don’t argue, obey!” — “Don’t try to understand, believe!” —
“Don't rebel, adjust!” — “ Don't stand out, belong !” — “Don’t strug-

910

gle, compromise! Your heart is more important than your
mind!” — “Who are you to know? Your parents know best!”—' “Who
are you to know? Society knows best*” “Who are you to know? The
bureaucrats know best!’ —“Who are you to object? All values are
relative!” — “Who are you to want to escape a thug’s bullet? That’s
only a personal prejudice!”

Men would shudder, he thought, if they saw a mother bird pluck-
ing the feathers from the wings of her young, then pushing him out
of the nest to struggle for survival— yet that was what they did to
their children.

Armed with nothing but meaningless phrases, this boy had been
thrown to fight for existence, he had hobbled and groped through a
brief, doomed effort, he had screamed his indignant, bewildered pro-
test — and had perished in hts first attempt to soar on his mangled
wings.

But a different breed of teachers had once existed, he thought,
and had reared the men who created this country; he thought that
mothers should set out on their knees to look for men like Hugh
Akston, to find them and beg them to return.

He went through the gate of the mills, barely noticing the guards
who let him enter, who stared at his face and his burden; he did not
pause to listen to their words, as they pointed to the fighting in the
distance; he went on walking slowly toward the wedge of light which
was the open door of the hospital building

He stepped into a lighted room lull ot men. bloody bandages and
the odor of antiseptics; he deposited his burden on a bench, with
no word of explanation to anyone, and walked out, not glancing
behind him.

He walked m the direction ol the front gate, toward the glare of
tire and the bursts of guns. He saw, once in a while, a few figures
running through the ciacks between structures or darling behind
hlack corners, pursued by groups of guards and workers: he was
astonished to notice that his workers were well armed. They seemed
to have subdued the hoodlums inside the mills, and only the siege
at the front gate remained to be beaten. He saw a lout scurrying
across a patch of lamplight, swinging a length of pipe at a wall of
glass panes, battering them down with an animal relish, dancing like
a gorilla to the sound of crashing glass, until three husky human
figures descended upon him. carrying him writhing to the ground.

The siege of the gate appeared to be ebbing, as if the spine of the
mob had been broken. He heard the distant sciceches of tlieir cries—
but the shots from the road were growing rarer, the fire set to the
gatekeeper’s office was put out, there were armed men on the ledges
and at windows, posted in well-planned defense.

On the roof of a structure above the gate, he saw. as he came
closer, the slim silhouette of a man who held a gun in each hand
and, from behind the protection of a chimney, kept firing at intervals
down into the mob, firing swiftly and, it seemed, in two directions
at once, like a sentinel protecting the approaches to the gate. The
confident skill of his movements, his manner of firing, with no time
wasted to take aim, but with the kind of casual abruptness that never

911

misses a target, made him look like a hero of Western legend— -and
Rearden watched him with detached, impersonal pleasure, as if the
battle of the mills were not his any longer, but he could still enjoy
the sight of the competence and certainty with which men of that
distant age had once combatted evil.

The beam of a roving searchlight struck Rearden’s face, and when
the light swept past he saw the man on the roof leaning down, as if
peering in his direction. The man waved to someone to replace him,
then vanished abruptly from his post.

Rearden hurried on through the short stretch of darkness ahead —
but then, from the side, from the crack of an alley, he heard a
drunken voice yell, “There he is!’" and whirled to see two bcety
figures advancing upon him. He saw a leering, mindless face with a
mouth hung loose in a joyless chuckle, and a club in a rising fist —
he heard the sound of running steps approaching from another direc-
tion, he attempted to turn his head, then the club crashed down on
his skull from behind — and in the moment of splitting darkness,
when he wavered, refusing to believe it, then felt himself going down,
he felt a strong, protective arm seizing him and breaking his fall, he
heard a gun exploding an inch above his car, then another explosion
from the same gun in the same second, but it seemed faint and
distant, as if he had fallen down a shaft.

His first awareness, when he opened his eyes, was a sense of pro*
found serenity. Then he saw that he was lying on a couch in a mod-
ern, sternly gracious room — then he realized that it was his office
and that the two men standing beside him were the mills' doctor
and the superintendent. He felt a distant pain in his head, which
would have been violent had he cared to notice it, and he felt a strip
of tape across his hair, on the side of his head. The sense of serenity
was the knowledge that he was free.

The meaning of his bandage and the meaning of his office were
not to be accepted or to exist, together —it was not a combination
for men to live with — this was not his battle any longer, nor his job.
nor his business.

“I think ill be all right, Doctor," he said, raising his head.

“Yes, Mr. Rearden, fortunately.” The doctor was looking at him
as if still unable to believe that this had happened to Hank Rearden
inside his own mills; the doctor’s voice was tense with angry loyalty
and indignation. “Nothing serious, just a scalp wound and a slight
concussion. But you must take it easy and allow yourself to rest.”

“I will,” said Rearden firmly.

“It’s alt over,” said the superintendent, waying at the mills beyond
the window, “We’ve got the bastards beateti and on the run. You
don't have to worry, Mr. Rearden. It’s all oVcr.”

“It is,” said Rearden. “There must be a |ot of work left for you
to do. Doctor.” <

“Oh yes! I never thought I’d live to see the day when — ”

“I know. Go ahead, take care of it. Til be all right.”

“Yes, Mr. Rearden.”

“I'll take care of the place,” said the superintendent, as the doctor

912

hurried out. “Everything’s under control, Mr, Rearden. But it was
the dirtiest—”

“I know,” said Rearden. “Who was it that saved my life? Some-
body grabbed me as 1 fell, and fired at the thugs.”

“Did he! Straight at Iheir faces. Blew their heads off. That was
that new furnace foreman of ours. Been here two months. Best man
I’ve ever had. He’s the one who got wise to what the gravy boys
were planning and warned me, this atternoon. Told me to arm our
men, as many as we could. We got no help from the police or the
state troopers, they dodged all over the place with the fanciest delays
and excuses I ever heard of, it was all fixed in advance, the goons
weren’t expecting any armed resistance. It was that furnace fore-
man— Frank Adams is his name— who organized our defense, ran
the whole battle, and stood on a root, picking off the scum that came
loo close to the gate. Boy, what a marksman! I shudder to think
how many of our lives he saved tonight. Those bastards were out
for blood, Mr. Rearden.”

“I’d like to see him."

“He’s waiting somewhere outside. It’s he who brought you here,
and he asked permission to speak to you. when possible."

“Send him in Then go back out there, lake charge, finish the job.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Rearden?”

“No, nothing else.”

He lay still, alone in the silence of his office. He knew' that the
meaning ot his mills had ceased to exist, and the fullness of the
knowledge left no room for the pain of rcgreifing an illusion. He had
seen, in a final image, the soul and essence of his enemies: the
mindJeSvS face of the thug with the club. It was not the face itself
that made him draw back in horror, but the professors, the philoso-
phers, the moralists, the mystics who had released that face upon
the world

He tell a peculiar cleanliness. It was made of pride and of love
lor this earth, this earth which was his, not theirs. It was the feeling
which had moved him through his life, the feeling which some among
men know in their youth, then betray, but which he had never be-
trayed and had carried within him as a battered, attacked, unidenti-
fied, but living motor— the feeling which he could now experience
in its full, uncontested purity: the sense of his own superlative value
and the superlative value of his life. It was the final certainty that
his life was his, to be lived with no bondage to evil, and that that
bondage had never been necessary. It was the radiant serenity of
knowing that he w'as tree of fear, of pain, of guilt.

If it’s true, he thought, that there are avengers who are working
for the deliverance of men like me, let them see me now, let them
tell me their secret, let them claim me, let them — “Come in!” he
said aloud, in answer to the knock on his door.

The door opened and he lay still. The man standing on the thresh-
old, with disheveled hair, a soot-streaked face and furnace-smudgec
arms, dressed in scorched overalls and bloodstained shirt, standing
as if he wore a cape waving behind hint in the wind, was Franciscc
d’Anconia.

913

It seemed to Rearden that his consciousness shot forward ahead
of his body, it was his body that refused to move, stunned by shock,
while his mind was laughing, telling him that this was the most natu-
ral, the most-to-have-been -expected event in the world.

Francisco smiled, a smile of greeting to a childhood friend on a
summer morning, as if nothing else had ever been possible between
them — and Rearden found himself smiling in answer, sonic part of
him feeling an incredulous wonder, yet knowing that it was irresist-
ibly right.

“You’ve been torturing yourself for months,” said Francisco, ap-
proaching him, ‘‘wondering what words you'd use to ask my forgive-
ness and whether you had the right to ask it, if, you ever saw me
again— but now you see that it isn't necessary, that there’s nothing
to ask or to forgive.”

“Yes,” said Rearden, the word coming as an astonished whisper,
but by the time he finished his sentence he knew that this was the
greatest tribute he could offer, “yes. I know it.”

Francisco sat down on the couch beside him, and slowly moved
his hand over Rearden's forehead. It was like a healing touch that
closed the past.

“There’s only one thing l want to tell you,” said Rearden. “I want
you to hear it from me: you kept your oath, you were my friend."

“I knew that you knew it. You knew it from the first. You knew
it, no matter what you thought of my actions. You slapped me be
cause you could not force yourself to doubt it.”

“That . . whispered Rearden, staring at him, "that was the thing
I had no right to tell you ... no right to claim as my excuse . . ”

“Didn’t you suppose I'd understand it?”

“1 wanted to find you ... I had no right to look for you . . . And
all that time, you were — ” fie pointed at Francisco's clothes, then
his hand dropped helplessly and he closed his eyes.

“I was your furnace foreman,” said Francisco, grinning. “1 didn't
think you'd mind that. You offered me the job yourself.”

“You’ve been here, as my bodyguard, for two months?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been here, ever since- fie stopped.

“That’s right. On the morning of the day when you were reading
my farewell message over the roofs of New York, J was reporting
here for my first shift as your furnace foreman.”

“Tell me,” said Rearden slowly, “that night at James Taggart's
wedding, when you said that you were after y0ur greatest conquest . . .
you meant me, didn’t you?” ;

“Of course.” v

Francisco drew himself up a little, as if fof a solemn task, his face
earnest, the smile remaining only in his eyfs, “1 have a great deal
to tell you,” he said. “But first, will you ifcpeat a word you once
offered me and 1 ... I had to reject, because I knew that I was not
free to accept it?”

Rearden smiled. “What word, FranciscoV?

Francisco inclined his head in acceptance, and answered, “Thank
you, fiank^ Then he raised his head. “Now I’ll tell you the things

914

I had come to say, but did not finish, that night when I came here
for the first time. 1 think you’re ready to hear it.”

“I am.”

The glare of steel being poured from a furnace shot to the sky
beyond the window. A red glow went sweeping slowly over the walls
of the office, over the empty desk, over Rearden’s face, as if in salute
and farewell.

Chapter VII "THIS IS JOHN GALT SPEAKING"

The doorbell was ringing like an alarm, in a long, demanding scream,
bioken by the impatient stabs of someone's trantic finger.

leaping out o< bed, Dagny noticed the cold, pale sunlight of late
morning and a clock on a distant spire marking the hour of ten. She
had worked at the office till lour a m and had left word not to expect
her till noon.

The white face ungroomed by panic, that confronted her when she
threw the door open, was James Taggart.

‘He’s gone!" he cried.

“Who’”

"Hank Rcarden! He’s gone. quit, vanished, disappeared!”

She stood still for a moment, holding the bell of the dressing gown
she had been tying; then, as the full knowledge reached her. her
hands jerked the belt light — as il snapping her body in two at the
waistline -while she burst out laughing. It was a sound of triumph.

He stared at her in bewilderment. “What’s the matter with you?”
he gasped. “Haven't you understood?”

“Come in, Jim,” she said, turning contemptuously, walking into
the living room. “Oh yes. I’ve understood.”

“He's quit! Gone! Gone like all the others! Left his mills, his
bank accounts, his property, everything! Just vanished! Took some
clothing and whatever he had in the safe in his apartment — they
lound a safe left open in his l^edroom, open and empty— that's all!
No word, no note, no explanation! They called me from Washington,
but it’s all over town! The news, 1 mean, the stoiy! They can’t keep
it quiet! They’ve tried to. but . . Nobody knows how it got out. but
it went through the mills like one of those furnace break-outs, the
word that he’d gone, and then . . . before anyone could stop it, a
whole bunch ot them vanished! The superintendent, the chief metal-
lurgist, the chid engineer. Reardon's secretary, even the hospital
doctor! And God knows how many others! Deserting, the bastards!
Deserting us. in spite of all the penalties we've set up! He's quit and
the rest arc quitting and those nulls are just left there, standing still!
Do you understand what that means?”

“Do youV' she asked.

He had thrown his story at her, sentence by sentence, as if trying
to knock the smile off her face, an odd, unmoving smile of bitterness
and triumph: he had failed, “it's a national catastrophe! What’s the
matter with you? Don’t you see that it’s a fatal blow? It will break

915

the last of the country’s morale and economy! We can’t let him
vanish! You’ve got to bring him back!”

Her smile disappeared.

“You can!” he cried. “You’re the only one who can! He's your
lover, isn't he? ... Oh, don’t look like that! it’s no time for squea-
mishness! It's no time for anything except that we’ve got to have
him! You must know where he is! You can find him! You must
reach him and bring him back!”

The way she now looked at him was worse than her smile— she
looked as if she were seeing him naked and would not endure the
sight much longer. “I can't bring him back,” she said, not raising
her voice. “And l wouldn’t, if I could. Now get out of here.”

“But the national catastrophe — ”

“Get out.”

She did not notice his exit. She stood alone in the middle of her
living room, her head dropping, her shoulders sagging, while she was
smiling, a smile of pain, of tenderness, of greeting to Hank Rearden.
She wondered dimly why she should feel so glad that he had found
liberation, so certain that he was right, and yet refuse herself the
same deliverance. Two sentences were beating in her mind; one was
the triumphant sweep of: He’s free, he’s out of their reach! — the
other was like a prayer oi dedication: There’s still a chance to win,
but let me be the only victim. . . .

It was strange — she thought, in the days that followed, looking at
the men around her — that catastrophe had made them aware of
Hank Rearden with an intensity that his achievements had not
aroused, as it the paths of their consciousness were open to disaster,
but not to value. Some spoke of him in shrill curses -others whis-
pered, with a look of guilt and terror, as if a nameless retribution
were now to descend upon them— some tried, with hysterical eva-
' siveness, to act as if nothing had happened.

The newspapers, like puppets on tangled strings, were shouting
with the same belligerence and on the same dates: “It is social trea-
son to ascribe too much importance to Hank Reardon’s desertion
and to undermine public morale by the old-fashioned belief that an
individual can be of any significance to society.” “It is social treason
to spread rumors about the disappearance of Hank Rearden, Mi.
Rearden has not disappeared, he is in his office, running his mills,
as usual, and there has been no trouble at Rearden Steel, except a
minor disturbance, a private scuffle among some workers.” “It is
social treason to cast an unpatriotic light upon the tragic loss of
Hank Rearden, Mr. Rearden has not deserted, he was killed in an
automobile accident on his way to work, and this gricf-strickcn family
has insisted on a private funeral.” j

It was strange, she thought, to obtain ne^s by means of nothing
but denials, as if existence had ceased, facts had vanished and only
the frantic negatives uttered by officials and columnists gave any clue
to the reality they were denying. “It is not true that the Miller Steel
Foundry of New Jersey has gone out of business.” “It is not true
that the Jansen Motor Company of Michigan has closed its doors.”
“It is a vicious, anti-social lie that manufacturers of steel products

916

are collapsing under the threat of a steel shortage. There is no reason
to expect a steel shortage/’ “U is a slanderous, unfounded rumor
that a Steel Unification Plan had been in the making and that it had
been favored by Mr. Orren Boyle. Mr. Boyle’s attorney has issued
an emphatic denial and has assured the press that Mr. Boyle is now
vehemently opposed to any such plan. Mr. Boyle, at the moment, is
suffering from a nervous breakdown.”

But some news could be witnessed in the streets of New York, in
the cold, dank twilight of autumn evenings: a crowd gathered in front
of a hardware store, where the owner had thrown the doors open,
inviting people to help themselves to the last of his meager stock,
while he laughed in shrieking sobs and went smashing his plate-glass
windows —a crowd gathered at the door of a run-down apartment
house, where a police ambulance stood waiting, while the bodies of
a man, his wife and their three children were being removed from
a gas-filled room; the man had been a small manufacturer of steel
castings.

If they see Hank Reardcn’s value now— she thought — why didn't
they see it sooner? Why hadn't they averted their own doom and
spared him his years of thankless torture? She found no answer.

In the silence of sleepless nights, she thought that Hank Rearden
and she had now changed places, he was in Atlantis and she was
locked out by a screen ot light — he was, perhaps, calling to her as
she had called to his struggling airplane, but no signal could reach
her through that screen.

Yet the screen split open tor one brief break — for the length of a
letter she received a week after he vanished. The envelope bore no
return address, only the postmark of some hamlet in Colorado. The
letter contained two sentences:

I have met him. I don’t blame you.

H. R.

She sat still for a long time, looking at the letter, as if unable to
move or to feel. She felt nothing, she thought, then noticed that her
shoulders were trembling in a faint, continuous shudder, then
grasped that the tearing violence within her was made of an exultant
tribute, of gratitude and of despair — her tribute to the victory that
the meeting tit these two men implied, the final victory of both — her
gratitude thai those in Atlantis still regarded her as one of them and
had granted her the exception of receiving a message — the despair
of the knowledge that her blankness was a struggle not to hear the
questions she was now hearing. Had Galt abandoned her? Had he
gone to the valley to meet his greatest conquest? Would he come
back? Had he given her up? The unendurable was not that these
questions had no answer, but that the answer was so simply, so easily
within her reach and that she had no right to take a step to reach it.

She had made no attempt to see him. Every morning, for a month*
on entering her office, she had been conscious, not of the room
around her, but of the tunnels below, under the floors of the build-
ing — and she had worked, feeling as if some marginal part of her
brain was computing figures, reading reports, making decisions in a
rush of lifeless activity, while her living mind was inactive and still,

917

frozen in contemplation, forbidden to move beyond the sentence:
He's down there. The only inquiry she had permitted herself had
been a glance at the payroll list of the Terminal workers. She had
seen the name: Galt, John, The list had carried it, openly, for over
twelve years. She had seen an address next to the name — and, for a
month, had struggled to forget it.

It had seemed hard to live through that month — yet now, as she
looked at the letter, the thought that Galt had gone was still harder
to bear. Even the struggle of resisting his proximity had been a link
to him, a price to pay, a victory achieved in his name. Now there
was nothing, except a question that was not to be asked. His presence
in the tunnels had been her motor through those days— just as his
presence in the city had been her motor through the months of that
summer — just as his presence somewhere in the world had been her
motor through the years before she ever heard his name. Now she
felt as if her motor, too, had stopped.

She went on, with the bright, puie glitter ot a five dollar gold
piece, which she kept in her pocket, as her last drop of luel. She
went on, protected from the world around her by a last armor:
indifference.

The newspapers did not mention the outbreaks of violence that
had begun to burst across the country — but she watched them
through the reports of train conductors about bullet-riddled cars,
dismantled tracks, attacked trains, besieged stations, in Nebraska, in
Oregon, m Texas, in Montana — the futile, doomed outbreaks,
prompted by nothing but despair, ending in nothing but destruction.
Some were the explosions of local gangs; some spread wider, '('here
were districts that rose in blind rebellion, arrested the local officials,
expelled the agents of Washington, killed the tax collectors— then,
announcing their secession from the country, went on to the final
extreme of the very evil that had destroyed them, as if lighting mur-
der with suicide: went on tp seize all property within their reach, to
declare community bondage of all to all, and to perish within a week,
their meager loot consumed, in the bloody hatred of all tor all, in
the chaos of no rules save that of the gun, to perish under the lethar-
gic thrust of a few worn soldiers sent out from Washington to bring
order to the ruins.

The newspapers did not mention tt. The editorials went on speak-
ing of self-denial as the road to future progress, of self-sacrifice as
the moral imperative, of greed as the enemy, of love as the solu-
tion — their threadbare phrases as sickcningly sweet as the odor of
ether in a hospital.

Rumors went spreading through the cour^try in whispers of cynical
terror — yet people read the newspapers ant| acted as if they believed
what they read, each competing with the ofhers on who would keep
most blindly silent, each pretending that hie did not know what he
knew, each striving to believe that the unnamed was the unreal. It
was as if a volcano were cracking open, ypt the people at the foot
of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the
boiling trickles, and went on believing that their only danger was to
acknowledge the reality of these signs.

918

“Listen to Mr. Thompson’s report on the world crisis, November
22 !”

it was the first acknowledgment of the unacknowledged. The an*
nouncemcnts began to appear a week in advance and went ringing
across the country. “Mr. Thompson will give the people a report on
the world crisis! Listen to Mr. Thompson on every radio station and
television channel at 8 pm , on November 22!“

First, the front pages of the newspapers and the shouts of the
radio voices had explained it: "To counteract the fears and rumors
spread by the enemies of the people, Mr. Thompson will address the
country on November 22 and will give us a full report on the slate
of the world in this solemn moment of global crisis. Mr. Thompson
will put an end to those sinister forces whose purpose is to keep us
m terror and despair. He will bring light into the darkness of the
world and will show us the way out of our tragic problems — a stern
way, as befits the gravity of this hour, but a way of glory, as granted
by the rebirth o! light. Mr. Thompson’s address will be carried by
every radio station in this country and in all countries throughout
the world, wherever radio waves may still be heard.”

Then the chorus broke loose and went growing day by day. “Listen
to Mr. Thompson on November 22’“ said daily headlines. “Don't
torget Mr. Thompson on November 22!“ cried radio stations at the
end of every program. "Mr. T hompson will tell you the truth!" said
placards in subways and buses — then posters on the walls of build-
ings then billboards on deserted highways.

“Don't despair 1 Listen to Mr Thompson!” Said pennants on gov-
ernment cars. “Don’t give up! Listen to Mr. Thompson*” said ban-
ners in offices and shops. “Have faith’ Listen to Mr. Thompson!”
said voices in churches. “Mr. Thompson will give you the answer!”
wrote army airplanes across the sky. the letters dissolving in space,
and only the last two words remaining by the time the sentence
was completed.

Public loud-speakers were built in the squares ot New York for
the day of the speech, and came to rasping life once an hour, in
time with the ringing ot distant clocks, to send over the worn rattle
of the traffic, over the heads ot the shabby crowd, the sonorous,
mechanical cry of an alarm-toned voice* “Listen to Mr. Thompson's
report on the world crisis, November 22’“ — a cry rolling through the
frosted air and vanishing among the foggy roof tops, under the blank
page of a calendar that bore no date.

On the afternoon of November 22, James Taggart told Dagny that
Mr. Thompson wished to meet her for a conference before the
broadcast.

“In Washington?” she asked incredulously, glancing at her watch.

“Well. I must say that you haven’t been reading the newspapers
or keeping track of important events. Don’t you know that Mr,
Thompson is to broadcast from New York? He has come here to
confer with the leaders of industry, as well as of labor, science, the
professions, and the best of the country’s leadership in general. He
has requested that 1 bring you to the conference.”

“Where is it to be held?”

91 <)

“At the broadcasting studio.”

“They don’t expect me to speak on the air in support of their
policies, do they?”

“Don’t worry, they wouldn't let vow near a microphone! They just
want to hear your opinion, and you can’t refuse, not m a national
emergency, not when it's an invitation from Mr, Thompson in per-
son!'’ He spoke impatiently, avoiding her eyes.

“When is that conference to be held?”

“At seven-thirty.”

“Not much time to give a conference about a national emergency,
is it?”

“Mr. Thompson is a very busy man. Now please don’t argue, don’t
start being difficult, I don’t see what you’re — ”

“All right,” she said indifferently, ‘Til come,” and added,
prompted by the kind at feeling that would have made her reluctant
to venture without a witness into a conference ot gangsters, “but I’ll
bring Eddie Willers along with me.”

He frowned, considering it for a moment, with a look ot annoyance
more than anxiety. “Oh. all right, if you wish,” he snapped, shrug-
g*ng-

She came to the broadcasting studio with James Taggart as a po-
liceman at one side of her and Eddie Willers as a bodyguard at the
other. Taggart’s face was resentful and tense, Eddie’s — resigned, yet
wondering and curious. A stage set of pasteboard walls had been
erected in a corner of the vast, dim space, representing a stiffly tradi-
tional suggestion of a cross between a stately drawing room and a
modest study. A semicircle of empty armchairs filled the set, sug-
gesting a grouping from a family album, with microphones dangling
like bait at the end of long poles extended for fishing among the
chairs.

The best leadership of the country, that stood about in nervous
clusters, had the look of a remnant sale in a bankrupt store: she saw
Wesley Mouch. Eugene Lawson, Chick Morrison, Tinky Holloway,
Dr. Floyd Ferris, Dr. Simon Pritchett. Ma C halmers, Fred Kinnan.
and a seedy handful of businessmen among whom the half-scared,
half-flattered figure of Mr. Mowen of the Amalgamated Switch and
Signal Company was, incredibly, intended to represent an indus-
trial tycoon.

But the figure that gave her an instant’s shock was Dr Robert
Stadler, She had not known that a face could age so greatly within
the brief space of one year: the look of timeless energy, of boyish
eagerness, was gone, and nothing remained of the face except the
lines of contemptuous bitterness. He stood alone, apart from the
others, and she saw the moment when his eyesisaw her enter; he looked
like a man in a whorehouse who had accepted the nature of his
surroundings until suddenly caught there b^ his wife: it was a look
of guilt in the process of becoming hatred! Then she saw Robert
Stadler, the scientist, turn away as if he had not seen her — as if his
refusal to see could wipe a fact out of existence.

Mr. Thompson was pacing among the groups, snapping at random
bystanders in the restless manner of a man of action who feels con-

920

tempt for the duly of making speeches. He was clutching a sheaf of
typewritten pages, as if it were a bundle of old clothing about to
be discarded.

James Taggart caught him in mid-step, to say uncertainly and
loudly, “Mr. Thompson, may 1 present my sister. Miss Dagny
Taggart?"

“So nice of you to come. Miss Taggart." said Mr. Thompson, shak-
ing her hand as if she were another voter from back home whose
name he had never heard before; then he marched briskly off.

“Where's the conference, Jim?’' she asked, and glanced at the
clock: it was a huge white dial with a black hand slicing the minutes,
like a knife moving toward the hour ol eight.

"I can't help it! I don't run this show!” he snapped.

Eddie Willers glanced at her with a look of bitterly patient as-
tonishment, and stepped closer to her side.

A radio receiver was playing a program of military marches broad-
cast from another studio, baif-drowning the fragments of nervous
voices, of hastily aimless steps, of screeching machinery being pulled
to focus upon the drawing-room set.

“Stay tuned to hear Mr. Thompson's report on the world crisis at
eight pm !” cried the martial voice of an announce!, from the radio-
receiver -when the hand on the dial reached the hour ol 7:45.

“Step on it, boys, step on it!” snapped Mr. Thompson, while the
radio burst into another march.

It was 7:50 when C hick Morrison, the Morale Conditioner, who
seemed to be in charge, cried. “All right, boys and girls, all right,
let's take our places!” waving a bunch of notepaper, like a baton,
toward the light-flooded circle of atmehairs,

Mr. Thompson thudded down upon the central chair, m the man-
ner of grabbing a vacant seat in a subway.

Chick Morrison's assistants were herding the crowd toward the
circle of light

“A happy family,” ( hick Morrison explained, “the count! y must
see us as a big, united, happy — What's the matter with that thing?*'
The radio music had gone off abruptly, choking on an odd little gasp
ol static, cut in the middle of a ringing phrase. It was 7:51. He
shiugged and went on: “ — happy family. Hurry up. boys. Take close-
ups of Mr Thompson, first.”

The hand of the dock went slicing off the minutes, while press
photographers clicked their cameras at Mr. Thompson’s sourly impa-
tient face.

“Mr. Thompson will sit between science and industry!” Chick
Morrison announced. "Dr. Stadler, please — the chair on Mr. Thomp-
son's left. Miss Taggart — this way, please — on Mr. Thompson's
right.”

Dr. Stadler obeyed. She did not move.

“It's not just for the press, it’s for the television audiences,” Chick
Morrison explained to her, in the tone of an inducement.

She made a step forward. “I will not take part in this program,”
she said evenly, addressing Mr. Thompson.

“You won't?” he asked blankly, with the kind of look he would

921

have worn if one of the flower vases had suddenly refused! to perform
its parts.

“Dagny, for Christs sake!” cried James Taggart in panic.

“What's the matter with her?” asked Mr. Thompson.

“But, Miss Taggart! Why?” cried Chick Morrison.

“You all know why,” she said to the faces around her. “You
should have known better than to try that again.”

“Miss Taggart!” yelled Chick Morrison, as she turned to go. “It's
a national emer— ”

Then a man came rushing toward Mr. Thompson, and she stopped,
as did everyone else — and the look on the man's face swept the
crowd info an abruptly total silence. He was the station’s chief engi-
neer, and it was odd to see a look of primitive terror struggling
against his remnant of civilized control.

“Mr. Thompson.” he said, “we . . we might have to delay the

broadcast.”

“ What ?" cried Mr. Thompson.

The hand of the dial stood at 7:58.

“We re trying to fix it. Mr. Thompson, we’re trying to find out
what it is . . . but we might not be on time and — ”

“What are you talking about? What happened?”

“We're trying to locate the — ”

“What happened?”

“I don't know! But . . . We . . we can't get on the air, Mr

ITiompson.”

There was a moment of silence, then Mr. Thompson asked, his
voice unnaturally low. “Are you crazy 9 ”

“l must be 1 wish 1 were. 1 can’t make it out. The station is dead ”

“Mechanical trouble?” yelled Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet
“Mechanical trouble, God damn you, at a time like this? It that's
how you run this station—”

The chief engineer shook his head slowly, m the manner of an
adult who is reluctant to frighten a child. “It's not this station, Mr
Thompson.” he said softly. “It’s every station in the country, as fai
as we’ve been able to check. And there is no mechanical trouble
Neither here nor elsewhere. The equipment is in order, in perfect
order, and they all report the same, but . . . but all radio stations went
off the air at seven-fifty -one, and . . . and nobody can discover why."

“But — ” cried Mr. Thompson, stopped, glanced about him and
screamed, “Not tonight! You can't let it happen tonight! You’ve got
to get me on the air!”

“Mr. Thompson,” the man said slowly, ^we’ve called the electronic
laboratory of the State Science Institute; They . . . they’ve never
seen anything like it. They said it might be a natural phenomenon,
some sort ot cosmic disturbance o i an unprecedented kind, only — "

“Well?”

“Only they don't think it is. We don’t* either. They said it looks
like radio waves, but of a frequency never produced before, never
observed anywhere, never discovered by anybody.”

No one answered him. In a moment, he went on, his voice oddly

922

solemn: '‘It looks like a wall of radio waves jamming the air, and
we can’t get through it, we can t touch it, we can’t break it . . .
What’s more, we can’t locate its source, not by any of our usual
methods. . . Those waves seem to come from a transmitter that . . .
that makes any known to us look like a child's toy!”

“But that’s not possible!” The cry came from behind Mr. Thomp-
son and they all whirled in its direction, startled by its note of pecu-
liar terror; it came from Dr. Stadier. “There's no such thing! There’s
nobody on earth to make it!”

The chief engineer spread his hands out. “ That’s it. Dr Stadier,”
he said wearily. “It can't be possible It shouldn’t be possible. But
theie it is.”

'Well, do something about it!” cried Mr. Thompson to the crowd
at large.

No one answered or moved.

“I won’t permit this!” cried Mr. Thompson “I won't permit it!
Tonight of all nights’ I've got to make that speech! Do something!
Solve it, whatever it is’ 1 order you to solve it!”

The chief engineer was looking at him blankly.

“I’ll tire the lot ot you for this! I’ll lire every electronic engineer
in the country! I'll put the whole profession on trial for sabotage,
desertion and treason! Do you hear me*’ Now do something. God
damn you! Do something!”

I he chiet engineer was looking at him impassively, as if words
weie not conveying anything any longer.

“Isn't there anybody to obey an order?” cried Mr. Thompson,
isn't there a brain left in this country 0 '

The hand of the clock reached the "dot of 8:(X)

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice that came from the radio
icceivcr — a man’s clear, calm, implacable voice, the kind of voice
that had not been heard on the airwaves for years — “Mr. Thompson
will not speak to you tonight His time is up. 1 have taken it over.
You were to hear a report on the world crisis. That is what you are
going to hear.”

lhree gasps of recognition greeted the voice, but nobody had the
power to notice them among the sounds of the crowd, which were
beyond the stage of cries. One was a gasp of triumph, another — of
terror, the third — of bewilderment. Three persons had recognized
i he speaker: Dagny, Dr. Stadier. Eddie W tilers. Nobody glanced at
Eddie Willers; but Dagny and Dr. Stadier glanced at each other. She
saw that his face was distorted by as evil a terror as one could ever
bear to see; he saw that she knew and that the way she looked at
him was as if the speaker had slapped his tace.

“For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This
ts John Galt speaking. 1 am the man who loves hts life. 1 am the
man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who
has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world, and
if you -wish to know why you are perishing— you who dread knowl-
edge — l am the man who will now tell you.”

The chief engineer was the only one able to move; he ran to a
television set and struggled frantically with its dials. But the screen

923

remained empty; the speaker had not chosen to be seen. Only his
voice filled the airways of the country — of the world, thought the
chief engineer — sounding as if he were speaking here, in this room,
not to a group, but to one man; it was not the tone of addressing a
meeting, but the tone of addressing a mind.

“You have heard it said that this is an age of moral crisis. You
have said it yourself, half in fear, half in hope that the words had
no meaning. You have cried that man’s sins are destroying the world
and you have cursed human nature for its unwillingness to practice
the virtues you demanded. Since virtue, to you, consists of sacrifice,
you have demanded more sacrifices at every successive disaster. In
the name of a return to morality, you have sacrificed all those evils
which you held as the cause of your plight. You have sacrificed
justice to mercy. You have sacrificed independence to unity. You
have sacrificed reason to faith. You have sacrificed wealth to need.
You have sacrificed self-esteem to self-denial. You have sacrificed
happiness to duty.

“You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and
achieved all that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you
shrink in horror from the sight of the world around you? That world
is not the product of your sins, it is the product and the image nt
your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought into reality in its full and
final perfection. You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it.
and you have wished it. and I — I am the man who has granted you
your wish.

“Your ideal had an implacable enemy, which your code of morality
was designed to destroy. I have withdrawn that enemy. I have taken it
out of your way and out of your reach. I have removed the source
of all those evils you w'ere sacrificing one by one. I have ended your
battle. I have stopped your motor. I have deprived your world ot
man’s mind.

“Men do not live by the mind, you say? 1 have withdrawn those who
do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose
mind isn’t. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have
withdrawn those for whom there aren’t.

“While you were dragging to your sacrificial altars the men ot
justice, of independence, of reason, of wealth, of sell-esteem — I beat
you to it, I reached them first. 1 told them the nature of the game
you were playing and the nature of that moral code of yours, which
they had been too innocently generous to grasp. I showed them the
way to live by another morality — mine. It is mine that they chose
to follow.

“All the men who have vanished, the ipen you hated, yet dreaded
to lose, it is I who have taken them awaj| from you. Do not attempt
to find us. We do not choose to be foun|i. Do not cry that it is our
duty to serve you. We do not recognize ^uch duty. Do not cry that
you need us. We do not consider need a|claim. Do not cry that you
own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we,
the men of the mind.

“We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike
against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. Wc

924

are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness
is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.

“There is a difference between our strike and all those you’ve
practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands,
hut of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We
have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according
to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer.
We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics.
We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any
longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We
have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to
lace reality — the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now. a
world without mind.

“Wc have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who
had always been the givers, but have only now understood it. We
have no demands to present to you. no terms to bargain about,
no compromise to leach. You have nothing to offer us We do not
need you .

“Arc you now crying: No, this was not what you wanted? A mind-
less world of ruins was not your goal'/ You did not want us to leave
you? You moral cannibals. 1 know that you’ve always known what
it was that you wanted But your game is up. because now we know'
it, loo.

“Through centuries of scourges and disasteis, brought about by
vour code of morality, you have cried that your code had been bro-
ken. that the scourges were punishment for breaking it. that men
were too weak and too selfish to spill all the blooii it required. You
damned man, you damned existence, you damned this earth, but
never dared to question your code. Your victims took the blame and
snuggled on, with your cuises as reward lor their martyrdom — while
you went on crying that youi code was noble, but human nature was
not good enough to practice it. And no one rose to ask the question:
Good? — by what standard?

“You wanted to know John Galt's identity I am the man who has
asked that question.

“Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punish-
ment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is
not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code
that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax,
the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on
living, what you now need is not to return to morality — you who
have never known any - but to discover it.

“You have heard no concepts of morality but the mystical or the
social. You have been taught that morality is a code of behavior
imposed on you by whim, the whim of a supernatural power or the
whim of society, to serve God’s purpose or your neighbor’s well are,
to please an authority beyond the grave or else next door — but not
to serve your life or pleasure. Your pleasure, you have been taught,
is to be found in immorality, your interests would best be served by
<wil, and any moral code must be designed not for you. but against
you, not to further your life, but to drain it.

925

“For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those
who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed
that it belongs to your neighbors — between those who preached that
the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those
who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompe
tents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to
you and that the good is to live it.

“Both sides agreed that morality demands the surrender of your
self-interest and of your mind, that the moral and the practical are
opposites, that morality is not the province of reason, but the prov-
ince of faith and force. Both sides agreed that no rational morality
is possible, that there is no right or wrong in reason— that in reason
there’s no reason to be moral.

“Whatever else they fought about, it was against man’s mind that
all your moralists have stood united. It was man's mind that all their
schemes and systems were intended to despoil and destroy. Now
choose to perish or to iearn that the anti-mind is the anti-life.

“Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him.
survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His
mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must
act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose ol
his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food
and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch — or build a cyclo-
tron — without a knowledge of his aim and ot the means to achieve
it. To remain alive, he must think.

“But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so reckless!}
call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name,
is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness . Reason
does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process,
the connections of logic arc not made by instinct. The function ol
your stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind
is not. In any hour and issue ol your life, you are free to think or
to evade that effort. But you are not tree to escape from your nature,
from the fact that reason is your means of survival — so that for you
who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be* is the
question ‘to think or not to think.’

“A being of volitional consciousness has no automatic course ot
behavior. He needs a code ol values to guide his actions. ‘Value’ is
that which one acts to gam and keep, ‘virtue’ is the action by which
one gains and keeps it. ‘Value’ presupposes an answer to the ques-
tion: of value to whom and for what? Value’ presupposes a standard,
a purpose and the necessity of action in the face of an alternative
Where there are no alternatives, no valujbs are possible.

“There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe; exis
tence or non-existence — and it pertains to a single class of entities
to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is uncondi-
tional, the existence of life is not; it depends on a specific course ol
action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot
cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alter-
native; the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining
and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies,

926

its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is
only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible.
It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

“A plant must feed itself in order to live; the sunlight, the water,
the chemicals it needs are the values its nature has set it to pursue;
its life is the standard of value directing its actions. Bui a plant has
no choice of action; there are alternatives in the conditions it encoun-
ters, but there is no alternative in its function: it acts automatically
lo further its life, it cannot act for its own destruction.

“An animal is equipped for sustaining its life; its senses provide
it with an automatic code of action, an automatic knowledge of what
is good for it or evil. It has no power to extend its knowledge or to
evade it. In conditions where its knowledge proves inadequate, it
dies. But so long as it lives, it acts on its knowledge, with automatic
safety and no power of choice, it is unable to ignore its own good,
unable to decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.

“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction
jiom all other living species is the necessity to act m the lace of
alternatives by means ol volitional choice He has no automatic
knowledge of what is good for him or evil, vs hat values his life de-
pends on, what course of action it requires Aie you prattling about
an instinct of self-preservation 9 An instinct of self-preservation is
precisely what man does not possess An ‘instinct’ is an unerring and
automatic form of knowledge A desire is not an instinct. A desire
to live does not give you the knowledge required lor living. And
even man’s desire to live is not automatic your secret evil today is
that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a
love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it.
Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process
ot thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has
the power to act as his own destroyer — and that is the way he has
acted through most of his history

“A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would
not survive. A plant that stiuggled to mangle its roots, a bird that
lought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence
they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny
and to destroy his tnind.

‘‘Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter
of choice — and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being
or suicidal animal. Man has to be man— by choice; he has to hold
his life as a value — by choice; he has to learn to sustain it — by choice;
he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues —
by choice.

“A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.

“Whoever you are, you who are hearing me now, 1 am speaking
lo whatever living remnant is left uncorrupted within you, to the
remnant of the human, to your mind , and l say: There is a morality
of reason, a morality proper to man, and Man's Life is its standard
of value.

“All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the
good; all that which destroys it is the evil.

927

“Man's life, as required by his nature, is not the life of a mindless
brute, of a looting thug or a mooching mystic, but the life of a
thinking being — not life by means of force or fraud, but life by means
of achievement — not survival at any price, since there’s only one
price that pays for man’s survival: reason.

“Man’s life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its
purpose. If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your
actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—
for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable
value which is your life.

“Since life requires a specific course of action, any other course
will destroy it. A being who does not hold his own life as the motive
and goal of his actions, is acting on the motive and standard of death
Such a being is a metaphysical monstrosity, struggling to oppose,
negate and contradict the fact of his own existence, running blindly
amuck on a trail of destruction, capable of nothing but pain.

“Happiness is the successful stale of life, pain is an agent of death.
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the
achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to
find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness — to value the
failure of yout values — is an insolent negation of morality A doc
trine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seek-
ing slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your
standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man- -even
man — is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the
achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

“But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of
irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any
random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires,
so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the
torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness
proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you. not to sultei
and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

“Sweep aside -those parasites of subsidized classrooms, who live
on the profits of the mind of others and proclaim that man needs
no morality, no values, no code of behavior. They, who pose as
scientists and claim that man is only an animal, do not grant him
inclusion in the law of existence they have granted to the lowest of
insects. They recognize that every living species has a way of survival
demanded by its nature, they do not claim that a fish can live out
of water or that a dog can live without its sense of smell— but man.
they claim, the most complex of beings, man can survive in any wav
whatever, man has no identity, no natut^, and there’s no practical
reason why he cannot live with his mean^of survival destroyed, with
his mind throttled and placed at the disposal of any orders they might
care to issue.

“Sweep aside those hatred-eaten mystfes, who pose as friends ot
humanity and preach that the highest virtue man can practice is to
hold his own life as of no value. Do they tell you that the purpose
of morality is to curb man’s instinct of self-preservation? It is for

928

the purpose of self-preservation that man needs a code of morality.
The only man who desires to be moral is the man who desires to live.

“No, you do not have to live; it is your basic act of choice; but if
you choose to live, you must live as a man— by the work and the
judgment of your mind.

“No, you do not have to live as a man; it is an act of moral choice.
But you cannot live as anything else— and the alternative is that
state of living death which you now see within you and around you,
the state of a thing unfit for existence, no longer human and less
than animal, a thing that knows nothing but pain and drags itself
through its span of years in the agony of unthinking self-destruction.

“No, you do not have to think; it is an act of moral choice. But
someone had to think to keep you alive, if you choose to default,
you default on existence and you pass the deficit to some moral man,
expecting him to sacrifice his good for the sake of letting you survive
by your evil.

“No, you do not have to be a man; but today those who are,
are not there any longei. I have removed your means of survival —
\our victims.

“It you wish to know how 1 have done it and what 1 told them
to make them quit, you are hearing it now 1 told them, in essence,
the statement I am making tonight. They were men who had lived
by my code, but had not known how great a virtue it represented.

I made them see it. I brought them, not a re-evaluation, but only an
identification of their values.

“We, the men of the mind, are now on strike against you in the
name ol a single axiom, which is the root ol our moral code, just as
the root of yours is the wish to escape it. the axiom that existence
exists.

“Existence exists— and the act ot grasping that statement implies
two corollary axioms, that something exists which one perceives and
that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the fac-
ulty of perceiving that which exists

“If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness; a consciousness
with nothing to be conscious of is a conti adiction in terms. A con-
sciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms:
before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious
of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist,
what you possess is not consciousness.

“Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two — existence
and consciousness — are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the
irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any
part of your knowledge and in its sum, from the first ray of light
you perceive at the start of your life to the widest erudition you
might acquire at its end. Whether you know the shape of a pebble
or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that
it exists and that you know it.

“To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of
non-existence* it is to be an entity of a specilic nature made of spe-
cific attributes. Centuries ago. the man who was — no matter what
his errors — the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula

929

defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A
is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his
statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Conscious-
ness is Identification.

“Whatever you choose to consider, be it an object, an attribute or
an action, the law of identity remains the same. A leaf cannot be a
stone at the same time, it cannot be all red and all green at the same
time, it cannot free?e and burn at the same time. A is A. Or, if you
wish it stated in simpler language: You cannot have your cake and
eat it, too.

“Are you seeking to know what is wrong with the world? All the
disasters that have wrecked your world, came from your leaders'
attempt to evade the fact that A is A All the secret evil you dread
to face within you and all the pain you have ever endured, came
from your own attempt to evade the fact that A is A. The purpose
of those who taught you to evade it, was to make you forget that
Man is Man.

“Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is
his only means to gain it, Reason is the faculty that perceives, identi-
fies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of
his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of
identifying it belongs to his reason; his senses tell him only that
something is , but what it is must be learned by his mind

“All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man
perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight
and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to
identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made ot
wood; he learns that the wood consists ot cells, that the cells consist
of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this
process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question:
What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic,
and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of
non-contradictory identification. A contradiction cannot exist. An
atom is itself, and so is the universe: neither can contradict its own
identity; nor can a part contradict the whole. No concept man forms
is valid unless he integrates it without contradiction into the total
sum of his knowledge. To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an
error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate
one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.

“Reality is that which exists; the unreal does not exist; the unreal
is merely that negation of existence which is the content of a human
consciousness when it attempts to abandon reason. Truth is the rec-
ognition of reality; reason, man’s only m6ans of knowledge, is his
only standard of truth.

“The most depraved sentence you can rfow utter is to ask: Whose
reason? The answer is: Yours. No matter how vast your knowledge
or how modest, it is your own mind that fias to acquire it. It is only
with your own knowledge that you can $eal. It is only your own,
knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider.
Your mind is your only judge of truth — and if others dissent from
your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man’s

930

nund can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identifi-
cation which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own
judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.

“You who speak ot a ‘moral instinct 1 as ii it were some separate
endowment opposed to reason-man’s reason is his moral faculty.
A process of reason is a process of constant choice in answer to the
..ueslion: True or False ? — Right or Wrong? Is a seed to be planted

I soil in order to grow— right or wrong? Is a man's wound to be
isintected in order to save his life— right or wrong? Does the nature
f atmospheric electricity permit it to be converted into kinetic
ower — right or wrong? It is the answers to such questions that gave
ou everything you have — and the answers came from a man’s mind,
mind of intransigent devotion to that which is right.

"A iational process is a moral process. You may make an error
t any step of it, with nothing to protect you but your own severity.
n vou may try to cheat, to fake the evidence and evade the effort
•f the quest — but if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality,
hen there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form ol devotion than the
cl of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

“That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and
hat which you call ‘free will* is your mind’s ireedom to think or
ot. the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls

II the choices you make and determines your life and your character,
“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others

nococd. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that name-
w’ns act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the
.cl of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness,
he refusal to think — not blindness, but the refusal to sec: not igno-
ance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfoeusing your mind
md inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment —
>n the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse
o identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce
he verdict ‘It is.' Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to
legate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists;
eality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By
efusing to say Tt is,’ you are refusing to say ‘I am.’ By suspending
our judgment, you arc negating your person. When a man declares:
Who am I to know?’ — he is declaring: Who am I to live?’

‘This, in every hour and every issue, is your basic moral choice:
hulking or non-thinking, existence or non-existencc. A or non-A,
nlity or zero.

“To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise
hrecting his actions To the extent to which he is irrational, the
^remise directing his actions is death.

’’You who prattle that morality is social and that man would need
to morality on a desert island — it is on a desert island that he would
teed it most. Let him try to claim, when there are no victims to pay
or it, that a rock is a house, that sand is clothing, that food will
frop into his mouth without cause or effort, that he will collect a
tarvest tomorrow by devouring his stock seed today — and reality
*ill wipe him out, as he deserves: reality will show him that life is

931

a value to be bought and that thinking is the only coin noble enough
to buy it.

“If I were to speak your kind of language, 1 would say that man’s
only moral commandment is: Thou shalt think. But a ‘moral com-
mandment’ is a contradiction in terms. The moral is the chosen, not
the forced: the understood, not the obeyed. The moral is the rational,
and reason accepts no commandments.

“My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single
axiom: existence exists — and in a single choice: to live. The rest pro-
ceeds from these. To live, man must hold three things as the supreme
and ruling values of his life: Reason — Purpose — Self-esteem. Reason,
as his only tool of knowledge — Purpose, as his choice of the happi-
ness which that tool must proceed to achieve — Self-esteem, as hi>
inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person
is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living. These three
values imply and require all of man’s virtues, and all his virtues
pertain to the relation of existence and consciousness: rationality,
independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, pride.

“Rationality is the recognition ol the fact that existence exists,
that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence
over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking — that the mind is
one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action — that rea-
son is an absolute that permits no compromise — that a concession
to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the
task of perceiving to the task of faking reality — that the alleged
short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroy
ing the mind — that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish
for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s
consciousness.

‘ Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the re-
sponsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it— that
no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your
life — that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the
subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance ol
an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as
facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your
consciousness and your existence.

“Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your
consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot
fake existence — that man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two
attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach
between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life
and his convictions— that, like a judge impervious to public opinion, he
may not sacrifice his convictions to the wishes of others, be it the whole
of mankind shouting pleas or threats against him — that courage and
confidence are practical necessities, that Courage is the practical form
of being true to existence, of being true tp truth, and confidence is the
practical form of being true to one’s own consciousness.

“Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal
and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value
if obtained by fraud — that an attempt to gain a value by deceiving

932

the mind of others is an act of raising your victims to a position
higher than reality, where you become a pawn of their blindness, a
slave of their non-thinking and their evasions, while their intelli-
gence, their rationality, their perceptive ness become the enemies you
have to dread and flee — that you do nut care to live as a dependent,
least of all a dependent on the stupidity of others, or as a fool whose
source of values is the fools he succeeds in fooling — that honesty is
not a social duly, not a sacrifice for the sake of others, but the most
profoundly selfish virtue man can piactice: his refusal to sacrifice the
reality of his own existence to the deluded consciousness of others.

“Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the
character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that
vou must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate
objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible
Msion. by as pure and as rational a process of identification — that
every man must be judged tor what he is and treated accordingly,
that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap
than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above
a hero— that your moral appraisal is the com paving men for their
virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as sciupulous an
honor as you bring to financial transactions- -that to withhold your
contempt from men’s vices is an act of moial counterfeiting, and
to withhold your admiration from their viitues is an act of moral
embezzlement— -that to place any other concern higher than justice
is to devaluate your moral cunency and defraud the good in favor
ol the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and
only the evil can profit — and that the bottom of the pit at the end
o! that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is lo punish men for their
virtues and reward them lor their vices, that that is the collapse to
lull depravity, the Hlack Mass of the worship of death, the dedication
of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.

“Productiveness is your acceptance 01 morality, your recognition
of the fact that you choose to live— that productive work is the
process by which man's consciousness controls hts existence, a con-
stant process of acqmung knowledge and shaping matter to lit one’s
purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the
earth in the image of one's values - that all work is creative work if
done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank
who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from oth-
eis — that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as
your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is
human — that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind
can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions
and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less
than your mind’s full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence
yourself to another kind of motion: decay— that your work is the
pioeess of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values
is to lose your ambition to live— that your body is a machine, but
vour mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will
take you, with achievement as the goal of your road— that the man
who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy

of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who
stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the
man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed
to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is
a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up — that your work is the
purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes
the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your
work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to
share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power
in the same direction.

“Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest
value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned— that of any
achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is
the creation of your own character — that your character, your ac-
tions, your desires, your emotions are the products of the premises
held by your mind — that as man must produce the physical values
he needs to sustain his life, so he must acquire the values of character
that make his life worth sustaining — that as man is a being of self-
made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul — that to live requires
a sense of self-value, but man, who has no automatic values, has no
automatic sense of self-esteem and must earn it by shaping his soul
in the image of his moral ideal, in the image of Man, the rational
being he is born able to create, but must create by choice — that the
first precondition of self-esteem is that radiant selfishness of soul
which desires the best in all things, in values of matter and spirit, a
soul that seeks above all else to achieve its own moral perfection,
valuing nothing higher than itself — and that the proot of an achieved
self-esteem is your soul’s shudder of contempt and rebellion against
the role of a sacrificial animal, against the vile impertinence of any
creed that proposes to immolate the irreplaceable value which is your
consciousness and the incomparable glory which is your existence to
the blind evasions and the stagnant decay of others.

“Are you beginning to see who is John Galt? I ant the man who
has earned the thing you did not fight tor, the thing you have le-
nounced, betrayed, corrupted, yet were unable fully to destroy and
are now hiding as your guilty secret, spending your life in apologies
to every professional cannibal, lest it be discovered that somewhere
within you, you still long to say what 1 am now saying to the hearing
of the whole of mankind: I am proud of my own value and of the
fact that 1 wish to live.

“This wish — which you share, yet submerge as an evil— is the only
remnant of the good within you. but it i$ a wish one must learn to
deserve. His own happiness is man's only moral purpose, but only
his own virtue can achieve it. Virtue is tot an end in itself. Virtue
is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder?: for the reward of evil. Life
is the reward of virtue — and happiness is the goal and the reward
of life.

“Just as your body has two fundamental sensations, pleasure arid
pain, as signs of its welfare or injury, is a barometer of its basic
alternative, life or death, so your consciousness has two fundamental
emotions, joy and suffering, in answer to the same alternative. Your

934

emotions are estimates of that which furthers your life or threatens
it, lightning calculators giving you a sum of your profit or loss. You
have no choice about your capacity to feel that something is good
for you or evil, but what you will consider good or evil, what will
give you joy or pain, what you will love or hate, desire or fear,
depends on your standard of value. Emotions are inherent in your
nature, but their content is dictated by your mind Your emotional
capacity is an empty motor, and your values are the fuel with which
your mind fills it. If you choose a mix of contradictions, it will clog
your motor, corrode your transmission and wreck you on your first
attempt to move with a machine which you, the driver, have cor-
rupted.

"If you hold the irrational as your standard of value and the im-
possible as your concept ol the good, it you long for rewards you
have not earned, for a fortune, or a love you don't deserve, for a
loophole in the law of causality, for an A that becomes non-A at
your whim, if you desire the opposite ol existence — you will reach
it Do not cry, when you reach it, that file is trust rat ion and that
happiness is impossible to man. check your fuel: it brought you where
vou wanted lo go.

'Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional
" hums Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes
\ou might blindly attempt to indulge Happiness is a state of non-
tontradiclory joy — a joy without penalty 01 guilt, a joy that does not
clash with any of your values and docs not work for your own de-
struction, not the joy of escaping bom your mind, but of using your
mind’s fullest power, not the joy of taking reality, but of achieving
values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer.
Huppincss is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires
nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds
his joy in nothing but rational actions.

“Just as 1 support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my
own effort, so 1 do not seek to deitve my happiness from the injury
or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as
1 do not consider (he pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I
do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just
as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among
my desires — so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest
among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do
not view one another with a cannibal’s lust, men who neither make
sacrifices nor accept them.

“The symbol of all relationships among such men, the moral sym-
bol of respect for human beings, is the trader. We, who live by values,
not by loot, arc traders, both in matter and in spirit. A trader is a
man who earns what he gets and does not give or take the unde*
served. A trader does not ask to be paid for his failures, nor does
fie ask to be loved for his flaws. A trader does not squander his
body as fodder or his soul as alms. Just as he does not give his work
except in trade for material values, so he does not give the values
of his spirit — his love, his friendship, his esteem — except in payment
and in trade for human virtues, in payment for his own selfish plea-

935

sure, which he receives from men he can respect. The mystic para-
sites who have, throughout the ages, reviled the traders and held
them in contempt, while honoring the beggars and the looters, have
known the secret motive of their sneers: a trader is the entity they
dread — a man of justice.

“Do you ask what moral obligation 1 owe to my fellow men?
None — except the obligation I owe to myself, to material objects and
to all of existence: rationality. I deal with men as my nature and
theirs demands: by means of reason. I seek or desire nothing from
them except such relations as they care to enter of their own volun-
tary choice. It is only with their mind that 1 can deal and only for my
own self-interest, when they sec that my interest coincides with
theirs. When they don't, 1 enter no relationship; 1 let dissenters go
their way and I do not swerve from mine. I win by means of nothing
but logic and I surrender to nothing but logic. I do not surrender
my reason or deal with men who surrender theirs, i have nothing to
gain from fools or cowards; 1 have no benefits to seek from human
vices: from stupidity, dishonesty or fear. The only value men can
offer me is the work of their mind. When 1 disagree with a rational
man. I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; ll
I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit.

“Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil
that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and
no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live to-
gether, no man may initiate — do you hear me? no man may start —
the use of physical force against others.

“To inteipose the threat of physical destruction between a man
and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of
survival; to force him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing
him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or
extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of
death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying
man's capacity to live.

“Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced
you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites,
morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are
irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define
thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of
reason — as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be
no ‘right’ to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging
right and wrong: the mind.

“To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a
substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place ol
proof, and death as the final argument — is to attempt to exist m defi-
ance of reality. Reality demands of man that jhe act for his own rational
interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threat-
ens man with death if he does not act on h|s rational judgment; you
threaten him with death if he does. You^ place him into a world
where the price of his life is the surrender 6f all the virtues required
by life — and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you

936

and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling
power, the winning argument in a society of men.

“Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum:
‘Your money or your life,' or a politician who confronts a country
with the ultimatum: ‘Your children’s education or your life,’ the
meaning of that ultimatum is: ‘Your mind or your life’— -and neither
is possible to man without the other.

“tf there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is the more
contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of
others or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to
force his mind. That is the moral absolute one does not leave open
to debate. I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose
to deprive me of reason. 1 do not enter discussions with neighbors
who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral
sanction upon a murderer’s wish to kill me. When a man attempts
to deal with me by force. I answer him— by force.

“It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against
the man who starts its use. No. I do not share his evil or sink to his
concept of moiality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the
only destruction he had the right to choose: his own. He uses force
to seize a value; 1 use it only to destroy destruction. A holdup man
seeks to gain wealth by killing me; I do not grow richer by killing a
holdup man. 1 seek no values by means of evil, nor do 1 surrender
my values to evil.

“In the name of all the producers who had kept you alive and
received youi death ultimatums in payment, 1 now answer you with
a single ultimatum of our own: Our work or your guns. You can
choose either; you can’t have both. We do not initiate the use of
torce against others or submit to force at their hands. If you desire
ever again to live in an industrial society, it will be on our moral
terms. Our terms and our motive power are the antithesis of yours.
You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringiag
death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer
him life as his reward for accepting ours.

“You who are worshippers of the zero — you have never discovered
that achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. Joy is not
the absence of pain,’ intelligence is not the absence of stupidity,’
light is not ‘the absence of darkness.' an entity is not ‘the absence
of a nonentity/ Building is not done by abstaining from demolition;
centuries of sitting and waiting in such abstinence will not raise one
single girder for you to abstain from demolishing — and now you can
no longer say to me, the builder: ‘Produce, and feed us in exchange
lor our not destroying your production/ 1 am answering in the name
of all your victims: Perish with and in your own void. Existence is
not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a
negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it
extort from us. Perish, because we have learned that a zero cannot
hold a mortgage over life.

“You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happi-
ness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for
the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear

937

is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life
that we wish to live.

“You, who have lost the concept of the difference, you who claim
that fear and joy are incentives of equal power — and secretly add
that fear is the more practical*- you do not wish to live, and only
fear of death still holds you to the existence you have damned. You
dart in panic through the trap ol your days, looking for the exit you
have closed, running from a pursuer you dare not name to a terror
you dare not acknowledge, and the greater your terror the greater
your dread of the only act that could save you: thinking. The purpose
of your struggle is not to know, nut to grasp or name or hear the
thing I shall now state to your hearing: that yours is the Morality
of Death.

“Death is the standard of your values, death is vour chosen goal,
and you have to keep running, since there is no escape from the
pursuer who is out to destroy you or from the knowledge that the
pursuer is yourself. Stop running, for once — there is no place to
run — stand naked, as you dread to stand, but as I see you, and take
a look at what you dared to call a moral code.

“Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose,
means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then
demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for
him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept
his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with
a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by
means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which
he is not.

’ “It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his re-
nounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incom-
prehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as
# some inexplicable claim upon him — it does not matter, the good is
not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of
penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector
of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good
is that which is non-man.

“The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin,

“A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contra-
diction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is
outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no
will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good
nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as map’s sin, a fact not open
to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hlold man’s nature as his
sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed
before he was born is a mockery of justice. ?To hold him guilty in a
matter where no innocence exists is a mockcfy of reason. To destroy
morality, nature, justice and reason by .nearjs of a single concept is
a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that k the root of your code.

“Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with
free will, but with a ‘tendency’ to evil. A free will saddled with a
tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It Forces man to struggle
through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the

938

game, but the decision is weighted in favot of a tendency that he
had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot
possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

“What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original
Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they
consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the
tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being.
It was the knowledge of good and evil— he became a moral being.
He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor — he became a pro-
ductive being. He was sentenced to experience desire — he acquired
the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him
are reason, morality, creativeness, joy — all the cardinal values of his
existence. It is not his vices that their myth ol man’s fall is designed
to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his
guilt, but the essence of his natute as man. Whatever he was — that
robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without
values, without labor, without love— he was not man.

“Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gamed the
virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin.
His evil, they charge, is that he’s man His guilt, they charge, is that
he lives.

“They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man.

“No, they say. they do not preach that rnan is evil, the evil is only
that alien object* his body. No, they say, thev do not wish to kill
him, they only wish to make him lose his body. They seek to help
him, they say, against his pain — and they point at the torture rack
to which they've tied him, the rack with two wheels that pull him
m opposite directions, the rack of the doctrine that splits his soul
and body.

“They have cut man in two, setting one half against the other.
They have taught him that his body and his consciousness are two
enemies engaged in deadly conflict, two antagonists of opposite na-
tures, contradictory claims, incompatible needs, that to benefit one
is to injure the other, that his soul belongs to a supernatural realm,
but his body is an evil prison holding it in bondage to this earth —
Lind that the good is lo defeat his body, to undermine it by years of
patient struggle, digging his way to that gloiious jail-break which
leads into the freedom of the grave.

“They have taught man that he is a hopeless misfit made of two
elements, both symbols of death A body without a soul is a corpse,
a soul without a body is a ghost — yet such is their image of man’s
nature: the battleground of a struggle between a coipse and a ghost
a corpse endowed with some evil volition of its own and a ghost
endowed with the knowledge that everything known to man is non-
existent, that only the unknowable exists.

“Do you observe what human faculty that doctrine was designed
to ignore? It was man's mind that had to be negated in order to
make him fall apart. Once he surrendered reason, he was left at the
mercy of two monsters whom he could not lathom or control: of a
body moved by unaccountable instincts and of a soul moved by mys-

939

tic revelations — he was left as the passively ravaged victim of a battle
between a robot and a dictaphone.

“And as he now crawls through the wreckage, groping blindly for
a way to live, your teachers offer him the help of a morality that
proclaims that he’ll find no solution and must seek no fulfillment on
earth. Real existence, they tell him, is that which he cannot perceive,
true consciousness is the faculty of perceiving the non-existent — and
if he is unable to understand it, that is the proof that his existence
is evil and his consciousness impotent.

“As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are
two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit
and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the
materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence
and those who believe in existence without consciousness. Both de-
mand the surrender of your mind, one to their revelations, the other
to their reflexes. No matter how loudly they posture in the roles of
irreconctlahlc antagonists, their moral codes are alike, and so are
their aims: in matter — the enslavement of man's body, in spirit — the
destruction of his mind.

“The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only
definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive — a definition
that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of exis-
tence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society — a thing which
they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a supei
being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general
except yourself. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subor-
dinated to the will of God. Man's mind, say the mystics of muscle,
must be subordinated to the will of Society. Man’s standard ot value,
say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God. whose standards arc
beyond man’s power of comprehension and must be accepted on
faith. Man's standaid of value, say the mystics of muscle, is the plea-
sure of Society, whose standards are beyond man’s right of judgment
and must be obeyed as a primary absolute The purpose ot man's
life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose
he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. His reward, say
the mystics of spirit, will be given to him beyond the giave. His
rewaid, say the mystics of muscle, will be given on earth — to his
great-grandchildren.

"Selfishness — say both — is man’s evil Man's good — say both — is
to give up his personal desires, to deny himself, renounce lumscli,
surrender; man's good is to negate the life he lives. Sacrifice — cry
both — is the essence of morality, the highest virtue within man's
reach,

“Whoever is now within reach of my viitcc. whoever is man the
victim, not man the killer, I am speaking fat the deathbed of yo.ut
mind, at the brink of that darkness in whifch you're drowning, and
if there still remains within you the power to struggle to hold on to
those fading sparks which had been yourseff — use it now. The word
that has destroyed you is ‘ sacrifice / Use the last of your strength to
understand its meaning. You're still alive. You have a chance.

“ ‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the worthless, but of

940

the precious. ‘Sacrifice’ does not mean the rejection of the evil for
the sake of the good, but of the good for the sake of the evil ‘Sacri-
fice’ is the surrender of that which you value in favor of that which
you don’t.

“If you exchange a penny for a dollar, it is not a sacrifice; if you
exchange a dollar for a penny, it is. If you achieve a career you
wanted, after years of struggle, it is not a sacrifice; if you then re-
nounce it for the sake of a rival, it is. If you own a bottle of milk
and give it to your starving child, it is not a sacrifice; if you give it
to your neighbor's child and let your own die. it is.

“If you give money to help a friend, it is not a sacrifice; if you
give it to a worthless stranger, it is. 11 you give your friend a sum
you can atford, it is not a sacrifice; if you give him money at the
cost of your own discomfort, it is only a partial virtue, according to
this sort of moral standard; if you give him money at the cost of
disaster to yourself — that is the virtue of sacrifice in full.

“If you renounce all personal desire and dedicate your life to those
you love, you do not achieve full virtue: you still retain a value of
your own, which is your love. II you devote your life to random
strangers, it is an act of greater virtue. If you devote your life to
serving men you hate— chat is the greatest of the virtues you can
practice.

“A sacrifice is the surrender of a value. Full sacrifice is full surren-
der of all values. If you wish to achieve full virtue, you must seek
no gratitude in icturn lor your sacrifice, no praise, no love, no admi-
ration. no self-esteem, not even the pride of being virtuous: the faint-
est trace of any gam dilutes your virtue. If you pursue a course ol
action that does not taint your life by any joy, that brings you no
value in matter, no value in spirit, no gain, no profit, no reward — if
you achieve this state of total zero, you have achieved the ideal of
moral perfection.

“You are told that moral perfection is impossible to man — and,
by this standard, it is. You cannot achieve it so long as you live, but
the value of your life and of your person is gauged by how closely
you succeed in approaching that ideal zero which is death .

“If you start, however, as a passionless blank, as a vegetable seek-
ing to be eaten, with no values to reject and no wishes to renounce,
you will not win the crown of sacrifice. It is not a sacrifice to re-
nounce the unwanted. It is not a sacrifice to give your life for others,
if death is your personal desire. To achieve the virtue of sacrifice,
you must want to live, you must love it, you must burn with passion
for this earth and for all the splendor it can give you — you must feel
the twist of every knife as it slashes your desires away from your
reach and drains your love out of your body. It is not mere death
that the morality of sacrifice holds out to you as an ideal, but death
by slow torture.

“Do not remind me that it pertains only to this life on earth. I
am concerned with no other. Neither are you.

“If you wish to save the Iasi of your dignity, do not call your best
actions a ‘sacrifice 1 : that term brands you as immoral. If a mother
buys food for her hungry child rather than a hat for herself, it is not

941

a sacrifice; she values the child higher than the hat; but it is $ sacrifice
to the kind of mother whose higher value is the hat, who would
prefer her child to starve and feeds him only from a sense of duty.
If a man dies fighting for his own freedom, it is not a sacrifice: he is
not willing to live as a slave; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of man
who's willing. If a man refuses to sell his convictions, it is not a
sacrifice, unless he is the sort of man who has no convictions.

“Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to
sacrifice— no values, no standards, no judgment —those whose desires
are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For
a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values,
sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to
the evil.

“The creed of sacrifice is a morality for the immoral — a morality
that declares its own bankruptcy by confessing that it can’t imparl
to men any personal stake in virtues or value, and that their souls
are sewers of depravity, which they must be taught to sacrifice. By
its own confession, it is impotent to teach men to be good and can
only subject them to constant punishment

“Are you thinking, m some foggy stupor, that it’s only material
values that your morality requires you to sacrifice? And what do you
think are material values? Matter has no value except as a means
for the satisfaction of human desires. Matter is only a tool of human
values. To what service are you asked to give the material tools your
virtue has produced? To the service of that which you regard as evil
to a principle you do not share, to a person you do not respect, to
the achievement of a purpose opposed to your own— -else your gift
is not a sacrifice.

* “Your morality tells you to renounce the material world and to
divorce your values from matter. A man whose values are given no
expression in material form, whose existence is unrelated to his ide-
# als, whose actions contradict his convictions, is a cheap little hypo-
crite — yet that is the man who obeys your morality and divorces his
values from matter. The man who loves one woman, but sleeps with
another — the man who admires the talent of a worker, but hires
another — the man who considers one cause to be just, but donates
his money to the support of another— the man who holds high stan-
dards of craftsmanship, but devotes his etfort to the production of
trash — these are the men who have renounced matter, the men who
believe that the values of their spirit cannot be brought into mate-
rial reality.

“Do you say it is the spirit that such men; have renounced? Yes,
of course. You cannot have one without the other. You are an indi-
visible entity of matter and consciousness. Renounce your conscious-
ness and you become a brute. Renounce youf body and you become
a fake. Renounce the material world and yoji surrender it to evil.-

“And that is precisely the goal of your morality, the duty that your
code demands of you. Give to that which yi>u do not enjoy, serve
that which you do not admire, submit to that which you consider
evil — surrender the world to the values of others, deny, reject, re-

942

nounce your self. Your self is your mind: renounce it and you become
a chunk of meat ready for any cannibal to swallow.

“It is your mind that they want you to surrender— all those who
preach the creed of sacrifice, whatever their tags or their motives,
whether they demand it for the sake of your soul or of your body,
whether they promise you another life in heaven or a full stomach
on this earth. Those who start by saying: ‘It is selfish to pursue your
own wishes, you must sacrifice them to the wishes of others’ — end
up by saying: ‘It is selfish to uphold your convictions, you must sacri-
fice them to the convictions of others.’

“ Ibis much is true: the most selfish of all things is the independent
mind that recognizes no authority higher than its own and no value
higher than its judgment of truth. You are asked to sacrifice your
intellectual integrity, your logic, your reason, your standard of
truth— in favor of becoming a prostitute whose standard is the great-
est good for the greatest number.

"If you search your code tor guidance, for an answer to the ques-
tion: ‘What is the good?' — the only answer you will find is * The good
of others , ’ The good is whatever others wish, whatever you feel they
teel they wish, or whatever you feel they ought to feel. The good
of others’ is a magic formula that translorms anything into gold, a
lormula to be recited as a guarantee of moral glory and as a fumiga-
tor for any action, even the slaughter ol a continent Your standard
ot viitue is not an object, not an act, not a principle, but an intention.
You need no proof, no reasons, no success, you need not achieve in
fact the good of others —all you need to know is that your motive
was the good of others, not your own. Your onlv definition of the
good ls a negation: the good is the ‘non-good foi me.’

"Your code — which boasts that it upholds eternal, absolute, objec-
tive moral values and scorns the conditional, the relative and the
subjective — your code hands out, as its version of the absolute, the
following rule of moral conduct: If you wish it, it’s evil; it others
wish it, it’s good; if the motive of your action is your welfare, don’t
do it; if the motive is the welfare of others, then anything goes.

"As this double-jointed, double-standard morality splits you in
halt, so it splits mankind into two enemy camps: one is you, the
other is all the rest ot humanity. You are the only outcast who has
no right to wish to live. You ate the only servant, the rest are the
masters, you are the only giver, the rest are the lakers, you are the
eternal debtor, the rest are the creditors nevet to be paid off. You
must not question their right to your sacrifice, or the nature of their
wishes and their needs: their right is conferred upon them by a nega-
tive, by the fact that they are ‘non-you,’

"For those of you who might ask questions, your code provides a
consolation prize and booby-trap: it is for your own happiness, it
^ays, that you must serve the happiness of others, the only way to
achieve your joy is to give it up to otheis, the only way to achieve
your prosperity is to surrender your wealth to others, the only way
to protect your life is to protect all men except yourself —and if you
find no joy in this procedure, it is your own fault and the proof of
your evil; if you were good, you would find your happiness in provid-

943

ing a banquet for others, and your dignity in existing on such crumbs
as they might care to toss you.

“You who have no standard of self-esteem, accept the guilt and
dare not ask the questions. But you know the unadmitted answer,
refusing to acknowledge what you see, what hidden premise moves
your world. You know it, not in honest statement, but as a dark
uneasiness within you, while you flounder between guiltily cheating
and grudgingly practicing a principle too vicious to name.

“I, who do not accept the unearned, neither in values nor in guilt,
am here to ask the questions you evaded. Why is it moral to serve
the happiness of others, but not your own? If enjoyment is a value,
why is it moral when experienced by others, but immoral when expe-
rienced by you? If the sensation of eating a cake is a value, why is
it an immoral indulgence in your stomach, but a moral goal for you
to achieve in the stomach ot others? Why is it immoral for you to
desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce
a value and keep it. but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral
for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? it
you are selfless and virtuous when you give U, are they not selfish
and vicious when they take it? Does virtue consist of serving vice?
Is the moral purpose of those who are good, sell-immolation for the
sake of those who are evil?

*‘The answer you evade, the monstrous answer is: No, the takers
are not evil, provided they did not earn the value you gave them, ft
is not immoral for them to accept it, provided they are unable to
produce it, unable to deserve it, unable to give you any value in
return. It is not immoral for them to enjoy it, provided they do not
obtain it by right.

“Such is the secret core of your creed, the other half of your
double standard: it is immoral to live by your own effort, but moral
to live by the effort ol others — it is immoral to consume your own
product, but moral to consume the products of others — it is immoral
to earn, but moral to mooch— it is the parasites who are the moral
justification for the existence of the producers, but the existence of
the parasites is an end in itself— it is evil to profit by achievement,
but good to profit by sacrifice — it is evil to create your own happi-
ness, but good to enjoy it at the price of the blood of others.

“Your code divides mankind into two castes and commands them
to live by opposite rules: those who may desire anything and those
who may desire nothing, the chosen and the damned, the riders and
the carriers, the eaters and the eaten. What standard determines
your caste? What passkey admits you to the moral elite? The passkey
is lack of value. ■

“Whatever the value involved, it is youir lack of it that gives you
a claim upon those who don’t lack it. It if your need that gives you
a claim to rewards. If you are able to satisfy your need, your ability
annuls your right to satisfy it. But a nee^ you are unable to satisfy
gives you first right to the lives of mankind.

“If you succeed, any man who fails is y6ur master; if you fail, any
man who succeeds is your serf. Whether your failure is just or not,
whether your wishes are rational or not. Whether your misfortune is

944

undeserved or the result of your vices, it is misfortune that gives you
a right to rewards. It is pain, regardless of its nature or cause, pain
as a primary absolute, that gives you a mortgage on ail of existence.

“If you heal your pain by your own effort, you receive no moral
credit: your code regards it scornfully as an act of self-interest. What-
ever value you seek to acquire, be it wealth or food or love or rights,
if you acquire it by means of your virtue, your code does not regard
it as a moral acquisition: you occasion no loss to anyone, it is a
trade, not alms; a payment, not a sacrifice. The deserved belongs in
the selfish, commercial realm of mutual profit; it is only the unde-
served that calls for that moral transaction which consists of profit
to one at the price of disaster to the other. To demand rewards for
your virtue is selfish and immoral; it is your lack of virtue that trans-
forms your demand into a moral right

“A morality that holds need as a claim, holds emptiness — nonexist-
ence — as its standard of value; it rewards an absence , a defect: weak-
ness, inability, incompetence, suffering, disease, disaster, the lack, the
lault, the flaw —the zero.

“Who provides the account to pay these claims? Those who are
cursed for being non-zeros, each to the extent of his distance from
that ideal. Since all values ate the product of virtues, the degree of
your virtue is used as the measure of your penalty: the degree of
your faults is used as the measure of your gain Your code declares
that the rational man must sacrifice himself to the irrational, the
independent man to parasites, the honest man to the dishonest, the
man ol justice to the unjust, the productive man to thieving loafers,
the man of integrity to compromising knaves, the man of self-esteem
to sniveling neurotics. Do you wonder at the meanness of soul in
those you see around you ’ The man who achieves these virtues will
not accept your moral code; the man who accepts your moral code
will not achieve these virtues

“Under a morality of sacrifice, the first value you sacrifice is moral-
ity: the next is self-esteem When need is the standard, every man
is both victim and parasite. As a victim, he musi labor to fill the
needs of others, leaving himself in the position of a parasite whose
needs must be filled by others. He cannot approach his fellow men
except in one of two disgraceful roles: he is both a beggar and a
sucker.

“You tear the man who has a dollar less than you. that dollar is
rightfully his, he makes you feel like a moral defrauder. You hate
the man who has a dollar more than you, that dollar is rightfully
yours, he makes you feel that you aie morally defrauded. The man
below is a source of your guilt, the man above is a source of your
frustration. You do not know what to surrender or demand, when
U> give and when to grab, what pleasure in life is rightfully yours
and what debt is still unpaid to others — you struggle to evade, as
‘theory,’ the knowledge that by the moral standard you’ve accepted
you are guilty every moment of your fife, there is no mouthful of
food you swallow that is not needed by someone somewhere on
earth — and you give up the problem in blind resentment, you con-
clude that moral perfection is not to be achieved or desired f, that you

945

will muddle through by snatching as snatch can and by avoiding the
eyes of the young, of those who look at you as if self-esteem were
possible and they expected you to have it. Guilt is all that you retain
within your soul — and so does every other man, as he goes past,
avoiding your eyes. Do you wonder why your morality has not
achieved brotherhood on earth or the good will of man to man?

“The justification of sacrifice, that your morality, propounds, is
more corrupt than the corruption it purports to justify. The motive
of your sacrifice, it tells you, should be love — the love you ought to
feel for every man, A morality that professes the belief that the
values of the spirit are more precious than matter, a morality that
teaches you to scorn a whore who gives her body indiscriminately
to all men — this same morality demands thai you surrender your
soul to promiscuous love for all comers.

“As there can be no causeless wealth, so there can be no causeless
love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to
a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards. To love is
to value. The man who tells you that it is possible to value without
values, to love those whom you appraise as worthless, is the man
who tells you that it is possible to grow rich by consuming without
producing and that paper money is as valuable as gold.

“Observe that ho docs not expect you to fee) a causeless fear.
When his kind get into power, they are expert at contriving means
of terror, at giving you ample cause to feel the fear by which they
desire to rule you. But when it comes to love, the highest of emo-
tions, you permit them to shriek at you accusingly that you are a
moral delinquent if you’re incapable of feeling causeless love When
a man feels fear without reason, you call him to the attention of a
psychiatrist; you are not so careful to protect the meaning, the nature
and the dignity of love.

“Love is the expression of one’s values, the greatest reward you can
earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and per-
son, the emotional piice paid by one man for the joy he receives from
the virtues of another Your morality demands that you divorce your
love from values and hand it down to any vagrant; not as response
to his worth, but as response to his need, not as reward, but as alms,
not as a payment for virtues, but as a blank check on vices. Your
morality tells you that the purpose of love is to set you free of the
bonds of morality, that love is superior to moral judgment; that true
love transcends, forgives and survives every manner of evil in its
object, and the greater the love the greater the depravity it permits
to the loved. To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it
tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine. To love those who are
worthy of it is self-interest; to love the unworthy is sacrifice. You owe
your love to those who don’t deserve it, arid the less they deserve it,
the more love you owe them— the more loathsome the object, the
nobler your love — the more unfastidious |?our love, the greater the
virtue — and if you can bring your soul to ? the state of a dump heap
that welcomes anything on equal terms. If you can cease to value’
moral values, you have achieved the state of moral perfection.

“Such is your morality of sacrifice and such are the twin ideals it

946

offers: to refashion the life of your body in the image of a human
stockyard, and the life of your spirit in the image of a dump.

“Such was your goal— and you’ve reached it. Why do you now
moan complaints about man’s impotence and the futility of human
aspirations? Because you were unable to prosper by seeking destruc-
tion? Because you were unable to find joy by worshipping pain?
Because you were unable to live by holding death as your standard
of value?

“The degree of your ability to live was the degree to which you
broke your moral code, yet you believe that those who preach it are
friends of humanity, you damn yourself and dare not question their
motives or their goals, lake a look at them now, when you face your
last choice— and if you choose to perish, do so with full knowledge of
how cheaply so small an enemy has claimed your life.

“The mystics of both schools, who preach the creed of sacrifice,
are germs that attack you through a single sore: your fear of relying
on your mind, lliey tell you that they possess a means of knowledge
higher than the mind, a mode of consciousness superior to reason —
like a special pull with some bureaucrat of the universe who gives
them secret tips withheld from others. The mystics of spirit declare
that they possess an extra sense you lack: this special sixth sense
consists of contradicting the whole of the knowledge of your five.
The mystics of muscle do not bother to assert any claim to extrasen-
sory' perception: they merely declare that your senses are not valid,
and that their wisdom consists of perceiving your blindness by some
manner of unspecified means. Both kinds demand that you invalidate
vour own consciousness and surrender yourself into their power.
They offer you, as proof of their superior knowledge, the fact that
they assert the opposite of everything you know, and as proof of their
superior ability to deal with existence, the tact that they lead you to
misery, self-sacrifice, starvation, destruction.

“They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your
existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it ‘another dimen-
sion,’ which consist of denying dimensions The mystics of muscle
call it ‘the future,’ which consists ot denying the present. To exist is
to possess identity. What identity arc they able to give to their supe-
rior realm? They keep telling you what it is not. but never tell you
what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that
which no human mind can know, they sav— and proceed to demand
that you consider it knowledge — God is non-man, heaven is non-
earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit, A is non- A, perception
is non-sensory. knowledge is non- reason. Their definitions are not
acts of defining, but of wiping out.

“It is only the metaphysics of a leech that would cling to the idea
of a universe where a zero is a standard of identification. A leech
would want to seek escape from the necessity to name its own na-
ture — escape from the necessity to know that the substance on which
it builds its private universe is blood.

“What is the nature of that superior world to which they sacrifice
the world that exists? The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics
of muscle curse profit. The first wish men to profit by renouncing

947

the earth, the second wish men to inherit the earth by "renouncing
all profit. Their non-material, non-profit worlds are realms where
rivers run with milk and coffee, where wine spurts from rocks at
their command, where pastry drops on them from clouds at the price
of opening their mouth. On this material, profit-chasing earth, an
enormous investment of virtue— of intelligence, integrity, energy,
skill — is required to construct a railroad to carry them the distance
of one mile; in their non-material, non-profit world, they travel from
planet to planet at the cost of a wish. If an honest person asks them;
‘How?’ — they answer with righteous scorn that a ‘how’ is the concept
of vulgar realists; the concept of superior spirits is ‘Somehow.’ C3n
this earth restricted by matter and profit, rewards are achieved by
thought; in a world set free of such restrictions, rewards are achieved
by wishing.

“And that is the whole of their shabby secret. The secret of all
their esoteric philosophies, of all their dialectics and super- senses, of
their evasive eyes and snarling words, the secret for which they de-
stroy civilization, language, industries and lives, the secret for which
they pierce their own eyes and eardrums, grind out their senses,
blank out their minds, the purpose for which they dissolve the abso-
lutes of reason, logic, mattei, existence, realitv — is to erect upon that
plastic fog a single holy absolute: their Wish.

“The restriction they seek to escape is the law of identity. The
freedom they seek is freedom from the fact that an A will remain
an A, no matter what their tears or tantrums — that a river will not
bring them milk, no matter what their hunger— that water will not
run uphill, no matter what comforts they could gain if it did, and it
they want to lift it to the roof of a skyscraper, they must do it by a
process of thought and labor, in which the nature of an inch of pipe
line counts, but their feelings do not —that their feelings are impotent
to alter the course of a single speck of dust in space or the nature
of any action they have committed.

“Those who tell you that rnan is unable to perceive a reality undis-
torted by his senses, mean that they arc unwilling to perceive a
reality undistorted by their feelings. ‘Hungs as they are’ are things
as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they be-
come ‘things as perceived by your wishes.’

“There is no honest revolt against reason- -and when you accept
any part of their creed, your motive is to get away with something
your reason would not permit you to attempt , The freedom you seek
is freedom from the facl that if you stole your wealth, you arc a
scoundrel, no matter how much you give to. charity or how many pray-
ers you recite — that if you sleep with sluts, ypu’rc not a worthy husband,
no matter how anxiously you feel that youtlove your wife next morn-
ing— that you arc an entity, not a series random pieces scattered
through a universe where nothing sticks jand nothing commits you
to anything, the universe of a child’s nightmare where identities
switch and swim, where the rotter and th$ hero are interchangeable
parts arbitrarily assumed at will — that you are a man — that you arc
an entity — that you are.

948

“No matter bow eagerly you claim that the goal of your mystic
wishing is a higher mode of life, the rebellion against identity is the
wish for non-existence. The desire not to be anything is the desire
not to be.

“Your teachers, the mystics of both schools, have reversed causal-
ity in their consciousness, then strive to reverse it in existence. They
take their emotions as a cause, and their mind as a passive effect.
They make their emotions their tool for perceiving reality. They hold
their desires as an irreducible primary, as a fact superseding all facts.
An honest man does not desire until he has identified the object of
his desire. He says: Tt is, therefore I want it.’ They say: i want it,
therefore it is.’

“They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness,
they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving
but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the
subject of their consciousness — they want to be that God they created
in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by
means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What
they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want to be omnipo-
tent power over existence; instead, they lose the power of their con-
sciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the
horror of a perpetual unknown.

“Those irrational wishes that draw you to their creed, those emo-
tions you worship as an idol, on whose altar you sacrifice the earth,
that dark, incoherent passion within you, which you take as the voice
of God or of your glands, is nothing more than the corpse ot your
mind. An emotion that clashes with your reason, an emotion that
you cannot explain or control, is only the carcass of that stale think-
ing which you forbade your mind to revise.

“Whenever you committed the evil of refusing to think and to see,
of exempting from the absolute ot reality some one small wish of
yours, whenever you chose to say: Let me withdraw from the judg-
ment of reason the cookies 1 stole, or the existence of God, let me
have my one irrational whim and 1 will be a man of reason about
all else — that was the act of subverting your consciousness, the act
of corrupting your mind. Your mind then became a fixed jury who
takes orders from a secret underworld, whose verdict distorts the
evidence to fit an absolute it dares not touch— and a censored reality
is the result, a splintered reality where the bits you chose to see are
floating among the chasms of those you didn't, held together by
that embalming fluid of the mind which is an emotion exempted
from thought.

“The links you strive to drown are casual connections. The enemy
you seek to defeat is the law of causality: it permits you no miracles.
The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. Alt
actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and
determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act
in contradiction to its nature. An action not caused by an entity
would be caused by a zero, which would mean a zero controlling a
thing, a non-entity controlling an entity, the non-existent ruling the
existent — which is the universe of your teachers' desire, the cause of

949

their doctrines of causeless action, the reason of their revolt against
reason, the goal of their morality, their politics, their economics, the
ideal they strive for: the reign of the zero.

“The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and
eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake
before you have it. But il you drown both laws in the blanks of your
mind, if you pretend to yourself and to others that you don’t see —
then you can try to proclaim your right to eat your cake today and
mine tomorrow, you can preach that the way to have a cake is to
eat it first before you bake it, that the way to produce ts to start by
consuming, that all wishers have an equal claim to all things, since
nothing is caused by anything. The corollary of the causeless in mat-
ter is the unearned in spirit.

“Whenever you rebel against causality, your motive is the fraudu-
lent desire, not to escape it, but worse: to reverse it. You want
unearned love, as if love, the effect, could give you personal value,
the cause — you want unearned admiration, as if admiration, the ef-
fect, could give ypu virtue, the cause — you want unearned wealth,
as if wealth, the effect, could give you ability, the cause — you plead
for mercy, mercy , not justice, as if an unearned forgiveness could
wipe out the cause of your plea. And to indulge your ugly little
shams, you support the doctrines of your teachers, while they run
hog-wtld proclaiming that spending, the effect, creates riches, the
cause, that machinery, the effect, creates intelligence, the cause, that
your sexual desires, the effect, create your philosophical values, the
cause.

“Who pays for the orgy? Who causes the causeless 7 Who are the
victims, condemned to remain unacknowledged and to perish in si-
lence, lest their agony disturb your pretense that they do not exist?
We are, we. the men of the mind.

“We are the cause of all the values that you covet, we who perform
the process of thinking , winch is the process of defining identity and
discovering causal connections. We taught you to know, to speak, to
produce, to desire, to love. You who abandon reason — were it not
for us who preserve if, you would not be able to fulfill or even to
conceive your wishes. You would not be able to desire the clothes
that had not been made, the automobile that had not been invented,
the money that had not been devised, as exchange for goods that
did not exist, the admiration that had not been experienced for men
who had achieved nothing, the love that belongs and pertains only
to those who preserve their capacity to think, to choose, to value .

“You — who leap like a savage out of the jungle of your feelings
to the Fifth Avenue of our New York aqd proclaim that you want
to keep the electric lights, but to destroy the generators — it is our
wealth that you use while destroying us, it* is our values that you use
while damning us, it is our language thjfct you use while denying
the mind. t

‘Must as your mystics of spirit invented; their heaven in the image
of our earth, omitting our existence, and promised you rewards cre-
ated by miracle out of non-matter — so yojir modern mystics of mus-
cle omit our existence and promise you a heaven where matter

950

shapes itself of its own causeless will into all the rewards desired by
your non-mind.

“For centuries, the mystics of spirit had existed by running a pro-
tection racket— by making life on earth unbearable, then charging
you for consolation and relief, by forbidding all the virtues that make
existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by
declaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail
from the sinners. We, the men of the mind, were the unnamed vic-
tims of their creed, we who were willing to break their moral code
and to bear damnation for the sin of reason— we who thought and
acted, while they wished and prayed— we who were moral outcasts,
we who were bootleggers of life when life was held to be a crime —
while they basked in moral glory lor the virtue ot surpassing material
greed and of distributing in selfless chanty the material goods pro-
duced by-blank-out.

“Now we are chained and commanded to produce by savages who
do not grant us even the identification of sinners — by savages who
proclaim that we do not exist, then threaten to deprive us of the life
we don’t possess, if we tail to provide them with the goods we don’t
produce. Now we arc expected to continue running railroads and to
know the minute when a train will arrive after crossing the span of
a continent, we are expected to continue running steel mills and to
know the molecular structure of every drop ol metal in the cables
of your bridges and in the body of the airplanes that support you in
mid-air — while the tribes of your grotesque little mystics of muscle
light over the carcass of our world, gibbering in sounds of non-
language that there arc no principles, no absolutes, no knowledge,
no mind.

“Dropping below the level ol a savage, who believes that the
magic words he utters have the power to alter reality, they believe
that reality can be altered by the power of the words they do not
utter— and their magic tool is the blank-out. the pretense that noth-
ing can come into existence past the voodoo of their refusal to iden-
tify it.

“As they feed on stolen wealth in body, so they feed on stolen
concepts in mind, and proclaim that honesty consists of refusing to
know that one is stealing. As they use effects while denying causes,
so they use our concepts while denying the roots and the existence
of the concepts they are using. As they seek, not to build, but to
take over industrial plants, so they seek, not to think, but to take
over human thinking.

“As they proclaim that the only requirement for running a factory
is the ability to turn the cranks of the machines, and blank out the
question of who created the factory — so they proclaim that there are
no entities, that nothing exists but motion, and blank out the fact
that motion presupposes the thing which moves, that without the
concept of entity, there can be no such concept as ’motion.’ As they
proclaim their right to consume the unearned, and blank out the
question of who’s to produce it — so they proclaim that there is no
law of identity, that nothing exists but change, and blank out the
fact that change presupposes the concept of what changes, from what

951

and to what, that, without the law of identity, no such" concept as
‘change’ is possible. As they rob an industrialist while denying his
value, so they seek to seize power over all of existence while denying
that existence exists.

“ ‘We know that we know nothing,’ they chatter, blanking out the
fact that they are claiming knowledge — ‘There are no absolutes, 5 they
chatter, blanking out the fact that they are uttering an absolute —
‘You cannot prove that you exist or that you’re conscious,’ they
chatter, blanking out the fact that proof presupposes existence, con-
sciousness and a complex chain of knowledge- the existence of some-
thing to know, of a consciousness able to know it, and of a
knowledge that has teamed to distinguish between such concepts as
the proved and the unproved.

“When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that exis-
tence must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of non-
existence — when he declares that your consciousness must be proved,
he is asking you to prove it by means of unconsciousness— he is
asking you to step into a void outside of existence and consciousness
to give him proof of both — he is asking you to become a zero gaining
knowledge about a zero.

“When he declares that an axiom is a matter of aibitrary choice
and he doesn’t choose to accept the axiom that he exists, he blanks
out the fact that he has accepted it by uttering that sentence, that
the only way to reject it is to shut one’s mouth, expound no theories
and die.

“An axiom is a statement that identifies the base of knowledge and
of any further statement pertaining to that knowledge, a statement
necessarily contained m all others, whether any particular speaker
chooses to identify it or not. An axiom is a proposition that defeats
its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in
the process of any attempt to deny it. Let the caveman who does
not choose to accept the axiom of identity, try to present his theory
without using the concept of identity or any concept derived from
it — let the anthropoid who does not choose to accept the existence
of nouns, try to devise a language without nouns, adjectives or
verbSr — let the witch-doctor who does not choose to accept the valid-
ity of sensory perception, try to prove it without using the data he
obtained by sensory perception — let the head-hunter who does not
choose to accept the validity of logic, try to prove it without using
logic — let the pigmy w r ho proclaims that a skyscraper needs no foun-
dation after it reaches its fiftieth story, yank the base from under his
building, not yours — let the cannibal who snarls that the freedom of
man’s mind was needed to create an industrial civilization, but is not
needed to maintain it, be given an arrowhead and bearskin, not a
university chair of economics.

“Do you think they are taking you baqk to dark ages? They are
taking you back to darker ages than an>J your history has known..
Their goal is not the era of pre-science, b$t the era of pre-language.
Their purpose is to deprive you of the concept on which man’s mind,
his life and his culture depend: the concept of an objective reality.

952

Identify the development of a human consciousness — and you will
know the purpose of their creed.

“A savage is a being who has not grasped that A is A and that
reality is real. He has arrested his mind at the level of a baby’s, at
the state when a consciousness acquires its initial sensory perception
and has not learned to distinguish solid objects. It is to a baby that
the world appears as a blur of motion, without things that move —
and the birth of his mind is the day when he grasps that the streak
that keeps flickering past him is his mother and the whirl beyond
her is a curtain, that the two are solid entities and neither can turn
into the other, that they are what they are, that they exist. The day
when he grasps that matter has no volition is the day when he grasps
that he has — and this is his birth as a human being. The day when
he grasps that the reflection he sees m a mirror is not a delusion,
that it is real, but it is not himself, that the mirage he sees in a desert
is not a delusion, that the air and the light rays that cause it are
real, but it is not a city, it is a city's reflection— the day when he
grasps that he is not a passive recipient of the sensations of any
given moment, that his senses do not piovidc him with automatic
knowledge in separate snatches independent of context, but only
with the material of knowledge, which his mind must learn to inte-
grate— the day when he grasps that his senses cannot deceive him,
that physical objects cannot act without causes, that his organs of
perception are physical and have no volition, no power to invent or
to distort, that the evidence they give him is an absolute, but his
mind must learn to understand il T his mind must discover the nature,
the causes, the full context of his sensory material, his mind must
identify the things that he perceives — that is the day of his birth as
a thinker and scientist

'"We arc the men who reach that day. you arc the men who choose
to reach it partly; a savage is a man who never does.

“To a savage, the world is a place of unintelligible miracles where
anything is possible to inanimate matter and nothing is possible to
him. His world is not the unknown, but that irrational horror: the
unknowable. He believes that physical objects are endowed with a
mysterious volition, moved by causeless , unpredictable whims, while
he is a helpless pawn at the mercy of forces beyond his control. He
believes that nature is ruled by demons who possess an omnipotent
power and that reality is their fluid plaything, where they can turn
his bowl of meal into a snake and his wife into a beetle at any
moment, where the A he has never discovered can be any non-A
they choose, where the only knowledge he possesses is that he must
not attempt to know. He can count on nothing, he can only wish,
and he spends his life on wishing, on begging his demons to grant
him his wishes by the arbitrary powei of their will, giving them credit
when they do, taking the blame when they don’t, offering them sacri-
fices in token of his gratitude and sacrifices in token of his guilt,
crawling on his belly in fear and worship of sun and moon and wind
and rain and of any thug who announces himself as their spokesman,
provided his words are unintelligible and his mask sufficiently fright-
ening — he wishes, begs and crawls, and dies, leaving you, as a record

953

of his view of existence, the distorted monstrosities of his idols, part-
man, part-animal, part-spider, the embodiments of the world of
non-A.

“His is the intellectual state of your modem teachers and his is
the world to which they want to bring you.

“If you wonder by what means they propose to do it, walk into
any college classroom and you will hear your professors teaching
your children that man can be certain of nothing, that his conscious-
ness has no validity whatever, that he can learn no facts and no laws
of existence, that he’s incapable of knowing an objective reality.
What, then, is his standard of knowledge and truth? Whatever others
believe , is their answer. There is no knowledge, they teach, there’s
only faith: your belief that you exist is an act of faith, no more valid
than another’s faith in his right to kill you; the axioms of science are
an act of faith, no more valid than a mystic’s faith in revelations;
the belief that electric light can be produced by a generator is an
act of faith, no more valid than the belief that it can be produced
by a rabbit’s foot kissed under a stepladder on the first of the
moon — truth is whatever people want it to be, and people are every-
one except yourself; reality is whatever people choose to say it is,
there are no objective facts, there are only people’s arbitrary
wishes — a man who seeks knowledge in a laboratory by means of
test tubes and logic is an old-fashioned, superstitious fool; a true
scientist is a man who goes around taking public polls — and if it
weren’t for the selfish greed of the manufacturers of steel girders,
who have a vested interest in obstructing the progress of science,
you would learn that New York City does not exist, because a poll
of the entire population of the world would tell you by a landslide
majority that their beliefs forbid its existence.

‘'For centuries, the mystics of spirit have proclaimed that faith is
superior to reason, but have not dared deny the existence of reason.
Their heirs and product, the mystics of muscle, have completed their
job and achieved their dream: they proclaim that everything is faith,
and call it a revolt against believing. As revolt against unproved
assertions, they proclaim that nothing can be proved; as revolt
against supernatural knowledge, they proclaim that no knowledge is
possible; as revolt against the enemies of science, they proclaim that
science is superstition; as revolt against the enslavement of the mind,
they proclaim that there is no mind.

“If you surrender your power to perceive, if you accept the switch
of your standard from the objective to the collective and wait for
mankind to tell you what to think, you will find another switch taking
place before the eyes you have renounced: you will find that your
teachers become the rulers of the collective, and if you then refuse
to obey them, protesting that they arefnot the whole of mankind,
they will answer: ‘By what means do you know that we are- not?’
Are, brother? Where did you get that ^Id-fashioned term?

“if you doubt that such is their purpose, observe with what pas-
sionate consistency the ntystics of musde are striving to make you
forget that a concept such as 'mind’ has ever existed. Observe the
twists of undefined verbiage, the words with rubber meanings, the

954

terms left floating in midstream, by means of which they try to get
around the recognition of the concept of * thinking . ’ Your conscious-
ness, they tell you, consists of ‘reflexes/ ‘reactions,’ ‘experiences/
‘urges/ and ‘drives’— and refuse to identify the means by which they
acquired that knowledge, to identify the act they are performing
when they tell it or the act you are performing when you listen.
Words have the power to ‘condition’ you, they say and refuse to
identify the reason why words have the power to change your —
blank-out. A student reading a book understands it through a process
of — blank-out. A scientist working on an invention is engaged in the
activity of— blank-out. A psychologist helping a neurotic to solve a
problem and untangle a conflict, does it by means ot— blank-out.
An industrialist — blank out— there is no such person. A factory is a
‘natural resource/ like a tree, a rock or a mud puddle.

“The problem of production, they tell you, has been solved and
deserves no study or concern; the only problem left for your ‘re-
ilexes’ to solve is now the problem of distribution. Who solved the
problem of production? Humanity, they answer. What was the solu-
tion? The goods are here. How did they get here? Somehow. What
caused it? Nothing has causes.

“They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without
labor and, the laws ot reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is
entitled to receive his ‘minimum sustenance’— his food, his clothes,
lus shelter — with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright.
To receive it — from whom? Blank-out. Every man. they announce,
owns an equal share of the technological benefits created in the
world. Created— by whom? Blank-out. Frantic cowards who posture
as detenders of industrialists now define the purpose of economics
as ‘an adjustment between the unlimited desires of men and the
goods supplied in limited quantity.’ Supplied — by whom? Blank-out.
Intellectual hoodlums who pose as professors, shrug away the think-
ers of the past by declaring that their social theories were based on
the impractical assumption that man was a rational being — but since
men are not rational, they declare, there ought to be established a
system that will make it possible for them to exist while being irratio-
nal , which means: while defying reality. Who will make U possible?
Blank-out. Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to con-
trol the production of mankind— and whoever agrees or disagrees
with his statistics, no one questions his right to enforce his plans by
means of a gun. Enforce — on whom? Blank-out. Random females
with causeless incomes flitter on trips around the globe and return
to delivei the message that the backward peoples of the world de-
mand a higher standard of living. Demand —of whom? Blank-out.

“And to forestall any inquiry into the cause of the difference be-
tween a jungle village and New York City, they resort to the ultimate
obscenity of explaining man’s industrial progress — skyscrapers, cable
bridges, power motors, railroad trains — by declaring that man is an
animal who possesses an instinct of tool-making ♦ ’

“Did you wonder what is wrong with the world? You are now
seeing the climax of the creed of the uncaused and unearned. All
your gangs of mystics, of spirit or muscle, are fighting one another

Q55

for power to rule you, snarling that love is the solution for all the
problems of your spirit and that a whip is the solution for all the
problems of your body — you who have agreed to have no mind.
Granting man less dignity than they grant to cattle, ignoring what
an animal trainer could tell them — that no animal can be trained by
fear, that a tortured elephant will trample its torturer, but will not
work for him or carry his burdens — they expect man to continue to
produce electronic lubes, supersonic airplanes, atom-smashing en-
gines and interstellar telescopes, with his ration of meat for reward
and a lash on his back for incentive.

“Make no mistake about the character of mystics. To undercut
your consciousness has always been their only purpose throughout
the ages — and power , the power to rule you by force, has always
been their only lust.

“From the rites of the jungle witch-doctors, which distorted reality
into grotesque absurdities, stunted the minds of their victims and
kept them in terror of the supernatural for stagnant stretches of
centuries— to the supernatural doctrines of the Middle Ages, which
kept men huddling on the mud floors ot their hovels, in terror that
the devil might steal the soup they had worked eighteen hours to
earn — to the seedy little smiling professor who assures you that your
brain has no capacity to think, that you have no means of perception
and must blindly obey the omnipotent will of that supernatural force:
Society — all of it is the same performance for the same and only
purpose: to reduce you to the kind of pulp that has surrendered the
validity of its consciousness.

“But it cannot be done to you without your consent If you permit
it to be done, you deserve it.

“When you listen to a mystic’s harangue on the impotence of the
human mind and begin to doubt your consciousness, not his, when
you permit your precariously semi-rational state to be shaken by any
assertion and decide it is safer to trust his superior certainty and
knowledge, the joke is on both of you: your sanction is the only
source of certainty he has. The supernatural power that a mystic
dreads, the unknowable spirit he worships, the consciousness he con-
siders omnipotent is — yours.

“A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its first encounter
with the minds of others. Somewhere in the distant reaches of his
childhood, when his own understanding of reality clashed with the
assertions of others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory
demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he
renounced his rational faculty. At the cfossroads of the choice be-
tween ‘I know’ and They say, 1 he chose* the authority of others, he
chose to submit rather than to understand, to believe rather than to
think. Faith in the supernatural begins ai faith in the superiority of
others. His surrender took the form of the feeling that he must hide
his lack of understanding, that other4 possess some mysterious
knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is whatever
they want it to be, through some means^ forever denied to him, *

“From then on, afraid to think, he vs left at the mercy of unidenti-
fied feelings. His feelings become his only guide, his only remnant

956

of personal identity, he clings to them with ferocious possessive-
ness— and whatever thinking he does is devoted to the struggle of
hiding from himself that the nature of his feelings is terror.

“When a mystic declares that he feels the existence of a power
superior to reason, he feels it all right, but that power is not an
omniscient super-spirit of the universe, it is the consciousness of any
passer-by to whom he has surrendered his own. A mystic is driven
by the urge to impress, to cheat, to flatter, to deceive, to force that
omnipotent consciousness of others. * They ' are his only key to reality,
he feels that he cannot exist save by harnessing their mysterious
power and extorting their unaccountable consent. ‘ They ’ are his only
means of perception and, like a blind man who depends on the sight
of a dog, he feels he must leash them in order to live. To control
the consciousness of others becomes his only passion; power-lust is
a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

‘‘Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator.
A mystic craves obedience from men, not their agreement. He wants
them to surrender their consciousness to his assertions, his edicts,
his wishes, his whims— as his consciousness is surrendered to theirs.
He wants to deal with men by means of faith and force — he finds
no satisfaction in their consent if he must earn it by means of facts
and reason. Reason is the enemy he dreads and, simultaneously,
considers precarious: reason, to him, is a means of deception, he
feels that men possess some power more potent than reason — and
only their causeless belief or their forced obedience can give him a
sense of security, a prool that he has gained control of the mystic
endowment he lacked. His lust is to command, not to convince: con-
viction requires an act of independence and rests on the absolute of
an objective reality. What he seeks is power over reality and over
men’s means of perceiving it, their mind, the power to interpose his
will between existence and consciousness, as if. by agreeing to fake
the reality he orders them to fake, men would, in fact, create it.

“Just as the mystic is a parasite in matter, who expropriates the
wealth created by others — just as he is a parasite in spirit, who plun-
ders the ideas created by others — so he falls below the level of a
lunatic who creates his own distortion of reality, to the level of a
parasite of lunacy who seeks a distortion created by others.

“There is only one state that fulfills the mystic's longing for infin-
ity, non -causality, non -identity: death. No matter what unintelligible
causes he ascribes to his incommunicable feelings, whoever rejects
reality rejects existence — and the feelings that move him from then
on are hatred for all the values of man’s life, and lust for all the
evils that destroy it. A mystic relishes the spectacle of suffering, of
poverty, subservience and terror: these give him a feeling of triumph,
a proof of the defeat of rational reality. But no other reality exists.

“No matter whose welfare he professes to serve, be it the welfare
of God or ot the disembodied gargoyle he describes as 'The People,'
no matter what ideal he proclaims in terms of some supernatural
dimension — in fact » in reality , on earth , his ideal is death , his craving
is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture.

“Destruction is the only end that the mystics' cieed has ever

957

achieved, as it is the only end that you see them achieving today,
and if the ravages wrought by their acts have not made them ques-
tion their doctrines, if they profess to be moved by love, yet are not
deterred by piles of human corpses, it is because the truth about
their souls is worse than the obscene excuse you have allowed them,
the excuse that the end justifies the means and that the horrors they
practice are means to nobler ends. The truth is that those horrors
are their ends.

“You who’re depraved enough to believe that you could adjust
yourself to a mystic’s dictatorship and could please him by obeying
his orders — there is no way to please him; when you obey, he will
reverse his orders; he seeks obedience for the sake of obedience and
destruction for the sake of destruction. You who are craven enough
to believe that you can make terms with a mystic by giving in to his
extortions — there is no way to buy him off, the bribe he wants is
your life, as slowly or as fast as you are willing to give it up— and
the monster he seeks to bribe is the hidden blank-out in his mind,
which drives him to kill in order not to learn that the death he
desires is his own.

“You who are innocent enough to believe that the forces let loose
in your world today are moved by greed for material plunder— the
mystics’ scramble for spoils is only a screen to conceal from their
mind the nature of their motive. Wealth is a means of human life,
and they clamor for wealth in imitation of living beings, to pretend
to themselves that they desire to live. But their swinish indulgence
in plundered luxury is not enjoyment, it is escape. They do not want
to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to
succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want
you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep
running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is
himself.

“You who’ve never grasped the nature of evil, you who describe
them as 'misguided idealists' — may the God you invented forgive
you! — they are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who
seek, by devouring the world, to till the selfless zero of their soul. It
is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against
the mind, which means; against life and man.

“It is a conspiracy without leader or direction, and the random
little thugs of the moment who cash in on the agony of one land or
another are chance scum riding the torrent from the broken dam of
the sewer of centuries, from the reservoir of hatred for reason, for
logic, for ability, for achievement, for joy, stored by every whining
anti-human who ever preached the superiority of the ‘heart’ over
the mind.

“It is a conspiracy of all those who stick, not to live, but to get
away with living , those who seek to cuf just one small corner of
reality and are drawn, by feeling, to all* the others who are busy
cutting other corners — a conspiracy that ^unites by links of evasion
all those who pursue a zero as a value: the professor who, unable*
to think, takes pleasure in crippling the minds of his students, the
businessman who, to protect his stagnation, takes pleasure in chain-

958

ing the ability of competitors, the neurotic who, to defend his self-
loathing, takes pleasure in breaking men of self-esteem, the incompe-
tent who takes pleasure in defeating achievement, the mediocrity
who takes pleasure in demolishing greatness, the eunuch who takes
pleasure in the castration of all pleasure — and all their intellectual
munition-makers, all those who preach that the immolation of virtue
will transform vices into virtue. Death ts the premise at the root of
their theories, death is the goal of their actions in practice — and you
are the last of their victims.

“We, who were the living buffers between you and the nature of
your creed, arc no longer there to save you from the effects of your
chosen beliefs. We are no longer willing to pay with our lives the
debts you incurred in yours or the moral deficit piled up by all the
generations behind you. You had been living on borrowed time —
and 1 ani the man who has called in the loan.

“1 am the man whose existence your blank-outs were intended to
permit you to ignore. 1 am the man whom you did not want either
to live or to die. You did not want me to live, because you were
afraid of knowing that 1 carried the responsibility you dropped and
that your lives depended upon me; you did not want me to die,
t^eca use you knew it.

“Twelve years ago, when 1 worked in your world, I was an inven-
tor. 1 was one of a profession that came last in human history and
will be first to vanish on the way back to the sub-human An inventor
is a man who asks Why?' of the universe and lets nothing stand
between the answer and his mind.

“Like the man who discovered the use of steam or the man who
discovered the use of oil, 1 discovered a source of energy which was
available since the birth of the globe, but which men had not known
how to use except as an object of worship, of terror and of legends
about a thundering god. 1 completed the experimental model of a
motor that would have made a fortune for me and for those who
had hired me, a motor that would have raised the efficiency of every
human installation using powei and would have added the gift of
higher productivity to every hour you spend at earning youi living.

“Then, one night at a factory meeting, 1 heard myself sentenced
to death by reason of my achievement. I heard three parasites assert
that my brain and my life were their property, that my right to exist
was conditional and depended on the satisfaction of their desires.
The purpose of my ability, they said, was to serve the needs of those
who were less able. I had no right to live, they said, by reason of
my competence for living; their right to live was unconditional, by
reason of their incompetence.

“Then I saw what was wrong with the world, f saw what destroyed
men and nations, and where the bailie for life had to be fought, f
saw that the enemy was an inverted morality — and that my sanction
was its only power. 1 saw that evil was impotent — that evil was the
irrational, the blind, the anti-real — and that the only weapon of its
triumph was the willingness of the good to serve it. Just as the parasites
around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind
and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no

959

power to enforce, just as they were counting on my self-ifnmofation
to provide them with the means of their plan — so throughout the
world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from
the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collective coun-
tries. it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their
own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and
let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for
evil the power of survival, and for their own values — the impotence
of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man
of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win— and that
no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses
to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your out-
rages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it.
The word was Wo. '

“I quit that factory, f quit your world, I made it my job to warn
your victims and to give them the method and the weapon to fight
you. The method was to refuse to dellect retribution. The weapon
was justice.

“If you want to know what you lost when I quit and when my
strikers deserted your world — stand on an empty stretch ol soil in a
wilderness unexplored by men and ask yourself what manner of sur-
vival you would achieve and how long you would last it you retused
to think, with no one around to teach you the motions, or, if you
chose to think, how much your mind would be able to discover—
ask yourself how many independent conclusions you have reached
in the course of your life and how much of your time was spent on
performing the actions you (earned Irom others — ask yourself
whether you would be able to discover how to till the soil and grow
your food, whether you would be able to invent a wheel, a lever, an
induction coil, a generator, an electronic tube— then decide whether
men of ability are exploiters who live by the fruit of vour labor and
rob you of the wealth that vou produce, and whether you dare to
believe that you possess the power to enslave them. Let your women
take a look at a jungle female with her shriveled face and pendulous
breasts, as she sits grinding meal in a bowl, hour after hour, century
by century— then let them ask themselves whether their ‘instinct of
tool-making’ will piovide them with their electric relngcralors, their
washing machines and vacuum cleaners, and, if not, whether they
care to destroy those who provided it all, but not ‘by instinct.’

“Take a look around you, you savages who stutter that ideas are
created by men’s means of production, that a machine is not the
product of human thought, but a mystical power that produces
human thinking. You have never discovered the industrial age — and
you ding to the morality of the barbarian eras when a miserable
form of human subsistence was produced^ by the muscular labor of
slaves. Every mystic had always longed |or slaves, to protect .him
from the material reality he dreaded. Bui you, you grotesque little
atavists, stare blindly at the skyscrapers anil smokestacks around you
and dream of enslaving the material providers who are scientists,
inventors, industrialists. When you clamor for public ownership of
the means of production, you are clamoring for public ownership of

960

the mind. I have taught my strikers that the answer you deserve is
only: ‘Try and get it.’

“You proclaim yourself unable to harness the forces of inanimate
matter, yet propose to harness the minds of men who are able to
achieve the feats you cannot equal. You proclaim that you cannot
survive without us, yet propose to dictate the terms of our survival.
You proclaim that you need us, yet indulge the impertinence of
asserting your right to rule us by force— and expect that we, who
are not afraid of that physical nature which fills you with terror, will
cower at the sight of any lout who has talked you into voting him a
chance to command us.

“You propose to establish a social order based on the following
tenets: that you’re incompetent to run your own life, but competent
to run the lives of others— that you're unfit to exist in freedom, but
fit to become an omnipotent ruler — that you're unable to earn your
living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politi-
cians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have
never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements
of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where
you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable suc-
cessfully to fill the job of assistant greaser.

"This idol of your cult of zero-worship, this symbol of impotence —
the congenital dependent — is your image of man and your standard
of value, m whose likeness you strive to refashion your soul. 'It's
only human,’ you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage
of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean
the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward,
the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the
producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure — as if
‘to feel’ were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human,
but to succeed were not. as if corruption were human, but virtue
were not — as if the premise of death were proper to man. but the
premise of life were not.

“In order to deprive us of honor, that you may then deprive us
of our wealth, you have always regarded us as slaves who deserve
no moral recognition. You praise any venture that claims to be non-
profit, and damn the men who made the profits that make the ven-
ture possible. You regard as ‘in the public interest’ any project
serving those who do not pay; it is not in the public interest to
provide any services for those who do the paying. ‘Public benefit* is
anything given as alms; to engage in trade is to injure the public.
‘Public welfare’ is the welfare of those who do not earn it; those
who do, are entitled to no welfare. 'The public to you, is whoever
has failed to achieve any virtue or value; whoever achieves it, who-
ever provides the goods you require for survival, ceases to be re-
garded as part of the public or as part of the human race.

“What blank-out permitted you to hope that you could gel away
with this muck of contradictions and to plan it as an ideal society,
when the *No’ of your victims was sufficient to demolish the whole
of your structure? What permits any insolent beggar to wave his
sores in the face of his betters and to plead for help in the tone of

961

a threat? You cry, as he does, that you are counting on our pity,
but your secret hope is the moral code that has taught you to count
on our guilt. You expect us to feel guilty of our virtues in the pres*
ence of your vices, wounds and failures — guilty of succeeding at exis-
tence, guilty of enjoying the life that you damn, yet beg us to help
you to live.

“Did you want to know who is John Galt? I am the first man of
ability who refused to regard it as guilt. I am the first man who
would not do penance for my virtues or let them be used as the
tools of my destruction. I am the first man who would not suffer
martyrdom at the hands of those who wished me to perish for the
privilege of keeping them alive. I am the first man who told them
that I did not need them, and until they learned to deal with me as
traders, giving value for value, they would have to exist without me,
as I would exist without them; then I would let them learn whose is
the need and whose the ability — and if human survival is the stan-
dard, whose terms would set the way to survive,

“I have done by plan and intention what has been done through-
out history by silent default. There have always been men of intelli-
gence who went on strike, in protest and despair, but they did not
know the meaning of their action. The man who retires from public
life, to think, but not to share his thoughts — the man who chooses
to spend his years in the obscurity of menial employment, keeping
to himself the fire of his mind, never giving it form, expression or
reality, refusing to biing it into a world he despises — the man who
is defeated by revulsion, the man who renounces before he has
started, the man who gives up rather than give in, the man who
functions at a fraction of his capacity, disarmed by his longing for
an ideal he has not found— they are on strike, on strike against
unreason, on strike against your world and your values. But not
knowing any values of their own, they abandon the quest to know —
in the darkness of their hopeless indignation, which is righteous with-
out knowledge ol the nght, and passionate without knowledge of
desire, they concede to you the power of reality and surrender the
incentives of their mind — and they perish in bitter futility, as rebels
who never learned the object of their rebellion, as lovers who never
discovered their love.

‘'The infamous times you call the Dark Ages were an era of intelli-
gence on strike, when men of ability went underground and lived
undiscovered, studying in secret, and died, destroying the works of
their mind, when only a few of the bravest of martyrs remained to
keep the human race alive. Every period ruled by mystics was an
era of stagnation and want, when most nfren were on strike against
existence, working for less than their barest survival, leaving nothing
but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to
produce, when the ultimate collector of jtheir profits and the final
authority on truth or error was the whim iof some gilded degenerate
sanctioned as superior to reason by divide right and by grace of a
club. The road of human history was a i string of blank-outs over
sterile stretches eroded by faith and fotcc, with only a few brief
bursts of sunlight, when the released energy of the men of the mind

962

performed the wonders you gaped at, admired and promptly extin-
guished again.

“But there will be no extinction, this time. The game of the mystics
is up. You will perish in and by your own unreality. We, the men
of reason, will survive.

“I have called out on strike the kind of martyrs who had never
deserted you before. I have given them the weapon they had lacked:
the knowledge of their own moral value. I have taught them that
the world is ours, whenever we choose to claim it, by virtue and
grace of the fact that ours is the Morality of Life. They, the great
victims who had produced all the wonders of humanity’s brief sum-
mer, they, the industrialists, the conquerors of matter, had not dis-
covered the nature of their right. They had known that theirs was
the power. I taught them that theirs was the glory.

“You, who dare to regard us as the moral inferiors of any mystic
who claims supernatural visions— you, who scramble like vultures for
plundered pennies, yet honor a fortune-teller above a fortune-
maker — you, who scorn a businessman as ignoble, but esteem any
posturing artist as exalted — the root ol your standards is that mystic
miasma which comes from primordial swamps, that cult of death,
which pronounces a businessman immoral by reason of the fact that
he keeps you alive. You, who claim that you long to lise above the
crude concerns of the body, above the drudgery of serving mere
physical needs — who is enslaved by physical needs: the Hindu who
labors from sunrise to sunset at the shafts of a hand-plow for a bowl
ol rice, or the American who is driving a tractor* 1 Who is the con-
queror of physical reality: the man who sleeps on a bed of nails or
the man who sleeps on an inner-spring mattress'* Which is the monu-
ment to the triumph of the human spirit over matter: the germ-eaten
hovels on the shorelines of the Ganges or the Atlantic skyline of
New York?

“Unless you learn the answers to these questions- -and learn to
stand at reverent attention when you face the achievements of man’s
mind — you will not stay much longer on (his earth, which we love
and will not permit you to damn. You will not sneak by with the
rest of your lifespan. I have foreshortened the usual course of history
and have let you discover the nature oi the payment you had hoped
to switch to the shoulders of others. It is the last of your own living
power that will now be drained to provide the unearned for the
worshippers and carriers of Death. Do not pretend that a malevolent
reality defeated you — you were defeated by your own evasions. Do
not pretend that you will perish for a noble ideal —you will perish
as fodder for the haters of man.

“But to those of you who still retain a remnant of the dignity and
will to love one’s life, I am offering the chance to make a choice.
C hoose whether you wish to perish for a morality you have never
believed or practiced. Pause on the brink of self-destruction and
examine your values and your life. You had known how to take an
inventory of your wealth. Now take an inventory of your mind.

“Since childhood, you have been hiding the guilty secret that you
feel no desire to be moral, no desire to seek self-immolation, that

963

you dread and hate your code, but dare not say it evert to yourself,
that you’re devoid of those moral Instincts' which others profess to
feel The less you felt, the louder you proclaimed your selfless love
and servitude to others, in dread of ever letting them discover your
own self, the self that you betrayed, the self that you kept in conceal-
ment, like a skeleton in the closet of your body. And they, who were
at once your dupes and your deceivers, they listened and voiced their
loud approval, in dread of ever letting you discover that they were
harboring the same unspoken secret. Existence among you is a giant
pretense, an act you all perform for one another, each feeling that
he is the only guilty freak, each placing his moral authority in the
unknowable known only to others, each faking the reality he feels
they expect him to fake, none having the courage to break the vi-
cious circle.

“No matter what dishonorable compromise you've made with your
impracticable creed, no matter what miserable balance, half-cynicism,
half-superstition, you now manage to maintain, you still preserve the
root, the lethal tenet: the belief that the moral and the practical are
opposites. Since childhood, you have been running from the terror
of a choice you have never dared fully to identify: If the practical ,
whatever you must practice to exist, whatever works, succeeds,
achieves your purpose, whatever brings you food and joy, whatever
profits you, is evil — and if the good, the moral, is the impractical ,
whatever fails, destroys, frustrates, whatever injures you and brings
you loss or pain — then your choice is to be moral or to live.

“The sole result of that murderous doctrine was to remove moral-
ity from life. You grew up to believe that moral laws bear no relation
to the job of living, except as an impediment and threat, that man's
existence is an amoral jungle where anything goes and anything
works. And in that fog of switching definitions which descends upon
a frozen mind, you have forgotten that the evils damned by your
creed were the virtues required for living, and you have come to
believe that actual evils arc the practical means of existence. Forget-
ting that the impractical good’ was self-sacrifice, you believe that
self-esteem is impractical; forgetting that the practical ‘evil' was pro-
duction, you believe that robbery is practical.

“Swinging like a helpless branch in the wind of an uncharted moral
wilderness, you dare not fully to be evil or fully to live. When you
are honest, you feel the resentment of a sucker; when you cheat,
you feel terror and shame, your pain is augmented by the feeling
that pain is your natural state. You pity the men you admire, you
believe they are doomed to fail; you e$nvy the men you hate, you
believe they are the masters of existence. You feel disarmed when
you come up against a scoundrel: you t>elieve that evil is bound to
win, since the moral is the impotent, thje impractical -

“Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of bore-
dom, of punishment, of pain, a cross-breed between the first school-
teacher of your past and the tax collector of your present, a
scarecrow standing in a barren field, having a stick to chase away
your pleasures — and pleasure , to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a mind-

964

less slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animals'
race, since pleasure cannot be moral.

“If you identify your actual belief, you will find a triple damna-
tion — of yourself, of life, of virtue — in the grotesque conclusion you
have reached: you believe that morality is a necessary evil.

“Do you wonder why you live without dignity, love without fire
and die without resistance? Do you wonder why, wherever you look,
you see nothing but unanswerable questions, why your life is torn
by impossible conflicts, why you spend it straddling irrational fences
to evade artificial choices; such as soul or body, mind or heart, secu-
rity or freedom, private profit or public good?

“Do you cry that you find no answcis? By what means did you
hope to find them? You reject your tool of perception — your mind-
then complain that the universe is a mystery. You discard your key,
then wail that all doors are locked against you. You start out in
pursuit of the irrational, then damn existence tor making no sense.

“The fence you have been sti addling for two hours— while hearing
my words and seeking to escape them — is the coward’s formula con-
tained in the sentence ‘But we don’t have to go to extremes!’ The
extreme you have always struggled to avoid is the recognition that
reality is final, that A is A and that the truth is true. A moral code
impossible to practice, a code that demands imperfection or death,
has taught you to dissolve all ideas in fog, to permit no firm defini-
tions, to regard any concept as approximate and any rule of conduct
as elastic, to hedge on any principle, to compromise on any value,
to take the middle of any road. By extorting your acceptance of
supernatural absolutes, it has forced you to reject the absolute of
nature By making moral judgments impossible, it has made you
incapable of rational judgment. A code that forbids you to cast the
first stone, has forbidden you to admit the identity of stones and to
know when or it you’re being stoned.

“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agiees nor disagrees,
who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes
responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now
spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute,
a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you
live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not.
is an absolute. Whether you eat youi bread or see it vanish into a
looter’s stomach, is an absolute.

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other
is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still
retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility
ot choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out
the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is
willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the
blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who
dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to
tail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the foot to meet
each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it
is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and
evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which

965

drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting
rubber tube.

“You, who are half-rational, half-coward, have been playing a con
game with reality, but the victim you have conned is yourself. When
men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the
force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is
dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels — and you get
the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and
a self-righteously uncompromising evil. As you surrendered to the
mystics of muscle when they told you that ignorance consists of
claiming knowledge, so now you surrender to them when they shriek
that immorality consists of pronouncing moral judgment. When they
yell that it is seltish to be certain that you are right, you hasten to
assure them that you’re certain of nothing. When they shout that it’s
immoral to stand on your convictions, you assure them that you have
no convictions whatever. When the thugs of Europe’s People’s States
snarl that you are guilty of intolerance, because you don't treat your
desire to live and their desire to kill you as a difference of opinion —
you cringe and hasten to assure them that you are not intolerant of
any horror. When some barefoot bum in some pesthole of Asia yells
at you: How dare you be rich — you apologize and beg him to be
patient and promise him you’ll give it all away.

“You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed
when you agreed that you had no right to exist. Once, you believed
it was ‘only a compromise’: you conceded it was evil to live for
yourself, but moral to live for the sake ot your children. Then you
conceded that it was seltish to live for your children, but moral to
live for your community. Then you conceded that it was selfish to
live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now,
you are letting this greatest of countries be devoured by any scum
from any corner of the earth, while you concede that it is selfish to
live for your country and that your moral duty is to live for the
globe. A man who has no right to life, has no right to values and
will not keep them.

“At the end of your road of successive betrayals, stripped of weap-
ons, of certainty, of honor, you commit your final act of treason and
sign your petition of intellectual bankruptcy: while the muscle-mys-
tics of the People’s vStates proclaim that they Ye the champions of
reason and science, you agree and hasten to proclaim that faith is
your cardinal principle, that reason is on the side of your destroyers,
but youis is the side of faith. To the struggling remnants of raiionat
honesty in the twisted, bewildered minds of your children, you de-
clare that you can offer no rational argument to support the ideas
that created this country, that there is jno rational justification for
freedom, for property, for justice, for frights, that they rest on a
mystical insight and can be accepted oply on faith, that in reason
and logic the enemy is right, but taith .is superior to reason. You
declare to your children that it is rational to loot, to torture, (o
enslave, to expropriate, to murder, but that they must resist the
temptations of logic and stick to the discipline of remaining irratio-
nal— that skyscrapers, factories, radios, airplanes were the products

%6

of faith and mystic intuition, while famines, concentration camps
and firing squads arc the products of a reasonable manner of exis-
tence— that the industrial revolution was the revolt of the men of
faith against that era of reason and logic which is known as the
Middle Ages. Simultaneously, in the same breath, to the same child
you declare that the looters who rule the People’s States will surpass
this country in material production, since they are the representatives
of science, but that it’s evil to be concerned with physical wealth
and that one must renounce material prosperity— vou declare that
the looters’ ideals are noble, but they do not mean^them, while you
do: that your purpose in fighting the looters is only to accomplish
their aims, which they cannot accomplish, but you can; and that the
way to fight them is to beat them to it and give one's wealth away
Then you wonder why your children join the People's thugs or be-
come half-crazed delinquents, you wonder why the looters’ conquests
keep creeping closer to your doors -and you blame it on human
stupidity, declaring that the masses are impervious to reason.

“You blank out the open, public spectacle of the looters' fight
against the mind, and the fact that their bloodiest, horrors are un-
leashed to punish the enme of thinking. You blank out the fact that
most mystics of muscle started out as mystics of spirit, that they keep
switching from one to the other, that the men you call materialists and
spiritualists are only two halves of the same dissected human, forever
seeking completion, but seeking it by swinging from the destruction
of the flesh to the destruction of the soul and vice versa — that thev
keep running from your colleges to the slave pens of Europe to art
open collapse into the mystic muck of India, seeking any refuge
against reality, any form of escape from the mind.

“You blank it out and cling to your hypocrisy of ‘faith* in order
to blank out the knowledge that the looters have a stranglehold upon
you, which consists of your moral code— that the looters are the final
and consistent practitioners of the morality you're half-obeying, half-
e\ading — that they practice it the only way n can be practiced: by
turning the eaith into a sacrificial furnace — that >our morality forbids
you to oppose them in the only way they can be opposed: by refusing
to become a sacrificial animal and proudly asserting your right to
exist— that in order to tight them to the finish and with full rectitude,
it is your morality that you have to reject .

“You blank it out. because your self-esteem is tied to that mystic
‘unselfishness’ which you've never possessed or practiced, but spent
so many years pretending to possess that the thought of denouncing
it fills you with terror. No value is higher than self-esteem, but you've
invested it in counterfeit securities — and now your morality has
caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem
by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you:
that need of self-esteem, which you’re unable to explain or to define,
belongs to my morality, not yours; it's the objective token of my
code, it is my proof within your own soul.

“By a feeling he has not learned to identify, but has derived from
fits first awareness of existence, from his discovery that he has to
wake choices, man knows that his desperate need of self-esteem is

967

a matter of life or death. As a being of volitional consciousness, he
knows that he must know his own value in order to maintain his
own life. He knows that he has to be right, to be wrong in action
means danger to his life; to be wrong in person, to be evil, means
to be unfit for existence.

‘‘Every act of man’s life has to be willed; the mere act of obtaining
or eating his food implies that the person he preserves is worthy of
being preserved; every pleasure he seeks to enjoy implies that the
person who seeks it is worthy of finding enjoyment. He has no choice
about his need of self-esteem, his only choice is the standard by
which to gauge it. And he makes his fatal error when he switches
this gauge protecting his life into the service of his own destruction,
when he chooses a standard contradicting existence and sets his self-
esteem against reality.

“Every form of causeless self-doubt, every feeling of inferiority
and secret unworthiness is, in fact, man’s hidden dread of his inability
to deal with existence. But the greater his terror, the more fiercely
he clings to the murderous doctrines that choke him. No man can
survive the moment of pronouncing himself irredeemably evil; should
he do it, his next moment is insanity or suicide. To escape it — if he’s
chosen an irrational standard — he will fake, evade, blank out; he will
cheat himself of reality, of existence, of happiness, of mind; and he
will ultimately cheat himself of self-esteem by struggling to preserve
its illusion rather than to risk discovering its lack. To fear to face an
issue is to believe that the worst is true.

‘it is not any crime you have committed that infects your soul
with permanent guilt, it is none of your failures, errors or Haws, but
the blank-out by which you attempt to evade them — it is not any
sort of Original Sin or unknown prenatal deficiency, but the knowl-
edge and fact of your basic default, of suspending your mind, of
refusing to think. Fear and guilt are your chronic emotions, they are
real and you do deserve them, but they don’t come from the superfi-
cial reasons you invent to disguise their cause, not from your
‘selfishness,’ weakness or ignorance, but from a real and basic threat
to your existence; fear , because you have abandoned your weapon
of survival, guilt, because you know you have done it volitionally.

“The self you have betrayed is your mind; self-esteem is reliance
on one’s power to think. The ego you seek, that essential ‘you’ which
you cannot express or define, is not your emotions or inarticulate
dreams, but your intellect , that judge of your supreme tribunal whom
you’ve impeached in order to drift at the mercy of any stray shyster
you describe as your ‘feeling.’ Then you drag yourself through a self-
made night, in a desperate quest for a nameless fire, moved by some
fading vision of a dawn you had seen an£l lost.

“Observe the persistence, in mankind’^ mythologies, of the legend
about a paradise that men had once possessed, the city of Atlantis
or the Garden of Eden or some kingdom of perfection, always be-
hind us. The root of that legend exists, pot in the past of the race,
but in the past of every man. You still retain a sense — not as firm
as a memory, but diffused like the paiii of hopeless longing — that
somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had

968

teamed to submit, to absorb the terror of unreason and to doubt the
value of your mind, you had known a radiant state of existence, you
had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an
open universe. That is the paradise which you have lost, which you
seek — which is yours for the taking.

“Some of you will never know who is John Galt. But those of you
who have known a single moment of love for existence and of pride
in being its worthy lover, a moment of looking at this earth and
letting your glance be its sanction, have known the state of being a
man, and I — I am only the man who knew that that state is not to
be betrayed. 1 am the man who knew what made it possible and
who chose consistently to practice and to be what you had practiced
and been in that one moment.

“That choice is yours to make. That choice — the dedication to
one’s highest potential — is made by accepting the fact that the no-
blest act you have ever performed is the act of your mind in the
process of grasping that two and two make four.

“Whoever you are— you who are alone with my words in this
moment, with nothing but your honesty to help you understand —
the choice is still open to be a human being, but the price is to start
Irom scratch, to stand naked in the face of reality and, reversing a
costly historical error, to declare: *1 am, therefore I’ll think.'

“Accept the irrevocable fact that your life depends upon your
mind. Admit that the whole of your struggle, your doubts, your fakes,
your evasions, was a desperate quest for escape from the responsibil-
ity of a volitional consciousness — a quest for automatic knowledge,
for instinctive action, for intuitive certainty — and while you called it
a longing for the state of an angel, what you were seeking was the
state of an animal. Accept, as your moral ideal, the task of becoming
a man.

“Do not say that you're afraid to trust your mind because you
know so little. Are you safer in surrendering to mystics and dis-
carding the little that you know? Live and act within the limit of
your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your lif^.
Redeem your mind from the hockshops of authority. Accept the fact
that you arc not omniscient, but playing a zombie will not give you
omniscience — that your mind is fallible, but becoming mindless will
not make you infallible — that an error made on your own is safer
than ten truths accepted on faith, because the first leaves you the
means to correct it, but the second destroys your capacity to distin-
guish truth from error. In place of your dream of an omniscient
automaton, accept the fact that any knowledge man acquires is ac-
quired by his own will and effort, and that that is his distinction in
the universe, that is his nature, his morality, his glory.

“Discard that unlimited license to evil which consists of claiming
that man is imperfect. By what standard do you damn him when
you claim it? Accept the fact that in the realm of morality nothing
less than perfection will do. But perfection is not to be gauged by
mystic commandments to practice the impossible, and your moral
stature is not to be gauged by matters not open to your choice. Man
has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of

969

his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality — not the
degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your
mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason
as an absolute.

“Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge
and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw,
provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge
human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omni-
science. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action
you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension
of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral
charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account
of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of
knowledge; do not forgive or accept any breach of morality. Give
the benefit of the doubt to those who seek to know, but treat as
potential killers those specimens of insolent depravity who make
demands upon you, announcing that they have and seek no reasons,
proclaiming, as a license, that they ‘just feel it’ — or those who reject
an irrefutable argument by saying: ‘It's only logic.' which means: ‘It’s
only reality.' ihe only realm opposed to reality is the realm and
premise of death.

“Accept the fact that the achievement of your happiness is the
only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness — not pain or
mindless self-indulgence — is the proof of your moral integrity, since
it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of
your values. Happiness was the responsibility you dreaded, it re-
quired the kind of rational discipline you did not value yoursell
enough to assume— and the anxious staleness of your days is the
monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral
substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward
than the man who deserted the battle for his joy. fearing to assert
his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of
a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags
of that vice which you called a virtue: humility — learn to value your-
self, which means: to tight for your happiness — and when you learn
that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.

“As a basic step of self-esteem, learn to treat as the mark of a
cannibal any man's demand for your help. To demand it is to claim
that your life is his property — and loathsome as such claim might
be, there's something still more loathsome: your agreement. Do you
ask if it's ever proper to help another man? No — if he claims it as
his right or as a moral duty that you owe him. Yes — if such is your
own desire based on your own selfish pleasure in the value of his
person and his struggle. Suffering as such i$ not a value; only man’s
fight against suffering, is. If you choose to*help a man who suffers,
do it only on the ground of his virtues, of His fight to recover, of his
rational record, or of the fact that he sujffers unjustly: then your
action is still a trade, and his virtue is th<| payment for your help.
But to help a man who has no virtues, to help him on the ground
of his suffering as such, to accept his faults, his need, as a claim — is
to accept the mortgage of a zero on your values. A man who has

970

no virtues is a hater of existence who acts on the premise of death;
to help him is to sanction his evil and to support his career of de-
struction. Be it only a penny you will not miss or a kindly smile he
has not earned, a tribute to a zero is treason to life and to all those
who struggle to maintain it. It is of such pennies and smiles that the
desolation of your world was made.

“Do not say that my morality is too hard for you to practice and
that you tear it as you fear the unknown. Whatever living moments
you have known, were lived by the values of my code. But you
stifled, negated, betrayed it. You kept sacrificing your virtues to your
vices, and the best among men to the worst. Look around you: what
you have done to society, you have done it first within your soul;
one is the image of the other. This dismal wreckage, which is now
your world, is the physical form of the treason you committed to your
values, to your friends, to your dclcnders, to your tuture. to your
country, to yourself.

“We — whom you arc now calling, but who will not answer any
longer— we have lived among you, but you failed to know us, you
refused to think and to see what we were. You failed to recognize
the motor I invented — and it became, in your world, a pile of dead
scrap. You failed to recognize the hero in your soul — and you failed
to know me when 1 passed you in the street. When you cried in
despair for the unattainable spirit which you felt had deserted your
world, you gave it my name, but what you were calling was your own
betrayed self-esteem. You will not recover one without the other.

“When you failed to give recognition to man’s mind and attempted
to rule human beings by force —those who submitted had no mind
to surrender, those who had, were men who don't submit. Thus the
man of productive genius assumed in your world the disguise of a
playboy and became a destroyer of wealth, choosing to annihilate
his fortune rather than surrender it to guns. Thus the thinker, the
man of reason, assumed in your world the role of a pirate, to defend
his values by force against your foiee, rather than submit to the
rule of brutality. Do you hear me, Fiancisco d'Anconia and Ragnar
Danneskjold, my first friends, my fellow fighters, my fellow outcasts,
in whose name and honor 1 speak?

“It was the three of us who started what 1 am now completing. It
was the three of us who resolved <o avenge this country and to
release its imprisoned soul. This greatest of countries was built on
my morality — on the inviolate suptemucy of man’s right to exist—
but you dreaded to admit it and live up to it. You stared at an
achievement unequaled in history, and looted its effects and blanked
out its cause. In the presence of that monument to human morality,
which is a factory, a highway or a bridge — you kept damning this
country as immoral and its progress as material greed,' you kept
offering apologies for this country’s greatness to the idol of primor-
dial starvation, to decaying Europe's idol of a leprous, mystic bum.

“This country — the product of reason — could not survive on the
morality of sacrifice. It was not built by men who sought self-
immolation or by men who sought handouts. It could not stand on
Ihe mystic split that divorced man's soul from his body. It could not

971

live by the mystic doctrine that damned this earth as evil and those
who succeeded on earth as depraved. From its start, this country was
a threat to the ancient rule of mystics. In the brilliant rocket-explo-
sion of its youth, this country displayed to an incredulous world what
greatness was possible to man, what happiness was possible on earth.
It was one or the other: America or mystics. The mystics knew it;
you didn't. You let them infect you with the worship of need — and
this country became a giant in body with a mooching midget in place
of its soul, while its living soul was driven underground to labor and
feed you in silence, unnamed, unhonored, negated, its soul and hero:
the industrialist. Do you hear me now. Hank Rearden, the greatest
of the victims 1 have avenged?

“Neither he nor the rest of us will return until the road is clear
to rebuild this country — until the wreckage of the morality of sacri-
fice has been wiped out of our way, A country’s political system is
based on its code of morality. We will lebuild America’s system on
the moral premise which had been its foundation, but which you
treated as a guilty underground, in your frantic evasion of the conflict
between that premise and your mystic morality: the premise that
man is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others, that
man’s life, his freedom, his happiness are his by inalienable right.

“You who've lost the concept of a right, you who swing m impo-
tent evasiveness between the claim that rights arc a gilt of God, a
supernatural gift to be taken on faith, or the claim that rights are a
gift of society, to be broken at its arbitrary whim-* the source of
man’s rights is not divine law' or congressional law', but the law of
identity. A is A — and Man is Man. Rights are conditions ol existence
required by man’s nature for his proper survival. It man is to live
on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his
own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the
product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, ho has a right to
live as a rational being: nature torbids him the irrational. Any group,
any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong,
which means: is evil, which means*, is anti-life.

“ Rights are a moral concept — and morality is a matter of choice.
Men are free not to choose man’s survival as the standard of their
morals and their laws, but not free to escape from the fact that the
alternative is a cannibal society, which exists for a while by devouring
its best and collapses like a cancerous body, when the healthy have
been eaten by the diseased, when the rational have been consumed
by the irrational. Such has been the fate of your societies in history,
but you’ve evaded the knowledge of the cjiuse. I am here to state
it: the agent of retribution was the law of identity, which you cannot
escape. Just as man cannot live by means of the irrational, so two
men cannot, or two thousand, or two billion. Just as man can’t suc-
ceed by defying reality, so a nation can’t, ^r a country, or a globe.
A is A. The rest is a matter of time, provided by the generosity
of victims. *

“Just as man can’t exist without his body, so no rights can exist
without the right to translate one’s rights into reality — to think, to
work and to keep the results— which means: the right of property.

972

The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alterna-
tive of * human rights* versus ‘property rights,’ as if one could exist
without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the
doctrine of soul versus body. Only a ghost can exist without material
property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his
effort. The doctrine that ‘human rights’ are superior to ‘property
rights’ simply means that some human beings have the right to make
property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain
from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own
their betters and to use them as productive cattle Whoever regards
this as human and right, has no right to the title of ‘human.’

“The source of property rights is the law of causality. All property
and all forms of wealth are produced by man’s mind and labor. As
you cannot have effects without causes, so you cannot have wealth
without its source: without intelligence. You cannot force intelligence
to work: those who’re able to think, will not work under compulsion;
those who will, won’t produce much more than the price of the whip
needed to keep them enslaved. You cannot obtain the products of
a mind except on the owner’s terms, by trade and by volitional con-
sent. Any other policy of men toward man's property is the policy
of criminals, no matter what their numbers. Criminals are savages
who play it short-range and starve when their prey runs out— just as
you're starving today, you who believed that crime could be ‘practi-
cal’ if >our government decreed that robbery was legal and resistance
to robbery illegal.

“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's
rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper
government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-
defense. and, as such, may resort to force only against those who
start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government
arc: the police, to protect you from criminals, the army, to protect
you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect vour property
and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by
rational rules, according to objective law. Bui a government that
initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no
one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims,
is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality; such
a government reverses Us only moral purpose and switches from the
role of protector to the role of man s deadliest enemy, from the role
of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the
wielding of violence against victims depnved of the right of self-
defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following
rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your
neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his.

“Only a brute, a fool or an evader can agree to exist on such
terms or agree to give his fellow men a blank check on his life and
his mind, to accept the belief that others have the right to dispose
of his person at their whim, that the will of the majority is omnipo-
tent, that the physical force of muscles and numbers is a substitute
for justice, reality and truth. We, the men of the mind, we who are

973

traders, not masters or slaves, do not deal in blank checks or grant
them. We do not live or work with any form of the non-objective.

“So long as men, in the era of savagery, had no concept of objec-
tive reality and believed that physical nature was ruled by the whim
of unknowable demons — no thought, no science, no production were
possible. Only when men discovered that nature was a firm, predict-
able absolute were they able to rely on their knowledge, to choose
their course, to plan their future and, slowly, to rise from the cave.
Now you have placed modern industry, with its immense complexity
of scientific precision, back into the power of unknowable demons —
the unpredictable power of the arbitrary whims of hidden, ugly little
bureaucrats. A farmer will not invest the eftort of one summer if
he*s unable to calculate his chances of a harvest. But you expect
industrial giants — who plan in terms of decades, invest in terms of
generations and undertake ninety-nine-year contracts— to continue
to function and produce, not knowing what random caprice in the
skull of what random official will descend upon them at what mo-
ment to demolish the whole of their effort. Drifters and physical
laborers live and plan by the range of a day. The better the mind,
the longer the range. A man whose vision extends to a shanty, might
continue to build on your quicksands, to grab a fast profit and run.
A man who envisions skyscrapers, will not. Nor will he give ten years
of unswerving devotion to the task of inventing a new product, when
he knows the gangs of entrenched mediocrity are juggling the laws
against him, to tie him. restrict him and force him to fail, but should
he fight them and struggle and succeed, they will sei/e his rewards
and his invention.

“Look past the range of the moment, you who cry that you fear
to compete with men of superior intelligence, that their mind is a
threat to your livelihood, that the strong leave no chance to the weak
in a market of voluntary trade. What determines the material value
of your work? Nothing but the productive effort of your mind— if
you lived on a desert island. The less efficient the thinking of your
brain, the less your physical labor would bring you - and you could
spend your life on a single routine, collecting a precarious harvest
or hunting with bow and arrows, unable to think any further. But
when you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you
receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is
determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best
productive minds who exist in the world around you.

“When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for
your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that
factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it. for the
work of the investor who saved the money tb risk on the untried and
the new, for the work of the engineer who <|esigned the machines of
which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor wjio
created the product which you spend your jime on making, for the
work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the
making of that product, for the work of the? philosopher who taught
men how to think and whom you spend yopr time denouncing.

“The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power

974

that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of
your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the mystics' Middle
Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron
bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many
tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for Hank Rearden?
Would you dare to claim that the size of your pay check was created
solely by your physical labor and that those rails were the product
of your muscles? The standard of living of that blacksmith is ail that
your muscles are worth: the rest is a gift from Hank Rearden.

“Every man is free to rise as far as he’s able or willing, but it’s
only the degree to which he thinks that determines the degree to
which he’ll rise. Physical labor as such can extend no further than the
range of the moment. The man who does no more than physical labor,
consumes the material value-equivalent of his own contribution to the
process of production, and leaves no further value, neither for himself
nor others. But the man who produces an idea in any field of rational
endeavor — the man who discovers new knowledge— is the permanent
benefactor of humanity. Material products can’t be shared, they be-
long to some ultimate consumer; it is only the value of an idea that
can be shared with unlimited numbers ot men, making all sharers
richer at no one's sacrifice or loss, raising the productive capacity of
whatever labor they perform. It is the value of his own time that the
strong of the intellect transfers to the weak, letting them work on the
jobs he discovered, while devoting his time to further discoveries. TOs
is mutual trade to mutual advantage: the interests of the mind are
one, no matter what the degree of intelligence, among men who desire
to work and don’t seek or expect the unearned.

“In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates
a new invention receive* but a small percentage of his value in terms
of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter
what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the
factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in
proportion to the mental effort that his job requires ot him . And the
same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability.

I he man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most
to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment,
receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his
time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his
hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him. but re-
ceives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘com-
petition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the
pattern of ‘exploitation’ tor which you have damned the strong.

“Such was the service we had given you and were glad and willing
to give. What did we ask in return? Nothing but freedom. We re-
quired that you leave us free to function — free to think and to work
as we choose — free to take our own risks and to bear our own
losses — free to earn our own profits and to make our own fortunes
free to gamble on your rationality, to submit our products to your
judgment for the purpose of a voluntary trade, to rely on the objec-
tive value of our work and on your mind's ability to see it — free to
count on your intelligence and honesty, and to deal with nothing but

975

your mind. Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject
as too high. You decided to call it unfair that we, who had dragged
you out of your hovels and provided you with modern apartments,
with radios, movies and cars, should own our palaces and yachts —
you decided that you had a right to your wages, but we had no right
to our profits, that you did not want us to deal with your mind, but
to deal, instead, with your gun. Our answer to that , was: ‘May you
be damned!' Our answer came true. You are.

“You did not care to compete in terms of intelligence— you are
now competing m terms of brutality. You did not care to allow re-
wards to be won by successful production — you are now running a
race in which rewards are won by successful plunder. You called it
selfish and cruel that men should trade value for value— you have
now established an unselfish society where they trade extortion for
extortion. Your system is a legal civil war, where men gang up on
one another and struggle for possession of the law, which they use
as a club over rivals, till another gang wrests it from their clutch and
clubs them with it in their turn, all of them clamoring protestations
of service to an unnamed public s unspecified good. You had said
that you saw no difference between economic and political power,
between the power of money and the power of guns- -no difference
between reward and punishment, no difference between purchase
and plunder, no difference between pleasure and fear, no difference
between life and death. You are learning the difference now.

“Some of you might plead the excuse of your ignorance, of a
limited mind and a limited range. But the damned and the guiltiest
among you are the men who had the capacity to know, yet chose to
blank out reality, the men who were willing to sell their intelligence
into cynical servitude to force: the contemptible breed of those mys-
tics of science who profess a devotion to some sort of ‘pure knowl-
edge’ — the purity consisting of their claim that such knowledge has
no practical purpose on this earth — who reserve their logic for inani-
mate matter, but believe that the subject of dealing with men re-
quires and deserves no rationality, who scorn money and sell their
souls in exchange for a laboratory supplied by loot And since there
is no such thing as ‘non-practical knowledge’ or any sort of ‘disinter-
ested’ action, since they scorn the use of their science for the purpose
and profit of life, they deliver their science to the service of death,
to the only practical purpose it can ever have for looters: to inventing
weapons of coercion and destruction. They, the intellects who seek
escape from moral values, they are the damned on this earth, theirs
is the guilt beyond forgiveness. Do you heajr me. Dr. Robert Stadler?

“But it is not to him that I wish to speaje. 1 am speaking to those
among you who have retained some sovereign shred of their soul,
unsold and unstamped: ‘—to the order of ^thers.’ If. in the chaos of
the motives that have made you listen to the radio tonight, there
was an honest, rational desire to learn what is wrong with the world,
you are the man whom I wished to addreifc. By the rules and terms’
of my code, one owes a rational statement to those whom it does
concern and who’rc making an effort to know. 111056 who’re making
an effort to fail to understand me, are not a concern of mine,

976

k *I am speaking to those who desire to live and to recapture the
honor of their soul. Now that you know the truth about your world,
stop supporting your own destroyers . The evil of the world is made
possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. Withdraw your
sanction. Withdraw your support. Do not try to live on your enemies’
terms or to win at a game where they're setting the rules. Do not
seek the favor of those who enslaved you, do not beg for alms from
those who have robbed you, be it subsidies, loans or jobs, do not
join their team to recoup what they’ve taken by helping them rob
your neighbors. One cannot hope to maintain one’s life by accepting
bribes to condone one's destruction. Do not struggle for profit, suc-
cess or security at the price of a lien on your right to exist. .Such a
lien is not to be paid off; the more you pay them, the more they
will demand; the greater the values you seek or achieve, the more
vulnerably helpless you become. Theirs is a system of white blackmail
devised to bleed you, not by means of your sms, but by means of
your love for existence.

“Do not attempt to rise on the looters’ terms or to climb a ladder
while they’re holding the ropes. Do not allow their hands to touch
the only power that keeps them in power: your living ambition. Go
on strike— in the manner I did Use youi mind and skill in private,
extend your knowledge, develop your ability, but do not share your
achievements with others. Do not try to produce a fortune, with a
Jooter riding on your back. Stay on the lowest rung of their ladder,
earn no more than your barest survival, do not make an extra penny
to support the looters’ state. Since you’re captive, act as a captive,
do not help them pretend that you're free. Be the silent, incorrupt-
ible enemy they dread. When they force you, obey — but do not vol-
unteer. Never volunteer a step in their direction, or a wish, or a plea,
or a purpose. Do not help a holdup man lo claim that he acts as
your friend and benefactor. Do not help your jailers to pretend that
their jail is your natural state ol existence. Do not help them to fake
reality. That fake is the only dam holding off their secret terror, the
terror of knowing they're unfit to exist: remove it and let them
drown; your sanction is their only life belt.

“H you find a chance to vanish into some wilderness out of their
reach, do so, but not lo exist as a bandit or to create a gang compet-
ing with their racket; build a productive life of youi own with those
who accept your moral code and are willing lo struggle for a human
existence. You have no chance to win on the Morality of Death or
by the code of faith and force; raise a standard to which the honest
will repair: the standard of Life and Reason.

“Act as a rational being and aim at becoming a rallying point for
all those who are starved for a voice of integrity — act on your ratio-
nal values, whether alone in the midst of your enemies, or with a
tew of your chosen friends, or as the tounder of a modest community
on the frontier of mankind’s rebirth.

“When the looters’ state collapses, deprived of the best of its slaves,
when it falls to a level of impotent chaos, like the mystic-ridden na-
tions of the Orient, and dissolves into starving robber gangs fighting

977

to fob one another — when the advocates of the morality of sacrifice
perish with their final ideal-— then and on that day we will return,

“We will open the gates of our city to those who deserve to enter,
a city of smokestacks, pipe lines, orchards, markets and inviolate
homes. We will act as the rallying center for such hidden outposts as
you’ll build. With the sign of the dollar as our symbol — the sign of
free trade and free minds — we will move to reclaim this country once
more from the impotent savages who never discovered its nature, its
meaning, its splendor. Those who choose to join us, will join us; those
who don't, will not have the power to stop us; hordes of savages have
never been an obstacle to men who carried the banner of the mind.

“Then this country will once more become a sanctuary for a van-
ishing species: the rational being. The political system we will build
is contained in a single moral premise: no man may obtain any values
from others by resorting to physical force. Every man will stand or
fall, live or die by his rational judgment. If he fails to use it and
falls, he will be his only victim. If he fears that his judgment is
inadequate, he will not be given a gun to improve it. If he chooses
to correct his errors in time, he will have the unobstructed example
of his betters, for guidance in learning to think; but an end will be
put to the infamy of paying with one life tor the errors of another.

‘in that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit
you have known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adven-
ture and certainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe
No child is afraid of nature; it is your fear of men that will vanish,
the fear that has stunted your soul, the fear you acquired in your
early encounters with the incomprehensible, the unpredictable, the
contradictory, the arbitrary, the hidden, the faked, the irrational in
men. You will live in a world of responsible beings, who will be as
consistent and reliable as facts: the guarantee of their character will
be a system of existence where objective reality is the standard and
the judge. Your virtues will be given protection, your vices and weak-
nesses will not. Every chance will be open to your good, none will
be provided for your evil. What you’ll receive from men will not be
alms, or pity, or mercy, or forgiveness of sins, but a single value:
justice . And when you'll look at men or at yourself, you will feel,
not disgust, suspicion and guilt, but a single constant: respect .

“Such is the future you are capable of winning. It requires a strug-
gle; so docs any human value. All life is a purposeful struggle, and
your only choice is the choice of a goal. Do you wish to continue
the battle of your present or do you wish to fight for my world? Do
you wish to continue a struggle that consists of clinging to precarious
ledges in a sliding descent to the abyss, ^ struggle where the hard-
ships you endure are irreversible and the victories you win bring you
closer to destruction? Or do you wish to [undertake a struggle that
consists of rising from ledge to ledge in steady ascent to the lop,
a struggle where the hardships are investments in your future, and
the victories bring you irreversibly closer tb the world of your moral*
ideal, and should you die without reaching full sunlight, you will die
on a level touched by its rays? Such is the choice before you. Let
your mind and your love of existence decide.

978

“The last of my words will be addressed to those heroes who
might still be hidden in the world, those who are held prisoner, not
by their evasions, but by their virtues and their desperate courage.
My brothers in spirit, check on your virtues and on the nature of
the enemies you’re serving. Your destroyers hold you by means of
your endurance, your generosity, your innocence, your love— the en-
durance that carries their burdens— the generosity that responds to
their cries of despair— the innocence that is unable to conceive of
their evil and gives them the benefit of every doubt, refusing to
condemn them without understanding and incapable of understand-
ing such motives as theirs — the love, your love of life, which makes
you believe that they are men and that they love it, too. But the
world of today is the world they wanted; hie is the object of their
haired. Leave them to the death they worship. In the name of your
magnificent devotion to this earth, leave them, don’t exhaust the
greatness of your soul on achieving the triumph of the evil ot theirs.
Do you hear me ... my love?

“In the name of the best within you, do not sacrifice this world
to those who are Us worst. In the name ot the values that keep you
alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the
cowardly, the mindless in those who have never achieved his title.
Do not lose your knowledge that man’s proper estate is an upright
posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads.
Do not let your lire go out. spark by ii replaceable spark, in the
hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not -quite, the not-yet. the
not-al-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustra-
tion for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach.
Check your road and the nature of sour battle. The world you de-
sired can be won. it exists, it is real, it is possible, it’s yours.

“But to win it requires your total dedication and a total break with
the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacriticial
animal who exists for the pleasure ot others Fight for the value of
your person. Fight for the virtue of vour pride Fight for the essence
of that which is man; for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the
radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is
the Morality of Life and that yours is the battle for any achievement,
any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed
on this earth

“You will win when you are ready to pronounce the oath I have
taken at the start of my battle — and for those who wish to know the
day of my return, I shall now repeat it to the hearing of the world:

“1 swear— -by my life and my love of it — that I will never live tor
the sake ot another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. ’

Chapter VIII THE EGOIST

“It wasn't real, was it?” said Mr. Thompson.

They stood in front of the radio, as the last sound ot Galt s voice
had left them. No one had moved through the span of silence; they
had stood, looking at the radio, as if waiting. But the radio was now

W

only a wooden box with some knobs and a circle of cloth stretched
over an empty loud-speaker.

“We seem to have heard it,” said Tinky Holloway.

“We couldn’t help it,” said Chick Morrison.

Mr. Thompson was sitting on a crate. The pale, oblong smear at
the level of his elbow was the face of Wesley Mouch, who was seated
on the floor. Far behind them, like an island in the vast semidarknoss
of the studio space, the drawing room prepared for their broadcast
stood deserted and fully lighted, a semicircle of empty armchairs
under a cobweb of dead microphones in the glare of the floodlights
which no one had taken the initiative to turn off.

Mr. Thompson’s eyes were darting over the faces around him, as
if in search of some special vibrations known only to him. The rest
of them were trying to do it surreptitiously, each attempting to catch
a glimpse of the others without letting them catch his own glance.

“Let me out of here!” screamed a young third-rate assistant, sud-
denly and to no one in particular.

“Stay put!” snapped Mr. Thompson.

The sound of his own order and the hiccough-moan of the figure
immobilized somewhere in the darkness, seemed to help him recap-
ture a familiar version of reality. His head emerged an inch higher
from his shoulders.

“Who permitted it to hap — ” he began in a rising voice, but
stopped; the vibrations he caught were the dangerous panic of the
cornered. “What do you make oi it?” he asked, instead. There was
no answer. “Well?” He waited. “Well, say something, somebody!”

“We don’t have to believe it, do we?” cried James Taggart, thrust-
ing his face toward Mr. Thompson, in a manner that was almost a
threat. “Do we?” Taggart’s face was distorted; hts features seemed
shapeless; a mustache of small beads sparkled between his nose
and mouth.

“Pipe down,” said Mr. Thompson uncertainly, drawing a little
away from him.

“Wc don’t have to believe it!” Taggart's voice had the flat, insis-
tent sound of an effort to maintain a trance. “Nobody's ever said it
before! It’s just one man! We don’t have to believe it!”

“Take it easy,” said Mr. Thompson.

“Why is he so sure he's right? Who is he to go against the whole
world, against everything ever said for centuries and centuries? Who
is he to know? Nobody can be sure! Nobody can know what’s right!
There isn’t any right’”

“Shut up!” yelled Mr. Thompson. “What are you trying to — ”

The blast that stopped him was a military march leaping suddenly
forth from the radio receiver — the military march interrupted three
hours ago, played by the familiar screeches of a studio record. It
took them a few stunned seconds to graip it, while the cheerful,
thumping chords went goose-stepping through the silence, sounding
grotesquely irrelevant, like the mirth of a half-wit. The station’s pro-
gram director was blindly obeying the absolute that no radio time
was ever to be left blank.

980

“Tell them to cut it oft!” screamed Wesley Mouch, leaping to his
feet. “It will make the public think that we authorized that speech!”

“You damn fooP” cried Mr. Thompson. “Would you rather have
the public think that we didn’t?”

Mouch stopped short and his eyes shot to Mr. Thompson with the
appreciative glance of an amateur at a master.

“Broadcasts as usual!” ordered Mr. Thompson. “Tell them to go
on with whatever programs they'd scheduled for this hour! No spe-
cial announcements, no explanations’ Tell them to go on as if noth-
ing had happened!”

Half a dozen of Chick Morrison’s morale conditioners went scurry-
ing off toward telephones.

“Muzzle the commentators! Don’t allow them to comment! Send
word to every station in the country! Let the public wonder! Don’t
let them think that we’re worried! Don’t let them think that it’s
important!”

“No!” screamed Eugene Lawson, “No, no. no’ We can’t give peo-
ple the impression that we’ie endorsing that speech! It's horrible,
horrible, horrible!’’ Lawson was not in tears, but his voice had the
undignified sound of an adult sobbing with helpless rage.

“Who’s said anything about endorsing it?" snapped Mr. Thompson.

“It’s horrible! It’s immoral! It’s selfish, heartless, ruthless! It's the
most vicious speech ever made’ It . it will make people demand
to be happy!”

“It's only a speech,” said Mr Thompson, not too firmly.

“It seems to me,” said Chick Morrison, his voice tentatively help-
ful. “that people of nobler spiritual nature, you know what I mean,
people of . . of . . . well, of mystical insight" — he paused, as if
waiting to be slapped, but no one moved, so he repeated firmly—
“yes, of mystical insight, won’t go for that speech Logic isn’t every-
thing, after all.”

“The workingmen won’t go for it,” said Tinkv Holloway, a bit
more helpfully. “He didn’t sound like a friend ot labor,”

“The women of the country won’t go for it.” declared Ma Chal-
mers. “It is, 1 believe, an established fact that women don’t go for
that stuff about the mind. Women have finer feelings. You can count
on the women.”

“You can count on the scientists,” said Dr. Simon Pritchett. They
were all pressing forward, suddenly eager to speak, as if they had
found a subject they could handle with assurance. “Scientists know
better than to believe in reason. He's no friend of the scientists.”

”He\ no friend of anybody," said Wesley Mouch, recapturing a
shade of confidence at the sudden realization, “except maybe of
big business,”

“No!” cried Mr. Mowen in terror. ”No! Don't accuse us! Don’t
say it! I won't have you say it!”

“What?”

“That . . . that . , . that anybody is a friend of business!”

“Don’t let’s make a fuss about that speech.” said Dr. Floyd Ferris,

981

“It was too intellectual. Much too intellectual for the common man.
It will have no effect. People are too dumb to understand it.”

“Yeah,” said Mouch hopefully, “that’s so."

“In the first place,” said Dr. Ferris, encouraged, “people can’t
think. In the second place, they don't want to.”

“In the third place,” said Fred Kinnan, “they don't want to starve.
And what do you propose to do about that?”

It was as if he had pronounced the question which all ol the pre-
ceding utterances had been intended to stave off. No one answered
him, but heads drew faintly deeper into shoulders, and figures drew
faintly closer to one another, like a small cluster under the weight
of the studio's empty space. The military march boomed through the
silence with the inflexible gaiety of a grinning skull.

“Turn it off!” yelled Mr. Thompson, waving at the radio “1 urn
that damn thing off!” ,

Someone obeyed him. But the sudden silence was worse.

“Well?" said Mr. Thompson at last, raising his eyes reluctantly to
Fred Kinnan “What do you think we ought to do 9 ”

“Who. me?” chuckled Kinnan “I don't run this show.”

Mr. Thompson slammed his fist down on his knee, “Say some-
thing--” he ordered, but seeing Kinnan turn away, added, “some-
body!” There were no volunteers. “What are we to do 9 " he yelled,
knowing that the man who answered would, thereafter, be the man
in power. “What are we to do 9 Can't somebody tell us what to do 9 ”

“I can!"

It w r as a woman’s voice, but it had the quality of the voice the\
had heard on the radio. They whirled to Dagny before she had time
to step forward from the darkness beyond the group. As she stepped
forward, her face frightened them- because it was devoid of tear.

“I can," she said, addressing Mr. Thompson “You’re to give up."

“Give up?” he repeated blankly.

“You’re through. Don't you see that you’re through? What else
do you need, after what you’ve heard 9 Give up and get out of the
way. Leave men free to exist ” He was looking at her, neither ob-
jecting nor moving. “You’re still alive, you’re using a human lan-
guage, you're asking for answers, you’re counting on reason — you’re
still counting on reason, God damn you! You're able to understand.
It isn't possible that you haven't understood. There’s nothing you
can now pretend to hope, to want or gain or grab or reach. There's
nothing but destruction ahead, the world’s and your own. Give up
and get out.”

They were listening intently, but as if they did not hear her words,
as if they were clinging blindly to a qua$ty she was alone among
them to possess: the quality of being aliye, There was a sound of
exultant laughter under the angry violence^*! her voice, her face was
lifted, her eyes seemed to be greeting some spectacle at an incalcula-
ble distance, so that the glowing patch on fier forehead did not look
like the reflection of a studio spotlight, blit of a sunrise.

“You wish to live, don’t you? Get out of the way, if you want a
chance. Let those who can, take over. He knows what to do. You
don’t. He is able to create the means of human survival. You aren’t.”

982

“Don’t listen to her!”

It was so savage a cry of hatred that they drew away from Dr.
Robert Stadler, as if he had given voice to the unconfessed within
them. His face looked as they feared theirs would look in the privacy
of darkness. r

“Don’t listen to her!” he cried, his eyes avoiding hers, while hers
paused on him for a brief, level glance that began as a shock of
astonishment and ended as an obituary. “It’s your life or his!”

“Keep quiet, Professor,” said Mr. Thompson, brushing him off
with the jerk of one hand. Mr. Thompson’s eyes were watching
Dagny, as if some thought were struggling to take shape inside his
skull.

“You know the truth, all of you,” she said, “and so do I, and so
does every man who’s heard John Galt! What else are you waiting
for? For proof? He’s given it to you. For tacts? They’re all around
you. How many corpses do you intend to pile up before you re-
nounce it— your guns, your power, your controls and the whole ot
your miserable altruistic creed? Give it up, if you want to live. Give
it up. if there's anything left in your mind that’s still able to want
human beings to remain alive on this earth’”

‘But it’s treason!” cried Eugene 1 awson. “She’s talking pure
treason!”

“Now, now,” said Mr. Thompson. “You don’t have to go to
extremes ”

“Huh?” asked Tinky Holloway

“But . . . but surely it's outrageous?” asked Chick Morrison.

“You’re not agreeing with her. are you 0 ” asked Wesley Mouch.

“Who’s said anything about agreeing?” said Mr. Thompson, his
tone surprisingly placid. “Don’t be premature. Just don’t you be
prematuie, any of you. There's no harm in listening to any argument,
is there?”

“That kind of argument 0 ” asked Wesley Mouch. his finger stab-
bing again and again in Dagny's direction.

“Any kind,” said Mr. Thompson placidly. “We mustn't be
intolerant,”

‘But it’s treason, ruin, disloyalty, selfishness and big-business
propaganda!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr. Thompson. “We've got to keep an
open mind. We've got to give consideration to every one’s viewpoint.
She might have something there. He knows what to do We’ve got
to be flexible.”

“Do you mean that you're willing to quit?” gasped Mouch.

“Now don't jump to conclusions,” snapped Mr. Thompson angrily.
“If there's one thing 1 can't stand, it’s people who jump to conclu-
sions. And another thing is ivory-tower intellectuals who stick to
some pet theory and haven’t any sense of piactical reality. At a lime
hke this, we’ve got to be flexible above all.”

He saw a look of bewilderment on all the faces around him, on
Dagny’s and on the others, though not for the same reasons. He
smiled, rose to his feet and turned to Dagny.

“Thank you. Miss T aggart,” he said. “Thank you for speaking

983

your mind That’s what I want you to know — that you can*trust me
and speak to me with full frankness. We’re not your enemies. Miss
Taggart. Don’t pay any attention to the boys — they’re upset, but
they’ll come dowm to earth. We’re not your enemies, nor the coun-
try’s. Sure, we’ve made mistakes, we’re only human, but we’re trying
to do our best for the people — that is, l mean, for everybody —
in these difficult times. We can’t make snap judgments and reach
momentous decisions on the spur of the moment, can we? We’ve
got to consider it, and mull it over, and weigh it carefully. I just
want you to remember that we re not anybody's enemies — you real-
ize that, don’t you?”

‘Tve said everything 1 had to say,” she answered, turning away
from him, with no clue to the meaning of his words and no strength
to attempt to find it.

She turned to Eddie Willers, who had watched the men around
them with a look of so great an indignation that he seemed para-
lyzed — as if his brain were crying, “It’s evil!” and could not move
to any further thought. She jerked her head, indicating the door; he
followed her obediently.

Dr. Robert Stadler waited until the door had closed after them,
then whirled on Mr. Thompson. “You bloody fool! Do you know
what you’re playing with? Don’t you understand that it’s life or
death? That it’s you or him?”

The thin tremor that ran along Mr. Thompson's lips was a smile
of contempt. “It's a funny way for a professor to behave. 1 didn’t
think professors ever went to pieces.”

“Don’t you understand? Don't you see that it’s one or the other?”

‘‘And what is it that you want me to do?”

• “You must kill him.”

It was the fact that Dr. Stadler had not cried it. but had said it in
a flat, cold, suddenly and fully conscious voice, that brought a chill
moment of silence as the whole room’s answer.

“You must find him,” said Dr. Stadler, his voice cracking and
rising once more. “You must leave no stone unturned till you find
him and destroy him! If he lives, he ll destroy all of us! If he lives,
we can’t!”

“How am I to find him?” asked Mr. Thompson, speaking slowly
and carefully.

“I ... I can tell you. 1 can give you a lead. Watch that Taggart
woman. Set your men to watch every move she makes. She’ll lead
you to him, sooner or later.”

“How do you know that?”

‘isn’t it obvious? Isn't it sheer chance that she hasn’t deserted
you long ago? Don't you have the wits to see that she’s one of his
kind?” He did not state what kind. ;

“Yeah,” said Mr. Thompson thoughtfully, ^‘yeah, that’s true.” He
jerked his head up with a smile of satLsfactiob. “The professor’s gbt
something there. Put a tail on Miss Taggart/’ he ordered, snapping
his fingers at Mouch. “Have her tailed day 4nd night. We've got to
find him.”

“Yes, sir,” said Mouch blankly.

984

‘‘And when you find him/’ Dr. Stadler asked tensely, “you’ll kill
him?”

“Kill him, you damn fool? We need him!” cried Mr. Thompson.

Mouch waited, but no one ventured the question that was on ev-
eryone’s mind, so he made the effort to utter stiffly, “1 don’t under-
stand you, Mr. Thompson.”

“Oh, you theoretical intellectuals!” said Mr. Thompson with exas-
peration. “What are you all gaping at? It’s simple. Whoever he is,
he’s a man of action. Besides, he’s got a pressure group: he’s cor-
nered all the men of brains. He knows what to do. We’ll find him
and he’ll tell us. He’ll tell us what to do. He’ll make things work.
He'll pull us out ol the hide.”

"Us, Mr. Thompson?”

“Sure. Never mind your theories. We’ll make a deal with him.”

“With hiniT ’

“Sure. Oh, we’ll have to compromise, we'll have to make a few
concessions to big business, and the welfare boys won’t like it, but
what the hell! — do you know any other way out?”

“But his ideas?”

“Mr. Thompson,” said Mouch, choking. “I . . . I’m afraid he's a
man who’s not open to a deal.”

“There’s no such thing,” said Mr. Thompson.

A it

A cold wind rattled the broken signs over the windows ot aban-
doned shops, m the street outside the radio station. The city seemed
abnormally quiet. The distant rumble ol the traffic sounded lower
than usual and made the wind sound louder. Empty sidewalks
stretched otf into the darkness: a few lone figures stood in whispering
clusters under the rare lights.

Eddie Willcrs did not speak until they were many blocks away
from the station. He stopped abruptly, when they reached a deserted
square where the public loud-speakers, which no one had thought
of turning off, were now broadcasting a domestic comedy — the shrill
voices of a husband and wife quarreling over Junior’s dates — to an
empty stretch of pavement enclosed by unlighted house fronts. Be-
yond the square, a few dots of light, scattered vertically above the
twenty-fifth-floor limit of the city, suggested a distant, rising form,
which was the Taggart Building.

Eddie stopped and pointed at the building, his finger shaking.
“Dagny!” he cried, then lowered his voice involuntarily. “Dagny,”
he whispered. “I know him. He ... he works there . . . there ...”
He kept pointing at the building with incredulous helplessness. “He
works for Taggart Transcontinental ...”

“I know,” she answered; her voice was a lifeless monotone.

“As a track laborer ... as the lowest of track laborers . .

“I know.”

“I’ve talked to him . . I've been talking to him for years ... in
the Terminal cafeteria . . . He used to ask questions ... all sorts of
questions about the railroad, and I — God, Dagny! was I protecting
the railroad or was I helping to destroy it?”

“Both. Neither. It doesn’t matter now.”

985

“I could have staked my life that he loved the railroad!”

“He does.”

“But he destroyed it.”

“Yes.”

She tightened, the collar of her coat and walked on, against a gust
of wind.

“I used to talk to him,” he said, after a while. “His face . .
Dagny, it didn’t look like any of the others, it ... it showed that he
understood so much. ... I was glad, whenever 1 saw him there, in
the cafeteria ... I just talked ... I don’t think l knew that he was
asking questions . . . but he was ... so many questions about the
railroad and . . . and about you.”

“Did he ever ask you what I look like, when I’m asleep?”

“Yes . . . Yes, he did ... I d found you once, asleep in the office,
and when I mentioned it, he — ” He slopped, as a sudden connection
crashed into place in his mind.

She turned to him, in the ray of a street lamp, raising and holding
her face in lull light for a silent, deliberate moment, as if in answer
and confirmation of his thought.

He closed his eyes “Oh God, Dagny!” he whispered.

They walked on in silence.

“He’s gone by now, isn’t he?” he asked. “From the Taggart Termi-
nal, I mean.”

“Eddie,” she said, her voice suddenly grim, “if you value his life,
don’t ever ask that question. You don’t want them to lind him, do
you? Don’t give them any leads. Don't ever breathe a word to any-
one about having known him. Don't try to find out whether he’s still
working in the Terminal.”

“You don’t mean that he’s still there?”

“I don't know, i know only that he might be.”

"Now?"

“Yes.”

“Still?”

“Yes. Keep quiet about it, it you don't want to destroy him.”

“I think he's gone He won’t be back. I haven’t seen him since . .
since ...”

“Since when?” she asked sharply.

“The end of May. The night when you left for Utah, remember?”
He paused, as the memory of that night’s encounter and the full
understanding of its meaning struck him together. He said with ef-
fort, “1 saw him that night. Not since . . . I’ve waited tor him, in the
cafeteria ... He never came back.”

“I don’t think he’ll let you see him no^, he'll keep out of youi
way. But don’t look for him. Don’t inquir^.”

“It’s funny. I don’t even know what nan|e he used. It was Johnny
something or — ”

“It was John Galt,” she said, with affaint, mirthless chuckle.
“Don’t look at the Terminal payroll. The jhame is still there.”

“Just like that? All these years?”

“For twelve years. Just like that.”

“And it’s still there now?”

986

“Yes.”

After a moment, he said, “It proves nothing, I know. The person-
nel office hasn’t taken a single name off the payroll list since Direc-
tive 10-289. If a man quits, they give his name and job to a starving
friend of their own, rather than report it to the Unification Board.”

“Don’t question the personnel office or anyone. Don’t call atten-
tion to his name. If you or I make any inquiries about him, somebody
might begin to wonder. Don't look for him. Don’t make any move
in his direction. And if you ever catch sight of him by chance, act
as if you didn’t know him.’’

He nodded. After a while, he said, his voice tense and low, “1
wouldn’t turn him over to them, not even to save the railroad.”

“Eddie — ”

“Yes?”

“If you ever catch sight of him, tell me.”

He nodded.

Two blocks later, he asked quietly. “You’re going to quit, one of
these days, and vanish, aren’t you?”

“Why do you say that?” It was almost a cry.

“Aren’t you?”

She did not answer at once, when she did. the sound of despair
was present in her voice only in the form ot too tight a monotone:
“Eddie, if I quit, what would happen to the Taggart trains?”

“There would be no Taggart trains within a w'eek. Maybe less.”

“There will be no looters' government within ten days. Then men
like Cuffy Meigs will devour the last of our t ails and engines. Should
1 lose the battle by failing to wail one more moment? How can I
let it go — Taggart Transcontinental. Eddie- go turever, when one
last effort can still keep it in existence? If I've stood things this long,

1 can stand them a little longer. Just a little longer. I'm not helping
the looters. Nothing can help them now.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I don't know. What can they do? They ’to finished.”

“1 suppose so.”

“Didn’t you see them? They're miseiable. panic-stricken rats, run-
ning for their lives.”

“Does it mean anything to them?”

“What?”

“'Their lives,”

“They’re still struggling, aren’t they? But they're through and they
know it.”

“Have they ever acted on what they know?”

“They’ll have to. They’ll give up. It won’t be long. And we’ll be
here to save whatever’s left.”

“Mr. Thompson wishes it to be known,” said official broadcasts
on the morning of November 23, “that there is no cause for alarm.
He urges the public not to draw any hasty conclusions. We must
preserve our discipline, our morale, our unity and our sense of broad-
minded tolerance. The unconventional speech, which some of you
might have heard on the radio last night, was a thought -provoking

987

contribution to our pool of ideas on world problems. W,e must con-
sider it soberly, avoiding the extremes of total condemnation or of
reckless agreement. We must regard it as one viewpoint out of many
in our democratic forum of public opinion, which, as last night has
proved, is open to all. The truth, says Mr. Thompson, has many
facets. We must remain impartial.”

“They’re silent,” wrote Chick Morrison, as a summary of its con
tent, across the report from one of the field agents he had sent out
on a mission entitled Public Pulse Taking. “They’re silent,” he wrote
across the next report, then across another and another. “Silence,”
he wrote, with a frown of uneasiness, summing up his report to Mr.
Thompson. “People seem to be silent.”

The flames that went up to the sky of a winter night and devoured
a home in Wyoming were not seen by the people of Kansas, who
watched a trembling red glow on the prairie horizon, made by the
flames that went up to devour a farm, and the glow was not reflected
by the windows of a street in Pennsylvania, where the twisting red
tongues were reflections of the flames that went up to devour a
factory. Nobody mentioned, next morning, that those flames had not
been set off by chance and that the owners ot the three places had
vanished. Neighbors observed it without comment — and without as-
tonishment. A few homes were found abandoned in random corners
across the nation, some left locked, shuttered and empty, others open
and gutted of all movable goods — but people watched it in silence
and, through the snowdrifts of untended streets in the haze ot pre-
morning darkness, went on trudging to their jobs, a little slowei
than usual.

Then, on November 27, a speaker at a political meeting in Cleve
land was beaten up and had to escape by scurrying down dark alleys.
His silent audience had come to sudden life when he had shouted
that the cause of all their troubles was their selfish concern with
their own troubles.

On the morning of November 29. the workers of a shoe factory
in Massachusetts were astonished, on entering their workshop, to
find that the foreman was late. But they went to their usual posts
and went on with their habitual routine, pulling levers, pressing but-
tons, feeding leather into automatic cutters, piling boxes on a moving
belt, wondering, as the hours went by, why they did not catch sight
of the foreman, or the superintendent, or the general manager, or
the company president. It was noon before they discovered that the
front offices of the plant were empty.

“You goddamn cannibals!” screamed a woman in the midst of a
crowded movie theater, breaking into sudden, hysterical sobs — and
the audience showed no sign of astonishntent, as if she were scream-
ing for them all.

“There is no cause for alarm,” said official broadcasts on Decem-
ber 5. “Mr. Thompson wishes it to be l^riown that he is willing to
negotiate with John Gait for the purpose 0f devising ways and means
to achieve a speedy solution of our problems. Mr. Thompson urges
the people to be patient. We must not worry, we must not doubt,
we must not lose heart,”

988

The attendants of a hospital in Illinois showed no astonishment
when a man was brought in, beaten up by his elder brother, who
had supported him all his life: the younger man had screamed at the
elder, accusing him of selfishness and greed— just as the attendants
of a hospital in New York City showed no astonishment at the case
of a woman who came in with a fractured jaw: she had been slapped
in the face by a total stranger, who had heard her ordering her five-
year-old son to give his best toy to the children of neighbors.

Chick Morrison attempted a whistle-stop tour to buttress the coun-
try’s morale by speeches on self-sacrifice for the general welfare. He
was stoned at the first of his stops and had to return to Washington.

Nobody had ever granted them the title of “the better men” or,
granting it, had paused to grasp that title’s meaning, but everybody
knew, each in his own community, neighborhood, office or shop and
in his own unidentified terms, who would be the men that would
now fail to appear at their posts on some coming morning and would
silently vanish in search of unknown frontiers — the men whose faces
were tighter than the faces around them, whose eyes were more
direct, whose energy was more conscientiously enduring — the men
who were now slipping away, one by one, from every comer of the
country— -of the country' which was now like the descendant of what
had once been regal glory, prostrated by the scourge of hemophilia,
losing the best of its blood lrom a wound not to be healed

“But we’re willing to negotiate!” yelled Mr Thompson to his assis-
tants, ordering the special announcement to be repeated by all radio
stations three times a day “We’re willing to negotiate! Hell hear
it 1 He’ll answer!”

Special listeners were ordered to keep watch, uav and night, at
radio receivers tuned to every known frequency of sound, waiting
tor an answer from an unknown transmitter. There was no answer.

Umpty, hopeless, unfocused faces were becoming more apparent
m the streets of the cities, but no one could read their meaning. As
some men were escaping with their bodies into the underground of
uninhabited regions, so others could only save their souls and were
escaping into the underground of their minds — and no power on
earth could tell whether their blankly indilferent eyes were shutters
protecting hidden treasures at the bottom of shafts no longer to be
mined, or were merely gaping holes of the parasite’s emptiness never
to be filled.

“I don’t know what to do,” said the assistant superintendent of
an oil refinery, refusing to accept the job of the superintendent who
had vanished — and the agents of the Unification Board were unable
to tell whether he lied or not. It was only an edge of precision m
the tone of his voice, an absence ot apology or shame, that made
them wonder whether he was a rebel or a fool. It was dangerous to
force the job on either.

“Give us men!” The plea began to hammer progressively louder
upon the desk of the Unification Board, from all parts of a country
ravaged by unemployment, and neither the pleaders nor the Board
dared to add the dangerous words which the cry was implying: ‘‘Give
us men of ability!” There were waiting lines years* long for the jobs

989

of janitors, greasers, porters and bus boys; there was no one to apply
for the jobs of executives, managers, superintendents, engineers.

The explosions of oil refineries, the crashes of defective airplanes,
the break-outs of blast furnaces, the wrecks of colliding trains, and the
rumors of drunken orgies in the offices of newly created executives,
made the members of the Board fear the kind of men who did apply
for the positions of responsibility.

“Don’t despair! Don’t give up!” said official broadcasts on Decem-
ber 15, and on every day thereafter. “We will reach an agreement
with John Galt. We will get him to lead us. He will solve all our
problems. He will make things work. Don’t give up! We will get
John Galt!”

Rewards and honors were offered to applicants for managerial
jobs — then to foremen — then to skilled mechanics — then to any man
who would make an effort to deserve a promotion in rank: wage
raises, bonuses, tax exemptions and a medal devised by Wesley
Mouch, to be known as “The Order of Public Benefactors.” it
brought no results. Ragged people listened to the offers of material
comforts and turned away with lethargic indifference, as if they had
lost the concept of “Value.” These , thought the public-pulse-takers
with terror, were men who did not care to live — or men who did
not care to live on present terms.

“Don’t despair! Don’t give up! John Galt will solve our prob-
lems!” said the radio voices of official broadcasts, traveling through
the silence of falling snow into the silence of unheated homes.

“Don’t tell them that wc haven’t got him!” cried Mr. Thompson
to his assistants. “But for God's sake tell them to find him!” Squads
of Chick Morrison’s boys were assigned to the task of manufacturing
rumors: half of them went spreading the story that John Galt was
in Washington and in conference with government officials -while
the other half went spreading the story that the government would
give five hundred thousand dollars as reward for information that
would help to find John Galt.

“No, not a clue,” said Wesley Mouch to Mr. Thompson, summing
up the reports of the special agents who had been sent to check on
every man by the name of John Gall throughout the country.
“They’re a shabby lot. There’s a John Galt who’s a professor of
ornithology, eighty years old— -there’s a retired greengrocer with a
wife and nine children — there’s an unskilled railroad laborer who’s
held the same job for twelve years — and other such trash.”

“Don’t despair! We will get John Galt!” said official broadcasts
in the daytime — but at night, every hour on the hour, by a secret,
official order, an appeal was sent Irom $hort-wavc transmitters into
the empty reaches of space: “Calling John Galt! . . . Calling John
Galt! . . . Are you listening, John Galt*? . . . We wish to negotiate
We wish to confer with you, Give us firord on where you can be
reached. ... Do you hear us, John Galt?” There was no answer.

The wads of worthless paper money ^ere growing heavier in the
pockets of the nation, but there was less and less for that money 10
buy. In September, a bushel of wheat had cost eleven dollars; it had
cost thirty dollars in November; it had cost one hundred in Decenv

990

her; it was now approaching the price of two hundred— while the
printing presses of the government treasury were running a race with
starvation, and losing.

When the workers of a factory beat up their foreman and wrecked
the machinery in a fit of despair — no action could be taken against
them. Arrests were futile, the jails were full, the arresting officers
winked at their prisoners and let them escape on their way to
prison — men were going through the motions prescribed for the mo-
ment, with no thought of the moment to follow. No action could be
taken when mobs of starving people attacked warehouses on the
outskirts of cities. No action could be taken when punitive squadrons
joined the people they had been sent to punish.

“Are you listening, John Gall? ... We wish to negotiate. We
might meet your terms . . . Are you listening 7 *’

There were whispered rumors of covered wagons traveling by
night through abandoned trails, and of secret settlements armed to
resist the attacks of those whom they called the “Indians” — the at-
tacks of any looting savages, be they homeless mobs or government
agents. Lights were seen, once in a while, on the distant horizon of
a prairie, in the hills, on the ledges of mountains, vvheie no buildings
had been known to exist But no soldiers could be persuaded to
investigate the sources of those lights.

On the doors of abandoned houses, on the gates of crumbling
factories, on the walls of government buddings, there-appeared, once
in a while, traced in chalk, in paint, in blood, the curving mark which
was the sign ot the dollar.

“Can you hear us, John Gall? . . Send us word. Name your
terms. We will meet any terms >ou set. Can you hear us?”

There was no answer.

The shaft of red smoke that shot to the sky on the night of January
22 and stood abnormally still for a while, like a solemn memorial
obelisk, then wavered and swept back and forth across the sky, like
a searchlight sending some undecipherable message, then went out
as abruptly as it had come, marked the end of Reardon Steel — but
the inhabitants of the area did not know' it. t hey learned it only on
subsequent nights, when they— who had cursed the mills for the
smoke, the fumes, the soot and the noise — looked out and, instead
of the glow pulsating with life on their familiar horizon, they saw a
black void.

The mills had been nationalized, as the property of a deserter.
The first bearer of the title of ‘People's Manager,” appointed to run
the mills, had been a man of the Orien Boyle faction, a pudgy
hanger-on of the metallurgical industry, who had wanted nothing but
to follow his employees while going through the motions of leading.
But at the end of a month, after too many clashes with the workers,
too many occasions when his only answer had been that he couldn’t
help it, too many undelivered orders, too many telephonic pressures
from his buddies, he had begged to be transferred to some other
position. The Orren Boyle faction had been tailing apaif, since Mr.
Boyle had been confined to a rest home, where his doctor had forbid-
den him any contact with business and had put him to the job of

991

weaving baskets, as a means of occupational therapy.. The second
-‘People’s Manager” sent to Rearden Steel had belonged to the fac-
tion of Cuffy Meigs. He had worn leather leggings and perfumed
hair lotions, he had come to work with a gun on his hip, he had
kept snapping that discipline was his primary goal and that by God
he’d get it or else. The only discernible rule of the discipline had
been his order forbidding all questions. After weeks of frantic activ-
ity on the part of insurance companies, of firemen, of ambulances
and of first-aid units, attending to a series of inexplicable accidents —
the “People’s Manager” had vanished one morning, having sold and
shipped to sundry racketeers of Europe and Latin America most of
the cranes, the automatic conveyors, the supplies of refractory brick,
the emergency power generator, and the carpet from what had once
been Rearden’s office.

No one had been able to untangle the issues in the violent chaos
of the next few days — the issues had never been named, the sides
had remained unacknowledged, but everyone had known that the
bloody encounters between the older woikers and the newer had
not been driven to such ferocious intensity by the trivial causes that
kept setting them off — neither guards nor policemen nor state troop-
ers had been able to keep order for the length of a day — nor could
any faction muster a candidate willing to accept the post of “People's
Manager.” On January 22, the operations of Rearden Steel had been
ordered temporarily suspended.

The shaft of red smoke, that night, had been caused by a sixty-
year-old worker, who had set fire to one of the structures and had
been caught in the act, laughing dazedly and staring at the flames.
“To avenge Hank Rearden!” he had cried defiantly, tears running
down his furnace-tanned face.

Don’t let it hurt you like this — thought Dagny, slumped across her
desk, over the page of the newspaper where a single brief paragraph
announced the “temporary” end of Rearden Steel — don’t let it hurt
you so much. . . . She kept seeing the face of Hank Rearden, as he
had stood at the window of his office, watching a crane move against
the sky with a load of green-blue rail . . . Don’t let it hurt him like
this — was the plea in her mind, addressed to no one — don’t let him
hear of it. don’t let him know. , . . Then she saw another face, a
face with unflinching green eyes, saying to her, in a voice made
implacable by the quality of respect for facts: “You’ll have to hear
about it, . . . You’ll hear about every wreck. You'll hear about every
discontinued train. . . . Nobody stays in this valley by faking reality
in any manner whatever. . . Then she sat still, with no sight and
no sound in her mind, with nothing buf that enormous presence
which was pain — until she heard the famijiar cry that had become a
drug killing all sensations except the capacity to act: “Miss Taggart,
we don’t know what to do!” — and she st^>t to her feet to answer.

“The People’s State of Guatemala,” sai$l the newspapers on Janu-
ary 26, “declines the request of the United States for the loan ol a
thousand tons of steel.”

On the night of February 3, a young pilot was flying his usual
route, a weekly flight from Dallas to New York City. When he

992

reached the empty darkness beyond Philadelphia— in the place
where the flames of Rearden Steel had for years been his favorite
landmark, his greeting in the loneliness of night, the beacon of a
living earth — he saw a snow-covered spread, dead-white and phos-
phorescent in the starlight, a spread of peaks and craters that looked
like the surface of the moon. He quit his job. next morning.

Through the frozen nights, over dying cities, knocking in vain at
unanswering windows, beating on unechoing walls, rising above the
roofs of lightless buildings and the skeletal girders of ruins, the plea
went on crying through space, crying to the stationary motion of the
stars, to the heatless fire of their twinkling: “Can you hear us, John
Galt? Can you hear us?”

“Miss Taggart, we don’t know what to do.” said Mr. Thompson:
he had summoned her to a personal conference on one of his scurry-
ing trips to New York. “We'ie ready to give in, to meet his terms,
to let him take over— but where is he?”

“For the third time,” she said, her lace and voice shut tight against
any fissure of emotion, “I do not know where he is What made you
think I did?”

“Well, 1 didn’t know, 1 had to try . . I thought, just in case . . .

I thought, maybe if you had a way to roach him — ”

“I haven’t.”

“You see, we can’t announce, not even by short-wave radio, that
we’re willing to surrender altogether. People might hear it. But if
you had some way to reach him, to let him know that we’re ready
to give in, to scrap our policies, to do an\ thing he tells us to — ”

“[ said I haven’t.”

“If he’d only agree to a conference, just a conference, it wouldn’t
commit him to anything, would it? We’re willing to turn the whole
economy over to him — if he'd only tell us when, where, how. If he’d
give us some word or sign ... if he'd answei us . . . Why doesn’t
he answer?”

“You’ve heard his speech.”

“But what are we to do? We can't just quit and leave the country
without any government at all. 1 shudder to think what would hap-
pen. With ihe kind of social elements now on the loose — why. Miss
Taggart, it's all 1 can do to keep them in line or we’d have plunder
and bloody muider in broad daylight, 1 don’t know what’s got into
people, but they just don’t seem to be civilized any more. We can’t
quit at a time like this. We can neither quit nor run things any
longer. What are we to do. Miss Taggart?”

“Start decontrolling.”

“Huh?”

“Start lifting taxes and removing controls,”

“Oh, no, no, no! That's out of the question!”

“Out of whose question?”

“1 mean, not at this time, Miss Taggart, not at this time. The
country isn’t ready for it. Personally, I’d agree with you, Pm a free-
dom-loving man. Miss Taggart, I’m not after power — but this is an
emergency, People aren’t ready for freedom. We’ve got to keep a
strong hand. We can’t adopt an idealistic theory, which — ”

993

"then don't ask me wftat to do," she said, and rose to her teet,
"But, Miss Taggart — ”

"I didn't come here to argue.”

She was at the door when he sighed and said, "I hope he’s still
alive.” She stopped. "I hope they haven’t done anything rash.”

A moment passed before she was able to ask, "Who?” and to
make it a word, not a scream.

He shrugged, spreading his arms and letting them drop helplessly.
"I can’t hold my own boys in line any longer. 1 can’t tell what they
might attempt to do. There's one clique — the Ferris- Lawson-Meigs
faction — that’s been after me lor over a year to adopt stronger mea-
sures. A tougher policy, they mean. Frankly, what they mean is: to
resort to terror. Introduce the death penalty for civilian crimes, for
critics, dissenters and the like. Their argument is that since people
won’t co-operate, won’t act for the public interest voluntarily, we’ve
got to force them to. Nothing will make our system work, they say,
but terror. And they may be right, from the look of things nowadays.
But Wesley won’t go for strong-arm methods, Wesley is a peaceful
man, a liberal, and so am 1. We re trying to keep the Ferris boys in
check, but . . . You see, they're set against any surrender to John
Galt. They don’t want us to deal with him. They don’t want us to
find him. I wouldn't put anything past them. If they found him first,
they’d — there’s no telling what they might do. . . . That’s what wor-
ries me. Why doesn’t he answer? Why hasn't he answered us at all 9
What if they’ve found him and killed him? I wouldn’t know. . . So
I hoped that perhaps you had some way . . . some means of knowing
that he’s still alive . . His voice trailed off into a question mark.

The whole of her resistance against a rush of liquefying terror
went into the effort to keep her voice as stiff as her knees, long
enough to say, “I do not know,” and her knees stiff enough to carry
her out of the room.

* *

From behind the rotted posts of what had once been a corner
vegetable stand, Dagny glanced furtively back at the street: the rare
lamp posts broke the street into separate islands, she could see a
pawnshop in the first patch of light, a saloon in the next, a church
in the farthest, and black gaps between them; the sidewalks were
deserted; it was hard to tell, but the street seemed empty.

She turned the corner, with deliberately resonant steps, then
stopped abruptly to listen: it was hard to tell whether the abnormal
tightness inside her chest was the sound of her own heartbeats, and
hard to distinguish it from the sound of distant wheels and from the
glassy rustle which was the East River sopiewhere dose by; but she
heard no sound of human steps behind he*. She jerked her shoulders,
it was part-shrug, part-shudder, and she walked faster. A rusty clock
in some unlighted cavern coughed out th£ hour of four a m
The fear of being followed did not seeirf fully real, as no fear could
be real to her now. She wondered whether the unnatural lightness of
her body was a state of tension or relaxation; her body seemed drawn
so tightly that she felt as if it were reduced to a single attribute: to
the power of motion; her mind seemed inaccessibly relaxed, like a

994

motor set to the automatic control of an absolute no longer to be
questioned. If a naked bullet could feel in mid-flight, that is what it
would feel, she thought; just the motion and the goal, nothing else.
She thought it vaguely, distantly, as if her own person were unreal;
only the word “naked” seemed to reach her: naked . . . stripped of
all concern but for the target . . . for the number “367 ” the number
of a house on the East River, which her mind kept repeating, the
number it had so long been forbidden to consider.

Three-sixty-seven— she thought, looking for an invisible shape
ahead, among the angular forms of tenements— three-sixty-seven
that is where he lives ... if he lives at all. . . . Her calm, her
detachment and the confidence of her steps came fiom the certainty
that this was an “if” with which she could not exist any longer.

She had existed with it for ten days- -and the nights behind her
were a single progression that had brought her to this night, as if
the momentum now driving her steps were the sound of her own
steps still ringing, unanswered, m the tunnels of the Teiminal. She
had searched for him through the tunnels, she had walked for hours,
night after night— the hours ot the shift he had once worked —
through the underground passages and platlorms and shops and
every twist of abandoned tracks, asking no questions of anyone, of-
fering no explanations of her presence She had walked, with no
sense of fear or hope, moved by a feeling ot despeiate loyalty that
was almost a feeling of pride The root of that feeling was the mo-
ments when she had stopped in sudden astonishment in some dark
subterranean corner and had heard the words half-stated in her
nnnd This is my railroad — as she looked at a vault vibrating to the
sound of distant wheels; this is mv life — as she telt the clot of tension,
which was the stopped and the suspended within herself; this is my
love — as the thought of the man who, perhaps, was somewhere in
those tunnels. Theie can be no conflict among these three . . . what
am I doubting? . . . what can keep us apart, here, where only he and
1 belong? . . . Then, recapturing the context ot the present, she had
walked steadily on, with the sense of the same unbroken loyalty, but
the sound of differ ent words: You have forbidden me to look for
you, you may damn me, you may choose to discard .me . . but by
the right of the fact that l am alive, I must know that you are . . .
I must see you this once . . . not to stop, not to speak, not to touch
you, only to see, . . . She had not seen him. She had abandoned her
search, when she had noticed the curious, wondering glances of the
underground workers, following her steps.

She had called a meeting of the Terminal track laborers for the
alleged purpose of boosting their morale, she had held the meeting
twice, to face all the men in turn — she had repeated the same unintel-
ligible speech, feeling a stab of shame at the empty generalities she
uttered and, together, a stab of pride that it did not matter to her
any longer— she had looked at the exhausted, brutalized faces of
men who did not care whether they were ordered to work or to
listen to meaningless sounds. She had not seen his face among them.
“Was everyone present?” she had asked the foreman. “Ytah, 1 guess
so,” he had answered indifferently.

995

She had loitered at the Terminal entrances, watching }he men as
they came to work. But there were too many entrances to cover and
no place where she could watch while remaining unseen— she had
stood in the soggy twilight on a sidewalk glittering with rain, pressed
to the wall of a warehouse, her coat collar raised to her cheekbones,
raindrops falling off the brim of her hat — she had stood exposed to
the sight of the street, knowing that the glances of the men who
passed her were glances of recognition and astonishment, knowing
that her vigil was too dangerously obvious. If there was a John Galt
among them, someone could guess the nature of her quest ... if
there was no John Galt among them ... if there was no John Galt
in the world, she thought, then no danger existed — and no world.

No danger and no world, she thought — as she walked through the
streets of the slums toward a house with the number “367/’ which
was or was not his home. She wondered whether this was what one
felt while awaiting a verdict ol death: no fear, no anger, no concern,
nothing but the icy detachment of light without heat or of cognition
without values.

A tin can clattered from under her toes, and the sound went beat-
ing too loudly and too long, as if against the walls of an abandoned
city. The streets seemed razed by exhaustion, not by rest, as if the
men inside the walls were not asleep, but had collapsed. He would
be home from work at this hour, she thought ... if he worked . . .
if he still had a home. . . . She looked at the shapes of the slums,
at the crumbling plaster, the peeling paint, the fading signboards ol
failing shops with unwanted goods in unwashed windows, the sagging
steps unsafe to climb, the clotheslines of garments unfit to wear, the
undone, the unattended, the given up, the incomplete, all the twisted
monuments of a losing race against two enemies: “no time'’ and “no
strength” — and she thought that this was the place where he had
lived for twelve years, he who possessed such extravagant power to
lighten the job of human existence.

Some memory kept struggling to reach her, then came back: its
name was Starncsville, She felt the sensation of a shudder. But this
is New York City! — she cried to herself m defense of the greatness
she had loved; then she faced with unmoving austerity the verdict
pronounced by her mind: a city that had left him in these slums for
twelve years was damned and doomed to the future of Starncsville

Then, abruptly, it ceased to matter; she felt a peculiar shock, like
the shock of sudden silence, a sense of stillness within her, which
she took for a sense of calm: she saw the number “367” above the
door of an ancient tenement.

She was cairn, she thought, it was only tiipe that had suddenly lost
its continuity and had broken her perception into separate snatches,
she knew the moment when she saw the mimber — then the moment
when she looked at a fist on a board in ^he moldy halflight of a
doorway and saw the words “John Galt, 5thi rear” scrawled in pencil
by some illiterate hand — then the moment iwhen she stopped at the
foot of a stairway, glanced up at the vanishing angles of the railing
and suddenly leaned against the wall, trembling with terror, prefer-
ring not to know — then the moment when $he felt the movement of

996

her foot coming to rest on the first of the steps— then a single, unbro-
ken progression of lightness, of rising without effort or doubt or fear,
of feeling the twisting installments of stairway dropping down be-
neath her unhesitant feet, as if the momentum of her irresistible rise
were coming from the straightness of her body, the poise of her
shoulders, the lift of her head and the solemnly exultant certainty
that in the moment of ultimate decision, it was not disaster she ex-
pected of her life, at the end of a rising stairway she had needed
thirty-seven years to climb.

At the top, she saw a narrow hallway, its walls converging to an
unlighted door. She heard the floorboards creaking in the silence,
under her steps. She felt the pressure of her finger on a doorbell
and heard the sound of ringing in the unknown space beyond. She
waited. She heard the brief crack of a board but it came from the
floor below She heard the sliding wail of a tugboat somewhere on
the river. Then she knew that she had missed some span of time,
because her next awareness was not like a moment of awakening,
bur like a moment of birth’ as ifHwo sounds were pulling her out of
a void, the sound ol a step behind the door and the sound ol a
lock being turned — but she was not present until the moment when
suddenly there was no door before her and the figure standing on
the threshold was John Galt, standing casually in his own doorway,
dressed m slacks and shirt, the angle ol his waistline slanting faintly
against the light behind him

She knew that his eyes were grasping this moment, then sweeping
over its past and its future, that a lightning* process of calculation
was bringing it into his conscious control— -and b\ the lime a told of
his shirt moved with the motion of his breath, he Knew the sum —
and the sum was a smile of radiant greeting.

vShe was now unable to move. He seized her arm. he jerked her
inside the room, she felt the dinging pressure of his mouth, she fell
the slenderness of his bod) through the suddenly alien stiffness of
her coal. She saw the laughter in his eyes, she felt the touch of his
mouth again and again, she was sagging m his arms, she was breath-
ing in gasps, as if she had not breathed for five flights of stairs, her
face was pressed to the angle between his neck and shoulder, to hold
him, to hold him with her arms, her hands and the skin of her cheek.

“John . . . you're alive . . was all she could say

He nodded, as if he knew what the words were intended to
explain.

Then he picked up her hat that had fallen to the floor, he took
off her coat and put it aside, he looked at her slender, trembling
figure, a sparkle of approval in his eyes, his hand moving over the
tight, high-collared, dark blue sweater that gave to her body the
fragility of a schoolgirl and the tension of a lighter.

“The next time I see you,” he said, “wear a white one. It will
look wonderful, too.”

She realized that she was dressed as she never appeared m public,
as she had been dressed at home through the sleepless hours of that
night. She laughed, rediscovering the ability to laugh: she had ex-
pected his first words to be anything but that.

997

“If there is a next time,” he added calmly.

"What ... do you mean?”

He went to the door and locked it. "Sit down,” he said.

She remained standing, but she took the time to glance at the
room she had not noticed: a long, bare garret with a bed in one
corner and a gas stove in another, a tew pieces of wooden furniture,
naked boards stressing the length of the floor, a single lamp burning
on a desk, a closed door in the shadows beyond the lamp’s circle —
and New York City beyond an enormous window, the spread of
angular structures and scattered lights, and the shaft of the Taggart
Building far in the distance.

"Now listen carefully,” he said. "We have about half an hour, I
think. 1 know why you came here. 1 told you that it would be hard
to stand and that you would be likely to break. Don't regret it. You
see? — 1 can’t regret it, either. But now, we have to know how to
act. from here on. In about half an hour, the looters’ agents, who
followed you, will be here to arrest me.”

"Oh no!” she gasped.

"Dagny, whoever among them had any remnant of human percep-
tiveness would know that you’re not one of them, that you’re their
last link to me, and would not let you out of his sight — or, the sight
of his spies."

"I wasn't followed! I watched, I — ”

"You wouldn’t know how to notice it. Sneaking is one art they’re
expert at. Whoever followed you is reporting to his bosses right now
Your presence in this district, at this hour, my name on the board
downstairs, the fact that 1 work for your railroad — it’s enough even
for them to connect."

• "Then let’s get out of here!”

He shook his head. "They’ve surrounded the block by now. Your
follower would have every policeman in the district at his immediate
call. Now I want you to know what you'll have to do when they
* come here. Dagny, you have only one chance to save me. If you did
not quite understand what 1 said on the ladio about the man in the
middle, you’ll understand it now. lb ere is no middle for you to take.
And you cannot take my side, not so long as we’re in their hands.
Now you must take their side.”

“What?"

"You must take their side, as fully, consistently and loudly as your
capacity for deception will permit. You must act as one of them.
You must act as my worst enemy. If you do. I’ll have a chance to
come out of it alive. They need me too much, they'll go to any
extreme before they bring themselves to kill me. Whatever they ex-
tort from people, they can extort it only through their victim’s val-
ues — and they have no value of mine to hojd over my head, nothing
to threaten me with. But if they get the sfghtest suspicion of what
we are to each other, they will have you o| a torture rack — 1 mean,
physical torture — before my eyes, in less thin a week. 1 am not going
to wait for that. At the first mention of a> threat to you, I will* kill
myself and stop them right there.”

He said it without emphasis, in the same impersonal tone of practi-

m

al calculation as the rest. She knew that he meant it and that he
^as right to mean it: she saw in what manner she alone had the
►ower to succeed at destroying him, where all the power of his ene-
mies would fail. He saw the look of stillness in her eyes, a look of
inderstanding and of horror. He nodded, with a faint smile.

"1 don't have to tell you," he said, “that if f do it, it won’t be an
ct of self-sacrifice. I do not care to live on their terms, I do not
are to obey them and 1 do not care to see you enduring a drawnout
nurder. There will be no values for me to seek after that— -and I do
lot care to exist without values. 1 don’t have to tell you that we owe
io morality to those who hold us under a gun. So use every power
>f deceit you can command, but convince them that you hate me.
Then we'll have a chance to remain alive and to escape — I don’t
.now when or how. but Til know that I'm free to act. Is this
mderstood?"

She forced herself to lift her head, to look straight at him and
o nod.

“When they come," he said, “tell them that you had been trying
o find me for them, that you became suspicious when you saw my
lame on your payroll list and that you came here to investigate ’’

She nodded.

“I will stall about admitting my identity- -they might recognize my
(»ice, but I’ll attempt to deny it—so that it will be you who'll tell
hem that I am the John Galt they're seeking."

It took her a few seconds longer, but she nodded.

“Afterwards, you'll claim — and accept — that live-hundrcd-thousand-
lollar reward they’ve offered for my capture."

She closed her eyes, then nodded.

“Dagny,” he said slowly, “there is no way to serve your own values
inder their system Sooner or later, whether you intended it or not,
hey had to bring you to the point where the only thing you can do
or me is to turn against me Gather your strength and do it — then
ve il earn this one half-hour and. perhaps, the future."

“I’ll do it," she said firmly, and added, “if that is what happens,
f they — "

“It will happen. Don’t regret it. I won’t. You haven’t seen the
lature of our enemies. You’ll see il now If I have to be the pawn
n the demonstration that will convince you. I’m willing to be — and
o win you from them, once and for all. You didn’t want to wait any
onger v Oh, Dagny, Dagny, neither did I!"

It was the way he held her, the way he kissed her mouth that
nade her feel as if every step she had taken, every danger, every
ioubt, even her treason against him, if it was treason, all of it were
giving her an exultant right to this moment. He saw the struggle if?
ter face, the tension of an incredulous protest against herself — and
ihe heard the sound of his voice through the strands of her hair
tressed to his lips: “Don’t think of them now. Never think of pain
?r danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight
hem. You’re here. It's our time and our life, not theirs. Don't strug-
gle not to be happy. You are."

“At the risk of destroying you?" she whispered.

999

“You won't. But — yes, even that. You don’t think it's indifference,
do you? Was it indifference that broke you and brought you here?”

“I — ” And then the violence of the truth made her pull his mouth
down to hers, then throw the words at his face: ”1 didn't care
whether either one of us lived afterwards, just to see you this once!”

“I would have been disappointed if you hadn't come.”

“Do you know what it was like, waiting, fighting it, delaying it
one more day, then one more, then — ”

He chuckled. “Do I?” he said softly.

Her hand dropped in a helpless gesture: she thought of his ten
years. “When 1 heard your voice on the radio,” she said, “when I
heard the greatest statement 1 ever . . . No, 1 have no right to tell
you what I thought of it.”

“Why not?”

“You think that I haven’t accepted it.”

“You will.”

“Were you speaking from here?”

“No, from the valley.”

“And then you relumed to New York?”

“The next morning.”

“And you've been here ever since?”

“Yes.”

“Have you heard the kind of appeals they're sending out to you
every night?”

“Sure.”

She glanced slowly about the room, her eyes moving from the
towers of the city in the window to the wooden rafters o( his ceiling,
to the cracked plaster of his walls, to the iron posts of his bed.
“You’ve been here all that time,” she said. “You've lived here for
twelve years . . . here . . . like this .

“Like this,” he said, throwing open the door at the end of the
room.

She gasped: the long, light-flooded, windowless space beyond the
threshold, enclosed in a shell of softly lustrous metal, like a small
ballroom aboard a submarine, was the most efficiently modern labo-
ratory she had ever seen.

“Come in,” he said, grinning. “I don’t have to keep secrets from
you any longer.”

It was v like crossing the border into a different universe. She looked
at the complex equipment sparkling in a bright, diffused glow, at the
mesh of glittering wires, at the blackboard chalked with mathemati-
cal formulas, at the long counters of objects shaped by the ruthless
discipline of a purpose — then at the sagging boards and crumbling
plaster of the garret, Either-or, she thought^ this was the choice con-
fronting the world: a human soul in the imafcc of one or of the other.

“You wanted to know where 1 worked for eleven months out of
the year,” he said. !

“AH this,” she asked, pointing at the laboratory, “on the salary
of’ — she pointed at the garret— “of an unskilled laborer?”

“Oh, no! On the royalties Midas Mulligan pays me for his power-

1000

house, for the ray screen, for the radio transmitter and a few other
jobs of that kind.”

“Then . . , then why did you have to work as a track laborer?”

“Because no money earned in the valley is ever to be spent
outside.” ^

“Where did you get this equipment?”

“I designed it. Andrew Stockton’s foundry made it.” He pointed
to an unobtrusive object the size of a radio cabinet in a comer of
the room: “ITiere’s the motor you wanted,” and chuckled at her
gasp, at the involuntary jolt that threw her forward. “Don’t bother
studying it, you won’t give it away to them now.”

She was staring at the shining metal cylinders and the glistening
coils of wire that suggested the rusted shape resting, like a sacred
relic, in a glass coffin in a vault of the Taggart Terminal.

“It supplies my own electric power for the laboratory,” he said.
“No one has had to wonder why a track laborer is using such exorbi-
tant amounts of electricity.”

“But if they ever found this place — ”

He gave an odd, brief chuckle. “They won t.”

“How long have you been — ?”

She stopped; this time, she did not gasp; the sight confronting her
could not be greeted by anything except a moment of total inner
stillness: on the wall, behind a row ol machinery, she saw a picture
cut out of a newspaper— a picture of her, in slacks and shirt, standing
by the side of the engine at the opening of the John Galt Line, her
head lifted, her smile holding the context, the meaning and the sun-
light of that day.

A moan was her only answer, as she turned to him. but the look
on his face matched hers in the picture.

“f was the symbol of what you wanted to destroy in the world.”
he said. “But you were my symbol of what I wanted to achieve.”
He pointed at the pictuie. “ I his is how men expect to feel about
their life once or twice, as an exception, in the course of their life-
time. But I — this is what J chose as the constant and normal.”

The look on his face, the serene intensity of his eyes and of his
mind made it real to her, now, in this moment, in this moment’s full
context, in this city.

When he kissed her, she knew that their arms, holding each other,
were holding then greatest triumph, that this was the reality un-
touched by pain or fear, the reality of Halley’s Fifth Concerto, this
was the reward they had wanted, fought tor and won.

The doorbell rang.

Her first reaction was to draw back, his — to hold her closer and
longer.

When he raised his head, he was smiling. He said only, “Now is
the time not to be afraid.”

She followed him back to the garret. She heard the door of the
laboratory clicking locked behind them.

He held her coat for her silently, he waited until she had tied its
belt and put on her hat — then he walked to the entrance door and
opened it.

1001

Three of the four men who entered were muscular figures in mili-
tary uniforms, each with two guns on his hips, with broad faces
devoid of shape and eyes untouched by perception, lire fourth, their
leader, was a frail civilian with an expensive overcoat, a neat mus-
tache, pale blue eyes and the manner of an intellectual of the public-
relations species.

He blinked at Galt, at the room, made a step forward, stopped,
made another step and stopped.

“Yes?’' said Galt.

“Arc . . . are you John Galt?” he asked too loudly.

“That’s my name.”

“Are you the John Galt?”

“Which one?”

“Did you speak on the radio?”

“When 9 ”

“Don’t let him fool you.” The metallic voice was Dagny’s and it
was addressed to the leader. “He — is — John — Galt. 1 shall report the
proof to headquarters. You may proceed.”

Galt turned to her as to a stranger. “Will you tell me now just
who you are and what it was that you wanted here?”

Her face was as blank as the faces of the soldiers. “My name is
Dagny Taggart. 1 wanted to convince myself that you are the man
whom the country is seeking ”

He turned to the leader. “All right,” he said “I am John Galt— but
if you want me to answer you at all, keep your stool pigeon” — he
pointed at Dagny — “away from me.”

“Mr. Galt!” cried the leader with the sound of an enormous jovial-
ity. 4 *lt is an honor to meet you, an honor and a privilege! Please,
Mr. Galt, don’t misunderstand us — we’re ready to grant you your
wishes — no, of course, you don't have to deal with Miss Taggart, it
you prefer not to — Miss Taggart was only trying to do her patriotic
duty, but — ”

“I said keep her away from me.”

“We’re not your enemies, Mr Galt, I assure you we’re not your
enemies.” He turned to Dagny. “Miss Taggart, you have pcrlormed
an invaluable service to the people. You have earned the highest
form of public gratitude. Permit us to take over from here on.” The
soothing motions of his hands were urging her to stand back, to keep
out of Galt’s sight.

“Now what do you want?” asked Galt.

“The nation is waiting for you, Mr. Galt. All we want is a chance
to dispel misapprehensions. Just a chance to co-operate with you.”
His gloved hand was waving a signal to his three men; the floor-
boards creaked, as the men proceeded silently to the task of opening
drawers and closets; they were searching $ie room. “The spirit of
the nation will revive tomorrow morning. ^Ir. Galt, when they hear
that you have been found.”

“What do you want?”

“Just to greet you in the name of the people.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“Why think in such old-fashioned terms? Our job is only to escort

1002

you safely to the top councils of the national leadership, where your
presence is urgently needed.” He paused, but got no answer. ‘The
country’s top leaders desire to confer with you— just to confer and
to reach a friendly understanding.”

The soldiers were finding nothing but garments and kitchen uten-
sils; there were no letters, no books, not even a newspaper, as if the
room were the habitation of an illiterate.

“Our objective is only to assist you to assume your rightful place
m society, Mr. Galt. You do not seem to realize your own public
value.”

T do.”

“We are here only to protect you.”

“Locked!” declared a soldier, banging his fist against the labora-
tory door.

The leader assumed an ingratiating smile. “What is behind that
door, Mr. Galt?”

“Private property.”

“Would you open it, please?”

“No”

The leader spread his hands out in a gesture of pained help-
lessness. “Unfortunately, my hands are tied. Orders, you know. We
have to enter that room ”

“Enter it.”

“It’s only a formality, a mere formality. There’s no reason why
things should not be handled amicably. Won’t you please co-operate?”

“1 said, no.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want us to re soil to an> . . . unnecessary
means.” He got no answer. “We have the authority to break that
door down, you know — but, of course, we wouldn’t want to do it.”
He waited, but got no answer. “Force that lock!” he snapped to
the soldier.

Dagny glanced at Galt’s face. He stood impassively, his head held
level, she saw the undisturbed lines of his profile, his eyes directed
at the door. The lock was a small, square plate of polished copper,
without keyhole or fixtuies.

The silence and the sudden immobility of the three brutes were
involuntary, while the burglar s tools in the hands of the fourth were
grating cautiously against the wood of the door.

The wood gave way easily, and small chips fell down, their thuds
magnified by the silence into the rattle of a distant gun. When the
burglar’s jimmy attacked the copper plate, they heard a faint rustle
behind the door, no louder than the sigh of a weary mind. In another
minute, the lock fell out and the dooi shuddered torward the width
of an inch.

The soldier jumped back. The leader approached, his steps irregu-
lar like hiccoughs, and threw the door open. They faced a black hole
of unknown content and unrelieved darkness.

They glanced at one another and at Galt; he did not move; he
stood looking at the darkness.

Dagny followed them, when they stepped over the threshold, pre-

U)03

ceded by the beams of their flashlights. The space beyond was a long
shell of metal, empty but for heavy drifts of dust on the floor, an
odd, grayish-white dust that seemed to belong among ruins undis-
turbed for centuries. The room looked dead like an empty skull.

She turned away, not to let them see in her face the scream of
the knowledge of what that dust had been a few minutes ago. Don’t
try to open that door, he had said to her at the entrance to the
powerhouse of Atlantis ... if you tried to break it down, the machin-
ery inside would collapse into rubble long before the door would
give way. . . . Don’t try to open that door — she was thinking, but
knew that what she was now seeing was the visual form of the state-
ment: Don’t try to force a mind.

The men backed out in silence and went on backing toward the
exit door, then stopped uncertainly, one after another, at random
points of the garret, as if abandoned by a receding tide.

“Well,” said Gait, reaching tor his overcoat and turning to the
leader, “let’s go.”

* +

Three floors of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel had been evacuated
and transformed into an armed camp. Guards with machine guns
stood at every turn of the long, velvet-caipeted corridors. Sentinels
with bayonets stood on the landings ol the fire-stairways. The eleva-
tor doors of the fifty-ninth, sixtieth and sixty-first floors were pad-
locked; a single door and one elevator were left as sole means of
access, guarded by soldiers in full battle regalia Peculiar-looking
men loitered in the lobbies, restaurants and shops of the ground
floor: their clothes were too new and too expensive, in unsuccessful
imitation of the hotel’s usual patrons, a camouflage impaired by the
fact that the clothes were badly fitted to their wearers’ husky figures
and were further distorted by bulges in places wheie the garments
of businessmen have no cause to bulge, but the garments of gunmen
have. Groups of guards with Tommy guns were posted at every en-
trance and exit of the hotel, as well as at strategic windows of the
adjoining streets.

In the center ol this camp, on the sixtieth floor, in what was known
as the royal suite of the Wayne-Falkiand Hotel, amidst satin drapes,
crystal candelabra and sculptured garlands of flowers. John Galt,
dressed m slacks and shirt, sat in a brocaded armchair, one leg
stretched out on a velvet hassock, his hands crossed behind his head,
looking at the ceiling.

This was the posture in which Mr. Thompson found him, when
the four guards, who stood outside the door of the royal suite since
five a.m, opened it at eleven am. to admit Mr. Thompson, and
locked it again.

Mr. Thompson experienced a brief flash jof uneasiness when the
click of the lock cut off his escape and left jhim alone with the pris-
oner, But he remembered the newspaper deadlines dnd the radio
voices, which had been announcing to the country since dawn; “John
Galt is found! — John Galt is in New York! — John Galt has joined
the people’s cause! — John Galt is in conference with the country’s

1004

leaders, working for a speedy solution of all our problems!”— and
he made himself feel that he believed it.

“Well, well, well!” he said brightly, marching up to the armchair.
“So you’re the young fellow who’s started all the trouble— Oh,” he
said suddenly, as he got a closer look at the dark green eyes watching
him. “Well, I ... I’m tickled pink to meet you, Mr. Galt, just tickled
pink.” He added, ‘Tm Mr. Thompson, you know.”

“How do you do,” said Galt.

Mr. Thompson thudded down on a chair, the brusqueness of the
movement suggesting a cheerily businesslike attitude. “Now don’t go
imagining that you’re under arrest or some such nonsense.” He
pointed at the room. “This is no jail, as you can see. You can see
that we’ll treat you right. You're a big person, a very big person —
and we know it. Just make yourself at home. Ask for anything you
please. Fire any flunky that doesn't obey you. And if you take a
dislike to any of the army boys outside, just breathe the word — and
we’ll send another one to replace him.”

He paused expectantly. He received no answer.

“ITie only reason we brought you here is just that we wanted to
talk to you. We wouldn’t have done it this way, but you left us no
choice. You kept hiding. And all we wanted was a chance to tell
you that you got us all wrong ”

He spread his hands out, palms up, with a disarming smile. Galt’s
eyes were watching him, without answer.

“That was some speech you made. Hoy. are you an orator! You’ve
done something to the country— I don't know what or why, but you
have. People seem to want something you've got. But you thought
we'd be dead set against it? That’s where you're wrong. We're not.
Personally, I think there was plenty in that speech that made sense.
Yes, sir, I do. Of course, 1 don’t agree with every word you said —
but what the hell, you don't expect us to agree with everything, do
you? Differences of opinion- -that’s what makes horse racing. Me,
I'm always willing to change my mind. Pm open to any argument.”

He leaned forward invitingly. He obtained no answer.

“The world is in a hell of a mess. Just as you said. There, I agree
with you. We have a point in common. We can start trom that.
Something’s got to be done about it. All I wanted was — Look,” he
cried suddenly, “why don’t you let me talk to you?”

“You are talking to me.”

“I . , . well, that is . . . well, you know what I mean.”

“Fully.”

“Well? . . . Well, what have you got to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh?!”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, come now!”

“I didn’t seek to talk to you.”

“But ... but look! ... we have things to discuss!”

“I haven’t.”

“Look,” said 4 Mr. Thompson, after a pause, “you’re a man of ac-

1005

lion. A practical man. Boy, are you a practical man! Whatever else
I don't quite get about you, I’m sure of that. Now aren't you?”

‘Practical? Yes.”

‘‘Well, so am I. We can talk straight. We can put our cards on the
table. Whatever it is you’re after, I’m offeiing you a deal.”

“I’m always open to a deal.” .

“I knew it!” cried Mr. Thompson triumphantly, slamming his fist
down on his own knee. “I told them so — all those fool intellectual
theorizers, like Wesley!”

“I’m always open to a deal — with anyone who has a value to
offer me."

Mr. Thompson could not tell what made him miss a beat before
he answered, “Well, write your own ticket, brother! Write your
own ticket!”

“What have you got to offer me?”

“Why — anything.”

“Such as?”

“Anything you name. Have you heard our short-wave broadcasts
to you?”

“Yes.”

“We said we’ll meet your terms, any terms. We meant it.”

“Have you heard me say on (he radio that 1 have no teims to
bargain about? 1 meant it.”

“Oh. but look, you misunderstood us! You thought we’d fight you.
But we won’t. We’re not that rigid. WeYe willing to consider any
idea Why didn’t you answer our calls and come to a conference?”

“Why should I?”

“Because . . because we wanted to speak to you in the name ol
•the country.”

“I don l recognize your right to speak in the name of the country.”

“Now look here. I'm not used to . . . Well, okay, won’t you just
give me a hearing? Won’t you listen?”

“I’m listening.”

“The country is in a terrible state. People arc starving and giving
up, the economy is falling to pieces, nobody is producing any longer.
We don’t know what to do about it. You do. You know how to
make things work. Okay, we’re ready to give in. We want you to
tell us what to do.”

“1 told you what to do.”

“What?”

“Get out of the way.”

“That’s impossible! That's fantastic! That’s out of the question!”

“You see 9 I told you we had nothing to discuss.”

“Now. wait! Wait! Don't go to extremes! There’s always a middle
ground You can’t have everything. We afen’t . . . people aren’t
ready for it. You can’t expect us to ditch the machinery of State.
We’ve got to preserve the system. But wd’rc willing to amend It.
We’ll modify it any way you wish. We’re dot stubborn, theoretical
dogmatists — we’re flexible, We’ll do anything you say. We’ll give you
a free hand We’ll cooperate. We’ll compromise. We’ll split fifty-fifty.
We’ll keep the sphere of politics and give yOu total power over the

1006

phere of economics. We’ll turn the production of the country over
o you, we’ll make you a present of the entire economy. You’ll run
t any way you wish, you’ll give the orders, you’ll issue the direc-
ives — and you’ll have the organized power of the State at your com-
nand to enforce your decisions. We’ll stand ready to obey you, all
rf us, from me on down. In the field of production, we’ll do whatever
/ou say. You’ll be— you’ll be the Economic Dictator of the nation!”

Galt burst out laughing.

It was the simple amusement of the laughter that shocked Mr.
Thompson. “What’s the matter with you?”

“So that’s your idea of a compromise, is it?”

“What’s the . . . ? Don’t sit there grinning like that! ... I don’t
hmk you understood me. I’m offering you Wesley Mouch’s job—
md there’s nothing bigger that anyone could offer you! . . . You’ll
do free to do anything you wish. If you don’t like controls — repeal
hem. If you want higher profits and lower wages — decree them. If
/ou want special privileges for the big tycoons— grant them. If you
Jon’t like labor unions — dissolve them. If you want a free economy —
jrder people to be free! Play it any way you please. But get things
going. Get the country organized. Make people work again. Make
them produce. Bring back your own men — the men of brains. Lead
us to a peaceful, scientific, industrial age and to prosperity.”

“At the point of a gun?”

“Now look, 1 . . . Now what’s so damn funny about it?”

“Will you tell me just one thing: if you’re able to pretend that
vou haven’t heard a word 1 said on the ladio, what makes you think
I’d be willing to pretend that I haven’t said it?”

“I don’t know what you mean! i— ”

“Skip it. It was just a rhetorical question. The first part of it an-
swers the second.”

“Huh?”

“I don't play your kind of games, brother— if you want a translation.”

“Do you mean that you’re refusing my offer?”

“I am.”

“But why?”

“It took me three hours on the radio to tell you why.”

“Oh, that’s just theory! I'm talking business. I'm offering you the
greatest job in the world. Will you tell me what's wrong with it?”

“What I told you, in three hours, was that it won’t work.”

“You can make it work.”

“How?”

Mr, Thompson spread his hands out. “I don’t know. If I did, l
wouldn’t come to you. It's for you to figure out. You’re the industrial
genius. You can solve anything.”

“I said it can’t be done.”

“ You could do it.”

“How?”

“Somehow,” He heard Galt’s chuckle, and added. “Why not? Just
tell me why not?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you. You want me to be the Economic Dictator?”

“Yes!”

1007

“And you’ll obey any order I give?”

“Implicitly!”

“Then start by abolishing all income taxes.”

“Oh, no!” screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. “We couldn't
do that! That’s . . . that's not the field of production. That’s the field
of distribution. How would we pay government employees?”

“Fire your government employees.”

“Oh, no! That's politics! That’s not economics! You can’t interfere
with politics! You can’t have everything!”

Gait crossed his legs on the hassock, stretching himself more com-
fortably in the brocaded armchair. “Want to continue the discussion?
Or do you get the point?”

“I only — ” He stopped.

“Are you satisfied that I got the point?”

“Look,” said Mr. Thompson placatingly, resuming the edge of his
seat. “I don't want to argue. Fin no good at debates. I’m a man of
action. Time is short. All I know is that you’ve got a mind. Just the
sort of mind we need. You can do anything. You could make things
work if you wanted to.”

“All right, put it your own way: I don’t want to. 1 don’t want to
be an Economic Dictator, not even long enough to issue that order
for people to be free — which any rational human being would throw
back in my face, because he’d know that his rights are not to be
held, given or received by your permission or mine.”

“Tell me,” said Mr. Thompson, looking at him reflectively, “what
is it you're after?”

“I told you on the radio.”

“I don’t get it. You said that you’re out for your own selfish inter-
est — and that , I can understand. But what am you possibly want in
the future that you couldn’t get right now, from us, handed down to
you on a platter? 1 thought you were an egoist — and a practical man
1 offer you a blank check on anything you wish — and you tell me
that you don’t want it. Why 9 ”

“Because there are no funds behind your blank check.”

“W/iar?”

“Because you have no value to offer me.”

“I can offer you anything you can ask. Just name it.”

“You name it.”

“Well, you talked a lot about wealth. If it’s money that you want—
you couldn’t make in three lifetimes what I can hand over to you in
a minute, this minute, cash on the barrel. Want a billion dollars — a
cool, neat billion dollars?”

“Which Til have to produce, for you to give me?”

“No, I mean straight out of the public treasury, in fresh, new
bills ... or ... or even in gold, if you prefer.”

“What will it buy me?”

“Oh, look, when the country gets back £n its feet — ”

“When / put it back on its feet?”

“Well, if what you want is to run things your own way, if it’s
power that you’re after. I’ll guarantee you that every man, woman

1008

and child in this country will obey your orders and do whatever
you wish.”

“ After / teach them to do it?”

“If you want anything for your own gang— for all those men
who’ve disappeared — jobs, positions, authority, tax exemptions, any
special favor at ail just name it and they’ll get it.”

“After / bring them back?”

“Well, what on earth do you want?”

“What on earth do I need you for?”

“Huh?”

“What have you got to offer me that 1 couldn’t get without you?”

There was a different look in Mr. Thompson’s eyes when he drew
back, as if cornered, yet looked straight at Galt for the first time
and said slowly, “Without me, you couldn’t get out of this room,
right now.”

Galt smiled. “True.”

“You wouldn't be able to produce anything. You could be left
here to starve.”

“True.”

“Well, don’t you see?” The loudness of homey joviality came back
into Mr. Thompson’s voice, as if the hint given and received were
now to be safely evaded by means of humor. “What I’ve got to olfer
you is your life.”

“It’s not yours to offer, Mr. Thompson.” said Galt softly.

Something about his voice made Mr, Thompson jerk to glance at
him, then jerk faster to look away, Galt’s smile seemed almost gentle

“Now,” said Galt, “do you see what 1 mean when I said that a
zero can’t hold a mortgage over life? It's l who’d have to grant you
that kind of mortgage — and I don’t. The removal of a threat is not
a payment, the negation of a negative is not a reward, the withdrawal
of your armed hoodlums is not an incentive, the offer not to murder
me is not a value.”

“Who . . . who's said anything about murdering you*”

“Who’s said anything about anything else? If you weren’t holding
me here at the point ot a gun, under threat of death, you wouldn't
have a chance to speak to me at all. And that is as much as your
guns can accomplish. I don’t pay for the removal of threats. I don't
buy my life from anyone.”

“That’s not true,” said Mr. Thompson brightly, “If you had a
broken leg, you’d pay a doctor to set it.”

“Not if he was the one who broke it.” He smiled at Mr. Thomp-
son’s silence. “I’m a practical man, Mr. Thompson. 1 don't think it’s
practical to establish a person whose sole means of livelihood is
the breaking of my bones. I don’t think it's practical to support a
protection racket,”

Mr. Thompson looked thoughtful, then shook his head. “I don’t
think you’re practical,” he said. “A practical man doesn't ignore the
facts of reality. He doesn’t waste his time wishing things to be differ-
ent or trying to change them. He takes things as they are. We’re
holding you. It’s a fact. Whether you like it or not, it’s a fact. You
should act accordingly.”

1009

“I am.”

'‘What I mean is, you should co-operate. You should recognize an
existing situation, accept it and adjust to it.”

“If you had blood poisoning, would you adjust to it or act to
change it?”

“Oh, that's different! That’s physical!”

“You mean, physical facts are open to correction, but your whims
are not?”

“Huh?”

“You mean, physical nature can be adjusted to men, but your
whims are above the laws of nature, and men must adjust to you?”

“I mean that 1 hold the upper hand!"

“With a gun in it?”

“Oh, forget about guns! I — ”

♦‘I can't forget a fact of reality, Mr. Thompson. That would be
impractical.'’

“AH right, then: 1 hold a gun. What are you going to do about it?”

‘i’ll act accordingly. I'll obey you.”

“ What?"

“I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”

“Do you mean it?”

“I mean it. Literally .” He saw the eagerness of Mr. Thompson’s
face ebb slowly under a look of bewilderment. ”1 will perform any
motion you order me to perform. If you order me to move into the
office of an Economic Dictator, I'll move into it. If you order me to
sit at a desk, I will sit at it. If you order me to issue a directive, I
will issue the directive you order me to issue.”

“Oh, but 1 don't know what directives to issue!”

“1 don’t, either.”

There was a long pause.

“Well 7 ” said Galt. “What arc your orders?”

“I want you to save the economy of the country!”

“I don’t know how to save it.”

“I want you to find a way!”

“I don’t know how to find it.”

“1 want you to think!”

“How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson 7 ”

Mr. Thompson looked at him silently— and Galt saw, in the tight-
ened lips, in the jutting chin, in the narrowed eyes, the look of an
adolescent bully about to utter that philosophical argument which is
expressed by the sentence: I'll bash your teeth in. Galt smiled, look-
ing straight at him, as if hearing the unspoken sentence and under-
scoring it. Mr. Thompson looked away.

“No,” said Galt, “you don’t want me to? think. When you force a
man to act against his own choice and judgment, it’s his thinking
that you want him to suspend. You want |um to become a robot. 1
shall comply.”

Mr. Thompson sighed. “I don’t get it,” he said in a tone of genuine
helplessness. “Something’s off and l can’t figure it out. Why should
you ask for trouble? With a brain like yours—you can beat anybody.

1010

I’m no match for you, and you know it. Why don’t you pretend to
join us, then gain control and outsmart me?”

For the same reason that makes you offer it: because vou’d win ”

“Huh?”

Because it s the attempt of your betters to beat you on your
terms that has allowed your kind to get away with it for centuries.
Which one of us would succeed, if I were to compete with you for
control over your musclemen? Sure, I could pretend— and I wouldn't
save your economy or your system, nothing will save them now—
but I'd perish and what you’d win would be what you’ve always won
in the past: a postponement, one more stay of execution, for another
year — or month — bought at the price ol whatever hope and effort
might still be squeezed out of the best of the human remnants left
around you, tneluding me. That’s all you’re after and that is the
length ot your range. A month? You’d settle lot a week— on the
unchallenged absolute that there will always be another victim to
find. But you’ve found your last victim— the one who refuses to play
his historical part. The game is up, brother.”

“Oh. that’s just theory!” snapped Mr Thompson, a little too
sharply; his eyes were roving about the room, in the manner of a
substitute for pacing; he glanced at the door, as it longing to escape.
“You say that if we don’t give up the system, we ll perish?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then, since we’re holding you, you will perish with us?”

“Possibly.”

“Don’t you want to live?”

“Passionately.” He saw the snap ol a spark in Mr. Thompson's
eyes and smiled. “I’ll tell you more: I know (hat l want to live much
more intensely than you do. I know that that’s what you're counting
on 1 know that you. in fact, do not want to live at all. I want it.
And because l want it so much, I will accept no substitute.”

Mr. Thompson jumped to his feet. “That’s not true!” he cried.
“My not wanting to live —it’s not true! Why do you talk like that?”
He stood, his limbs drawn faintly together, as it against a sudden
chill. “Why do you say such things? 1 don't know what you mean.”
He backed a few steps away. “And it's not true that I’m a gunman.
I’m not. I don’t intend to harm you I never intended to harm any-
body. I want people to like me. 1 want to be your triend . . . i want
to be your friend!” he cried to the space at large.

Galt’s eyes were watching him, without expression, giving him no
clue to what they were seeing, except that they were seeing it.

Mr. Thompson jerked suddenly into bustling, unnecessary motions,
as if he were m a hurry. “I've got to run along,” he said. “I . . , I
have so many appointments. We’ll talk about it some more. Think
it over, lake your time. I’m not trying to high-pressure you. Just
relax, take it easy and make yourself at home. Ask for anything you
like — food, drinks, cigarettes, the best of anything.” He waved his
hand at Galt’s garments. “I'm going to order the most expensive
tailor in the city to make some decent clothes for you. I want you
to get used to the best. I want you to be comfortable and . . . Say,”

1011

he asked, a little too casually, “have you got any family? Any rela-
tives you’d like to see?”

“No.”

“Any friends?”

“No.”

“Have you got a sweetheart?”

“No.”

“It s just that 1 wouldn’t want you to get lonesome. We can let you
have visitors, any visitor you name, if there’s anyone you care for.”

“There isn’t.”

Mr. Thompson paused at the door, turned to look at Galt for a
moment and shook his head. “I can’t figure you out,” he said. “I
just can’t figure you out.”

Galt smiled, shrugged and answered, “Who is John Galt?”

* *

A whirling mesh of sleet hung over the entrance of the Wayne -
Falkland Hotel, and the armed guards looked oddly, desolately help-
less in the circle of light: they stood hunched, heads down, hugging
their guns for warmth — as if, were they to release all the spitting
violence of their bullets at the storm, it would not bring comfort to
their bodies.

From across the street. Chick Morrison, the Moiale Conditioner -
on his way to a conlercnce on the filly-ninth floor- -noted that the
rare, lethargic passers-by were not taking the trouble to glance at
the guards, as they did not take the trouble to glance at the soggy
headlines of a pile ot unsold newspaper on the stand of a ragged,
shivering vendor: “John Galt Promises Prosperity.”

Chick Morrison shook his head uneasily six days of front-page
stories — about the united efforts of the country's leaders working
with John Galt to shape new policies- -had brought no results Peo-
ple were moving, he observed, as if they did not care to sec anything
around them. No one took any notice of his existence, except a
ragged old woman who stretched out her hand to him silently, as he
approached the lights of the entrance; he hurried past, and only
drops of sleet tell on the gnarled, naked palm.

It was his memory of the streets that gave a jagged sound to Chick
Morrison’s voice, when he spoke to a circle of faces in Mr. Thomp-
son’s room on the fifty-ninth floor. I'he look of the faces matched
the sound of his voice.

“It doesn’t seem to work.” he said, pointing to a pile of reports
from his public-pulse-takers. “All the press releases about our collab-
orating with John Galt don’t seem to make any difference. People
don’t care. They don’t believe a word of it; Some of them say that
he’ll never collaborate with us. Most of them don't even believe that
we’ve got him. I don’t know what’s happened to people. They doo’t
believe anything any more.” He sighed. “Three factories went out
of business in Cleveland, day before yesterday. Five factories closed
in Chicago yesterday. In San Francisco — ”

“I know, I know,” snapped Mr. Thompson, tightening the muffler
around his throat: the building’s furnace had gone out of order.

1012

“There's no choice about it: he’s got to give in and take over. He’s
got to!”

Wesley Mouch glanced at the ceiling. “Don’t ask me to talk to
him again,” he said, and shuddered. “I’ve tried. One can’t talk to
that roan.”

“I . . . J can t, Mr. Thompson!” cried Chick Morrison, in answer
to the stop of Mr. Thompson’s roving glance. “I’ll resign, if you want
me to! 1 can’t talk to him again! Don’t make me!”

“Nobody can talk to him,” said Dr. Floyd Ferris. “It’s a waste of
time. He doesn’t hear a word you say.”

Fred Kinnan chuckled. “You mean, he hears too much, don’t you?
And what’s worse, he answers it.”

“Well, why don’t you try it again?” snapped Mouch. “You seem
to have enjoyed it. Why don’t you try to persuade him*”

“1 know better,” said Kinnan. “Don’t fool yourself, brother. No-
body’s going to persuade him, I won t try it twice. . . . Enjoyed it?”
he added, with a look of astonishment. “Yeah . . . veah, f guess
I did.”

“What’s the matter with you? Are you falling for him? Are you
letting him win you over?”

“Me?” Kinnan chuckled mirthlessly, “What use would he have for
me? I’ll be the first one to go down the drain when he wins. . . . It‘s
only” — he glanced wistfully up at the ceiling---“it’s only that he’s a
man who talks straight."

“He won’t win!” snapped Mr. ' Thompson “It's out of the
question!”

There was a long pause.

“There are hunger riots in West Virginia,” said Wesley Mouch.
“And the farmers in Texas have — ”

“Mr. ITiompson!” said Chick Morrison desperately. “Maybe . . .
maybe we could let the public see him ... at a mass rally ... or
maybe on TV . . . just see him. just so they'd believe that we've
really got him. . . .It would give people hope, for a while ... it
would give us a little time. . .

“Too dangerous,” snapped Dr. Ferris. “Don’t let him come any-
where near the public. There's no limit to what he’ll permit himself
to do.”

“He’s got to give in,” said Mr. Thompson stubbornly. “He’s got
to join us. One ot you must—”

“No!” screamed Eugene Lawson. “Not me! I don’t want to see
him at all! Not once! I don’t want to have to believe it!”

“What?” asked James Taggart; his voice had a note of dangerously
reckless mockery; Lawson did not answer. “What are you scared
of?” 'The contempt in Taggart’s voice sounded abnormally stressed,
as if the sight of someone's greater fear were tempting him to defy
his own, “What is it you’re scared to believe. Gene?”

U I won’t believe it! 1 won't!” Lawson’s voice was half-snarl, half-
whimper. “You can’t make me lose my faith iu humanity! You
shouldn’t permit such a man to be possible! A ruthless egoist who — ’

“You’re a fine bunch of intellectuals, you are,” said Mr. Thompson
scornfully. “I thought you could talk to him in his own lingo— but

1013

he’s scared the lot of you* Ideas? Where are your ideas now? Do
something! Make him join us! Win him over!”

“Trouble is, he doesn’t want anything,” said Mouch. “What can
we offer a man who doesn’t want anything?”

“You mean,” said Kinnan, /‘what can we offer a man who wants
to live?’'

“Shut up!" screamed James Taggart. “Why did you say that? What
made you say it?”

“What made you scream?” asked Kinnan.

“Keep quiet, all of you!” ordered Mr. Thompson “You Ye fine at
fighting one another, but when it comes to lighting a real man — ”

“So he’s got you, too?” yelled Lawson.

“Aw, pipe down,” said Mr. Thompson wearily. “He’s the toughest
bastard I’ve ever been up against. You wouldn’t understand that.
He's as hard as they come . . The faintest tinge of admiration
crept into his voice. “As hard as they come . . .”

“There are ways to persuade tough bastards,” diawted Dr. Ferris
casually, “as I’ve explained to you.”

“No!” cried Mr. Thompson. “No! Shut up! 1 won't listen to you\
I won’t hear of it!” His hands moved frantically, as if struggling to
dispel something he would not name. “I told him . . . that that’s not
true . . that we're not . . that I’m not a . . He shook his head
violently, as if his own words were some unprecedented lorm of
danger. “No, look, boys, what J mean is, we’ve got to be practical . . .
and cautious. Damn cautious. We’ve got to handle it peacefully. We
can’t aliord to antagonize him or . . . or harm him. We don’t dare
take any chances on . . . anything happening to him. Because .
because, if he goes, we go. He’s our last hope Make no mistake
about it. If he goes, we perish. You all know it.” His eyes swept
over the faces around him: they knew it.

The sleet of the following morning fell down on front-page stories
announcing that a constructive, harmonious conference between
John Galt and the country’s leaders, on the previous afternoon, had
produced “The John Galt Flan,” soon to be announced. The snow-
flakes of the evening fell down upon the furniture of an apartment
house whose front wall had collapsed — and upon a crowd of men
waiting silently at the closed cashier's window of a plant whose
owner had vanished

“The farmers of South Dakota,” Wesley Mouch reported to Mr.
Thompson, next morning, “are marching on the state capital, burning
every government building on their way, and every home worth more
than ten thousand dollars.”

“California’s blown to pieces,” he reported in the evening.
‘There’s a civil war going on there — if that’s what it is, which nobody
seems to be sure of. They’ve declared that they’re seceding from the
Union, but nobody knows who’s now in pow$r. There’s armed fight-
ing all over the state, between a ‘People’s Parly,’ led by Ma Chalmers
and her soybean cult of Orient-admirers-^and something called
‘Back to God,’ led by some former oil-field owners.”

“Miss Taggart!” moaned Mr. Thompson, when she entered his

1014

hotel room next morning, in answer to his summons. “What are we
going to do?'*

He wondered why he had once felt that she possessed some reas-
suring kind of energy. He was looking at a blank face that seemed
composed, but the composure became disquieting when one noticed
that it lasted for minute after minute, with no change of expression
no sign of feeling. Her face had the same look as all the others, he
thought, except for something in the set of the mouth that sug-
gested endurance.

*i trust you. Miss Taggart. You’ve got more brains than all my
boys,” he pleaded. “You’ve done more for the country than any of
them — it's you who found him for us. What are we to do? With
everything falling to pieces, he’s the only one who can lead us out
of this mess — but he won’t. He refused. He simply refuses to lead.
I’ve never seen anything like it: a man who has no desire to com-
mand. We beg him to give orders— and he answers that he wants to
obey them! It’s preposterous!”

“It is.”

“What do you make of it? Can you figure him out?”

“He’s an arrogant egoist,” she said. “He’s an ambitious adven-
turer. He’s a man of unlimited audacity who’s playing for the biggest
stakes in the world.”

It was easy, she thought. It would have been difficult in that distant
time when she had regarded language as a tool of honor, always to
be used as if one were under oath — an oath ol allegiance to reality
and to respect for human beings. Now it was only a matter of making
sounds, inarticulate sounds addressed to inanimate objects unrelated
to such concepts as reality, human or honor.

It had been easy, that first morning, to report to Mr. Thompson
how she had traced John Galt to his home. It had been easy to watch
Mr. Thompson's gulping smiles and his repeated cries of “ Thai’s my
girl!” uttered with glances of triumph at his assistants, the triumph
of a man whose judgment in trusting her had been vindicated. It had
been easy to express an angry hatred for Galt “1 used to agree
with his ideas, but I won t let him destroy my railroad!”— and to
hear Mr. Thompson say, “Don’t you worry. Miss Taggart! WeTl
protect you from him!”

U had been easy to assume a look of cold shrewdness and to
remind Mr. Thompson of the fivc-hundred-thousand-dollar reward,
her voice clear and cutting, like the sound of an adding machine
punching out the sum of a bill. She had seen an instant’s pause in
Mr. Thompson’s facial muscles, then a brighter, broader smile — like
a silent speech declaring that he had not expected it, but was de-
lighted to know what made her tick and that it was the kind of
licking he understood, “Of course. Miss Taggart! Certainly! That
reward is yours — all yours! The check will be sent to you, in full!”

It had been easy, because she had felt as if she were in some
dreary non-world, where her words and actions were not facts any
longer — not reflections of reality, but only distorted postures in one
of those side-show mirrors that project deformity for the perception
of beings whose consciousness is not to be treated as consciousness.

1015

Thin* single and hot* like the burning pressure of a wire within her,
like a needle selecting her course, was her only concern: the thought
of his safety. The rest was a blur of shapeless dissolution, half-acid,
half-fog.

But this — she thought with a shudder — was the state in which they
lived, all those people whom she had never understood, this was the
state they desired, this rubber reality, this task of pretending, dis-
torting, deceiving, with the credulous stare of some Mr. Thompson’s
panic-bleary eyes as one’s only purpose and reward. Those who de-
sired this state — she wondered-— did they want to live?

“The biggest stakes in the world. Miss Taggart?” Mr. Thompson
was asking her anxiously. “What is it? What does he want?”

“Reality. This earth.”

“I don’t know quite what you mean, but . . . lA>ok. Miss Taggart,
if you think you can understand him, would you . . . would you try
to speak to him once more?”

She felt as if she heard her own voice, many light-years away,
crying that she would give her life to see him but in this room, she
heard the voice ot a meaningless stranger saying coldly, “No, Mr.
Thompson, I wouldn’t. 1 hope I’ll never have to see him again.”

“I know that you can’t stand him, and 1 can't say I blame you,
but couldn’t you just try to — ”

“I tried to reason with him. the night I found him. I heard nothing
but insults in return. I think he resents me more than he'd resent
anyone else. He won’t forgive me the fact that it was 1 who trapped
him. I’d be the last person to whom he would surrender.”

“Yeah . . . yeah, that’s true ... Do you think he will ever
surrender?”

The needle within her wavered for a moment, burning its oscillat-
ing way between two courses: should she say that he would not, and
see them kill him? — should she say that he would, and see them
hold onto their power till they destroyed the world?

“He will,” she said firmly. “He’ll give in, it you treat him right.
He's too ambitious to refuse power. Don’t let him escape, but don't
threaten him-- or harm him. Fear won't work. He’s impervious to
fear.”

“But what if ... 1 mean, with the way things are collapsing . . .
what if he holds out too long?”

“He won’t. He’s too practical for that. By the way, are you letting
him hear any news about the state of the country?”

“Why . . . no.”

“I would suggest that you let him have copies of your confidential
reports. He’ll see that it won’t be long now?.”

“That’s a good idea! A very good ideal . . . You know. Miss
Taggart,” he said suddenly, with the sound i>f some desperate cling-
ing in his voice, “I feel better whenever I talk to you. It’s becailse
I trust you. I don’t trust anybody around mej But you— -you’re differ-
ent. You’re solid.”

She was looking unflinchingly straight ai him. “Thank you, Mr.
Thompson,” she said.

It had been easy, she thought — until she walked out into the street

1016

and noticed that under her coat, her blouse was sticking damply to
her shoulder blades.

Were she able to feel — she thought as she walked through the
concourse of the Terminal — she would know that the heavy indiffer-
ence she now felt for her railroad was hatred. She could not get rid
of the feeling that she was running nothing but freight trains: the
passengers, to her, were not living or human. It seemed senseless to
waste such enormous effort on preventing catastrophes, on pro-
tecting the safety of trains carrying nothing but inanimate objects.
She looked at the faces in the Terminal: if he were to die, she
thought, to be murdered by the rulers ol their system, that these
might continue to eat, sleep and travel— would she work to provide
them with trains? If she were to scream for their help, would one
of them rise to his defense? Did they want him to live, they who
had heard him?

The check for five hundred thousand dollars was delivered to her
office, that afternoon; it was delivered with a bouquet of flowers
from Mr. Thompson. She looked at the check and let it flutter down
to her desk: it meant nothing and made her feel nothing, not even
a suggestion of guilt. It was a scrap of paper, of no greater signifi-
cance than the ones m the office wastebasket. Whether it could buy
a diamond necklace or the city dump or the last of her food, made
no difference. It would never be spent. It was not a token of value
and nothing it purchased could be of value. But this— she thought—
this inanimate indifference was the permanent state of the people
around her, of men who had no purpose and no passion. This was
the stale of a non-valuing soul; those who chose it— she wondered—

did thev want to live?

The lights were out of order in the hall of the apartment house,
when she came home that evening, numb with exhaustion— and she
did not notice the envelope at her feet until she switched on the
lmhl in her foyer. It was a blank, sealed envelope that had been
slipped under hei door. She picked it up-and then within a mo-
mint. she was laughing soundlessly, halt-kneeling, hall-sitting on the
floor, not to move off that spot, not to do anything but stare at the
note written by a hand she knew, the hand that had written its las
message on the calendar above ihe city The note said:

D sTt^tight. Watch them. When he’ll need our help, call
me at OR 6-5693.

F.

The newspapers of the following mornmg admonished the pubhc

not to believe the rumors that there was any trouble im the ^uthern
states. The confidential reports, sent to * * for

armed fighting had broken out betwee n £*£%£

the possession of a factory manufacti armg elcctncal eqmpmcn
factory cut off by the fighting and by blasted railroad tracks Irom
any source of raw materials.

1017

“Have you read the confidential reports 1 sent you?” moaned Mr,
Thompson, that evening, facing Galt once more. He was accompa-
nied by James Taggart, who had volunteered to meet the prisoner
for the first time.

Galt sat on a straight-backed chair, his legs crossed, smoking a
cigarette. He seemed erect and relaxed, together. They could not
decipher the expression on his face, except that it showed no sign
of apprehension.

“I have,” he answered.

“There’s not much time left,” said Mr. Thompson.

‘There isn’t ”

‘'Are you going to let such things go on?”

“Are you?"

“How can you be so sure you’re right?” cried James Taggart; his
voice was not loud, but it had the intensity of a cry. “How can you
take it upon yourself, at a terrible time like this, to stick to your
own ideas at the risk ot destroying the whole world?”

“Whose ideas should I consider safer to follow?”

“How can you be sure you’re right? How can you know ? Nobody
can be sure of his knowledge! Nobody! You’re no better than any-
one else!”

“Then why do you want me?”

“How can you gamble with other people’s lives? How can you
permit yourself such a selfish luxury as to hold out, when people
need you°”

“You mean: when they need my ideas?”

“Nobody is fully right or wrong! There isn't any black or white!
You don’t have a monopoly on truth!”

There was something wrong in Taggart’s manner — thought Mr.
Thompson, frowning — some odd, loo personal resentment, as if it
•were not a political issue that he had come here to solve.

‘if you had any sense of responsibility,” Taggart was saying, “you
wouldn’t dare take such a chance on nothing but your own judgment!
You would join us and consider some ideas other than your own
and admit that we might be right, too! You would help us with our
plans! You would — ”

Taggart went on speaking with feverish insistence, but Mr. Thomp-
son could not tell whether Galt was listening: Gall had risen and
was pacing the room, not in a manner of restlessness, but in the
casual manner of a man enjoying the motion of his own body. Mr.
Thompson noted the lightness of the steps, Jhe straight spine, the
flat stomach, the relaxed shoulders. Galt walked as if he were both
unconscious of his body and tremendously conscious of his pride in
it. Mr. Thompson glanced at James Taggart* at the sloppy posture
of a tall figure stumped in ungainly self^ist^rtion, and caught him
watching Galt’s movements with such hatred that Mr. Thompson sat
up, fearing it would become audible in the room. But Galt was not
looking at Taggart.

. . your conscience!” Taggart was saying, “1 came here to appeal
to your conscience! How can you value your mind above thousands

1018

of human lives? People are perishing and— Oh, for Christ's sake,"
he snapped, “stop pacing!"

Galt stopped. “Is this an order?"

“No, no!" said Mr. Thompson hastily. “It’s not an order. We don't
want to give you orders. . . . l ake it easy, Jim."

Galt resumed his pacing. “The world is collapsing " said Taggart,
his eyes following Galt irresistibly. “People are perishing— and it’s
you who could save them! Does it matter who’s right or wrong? You
should join us, even if you think we re wrong, you should sacrifice
your mind to save them!"

“By what means will 1 then save them?"

“Who do you think you arc?" cried Taggart.

Galt stopped. “You know it."

“You’re an egoist!”

“i am."

“Do you realize what sort of egoist you are 7 "

“Do you'V' asked Galt, looking straight at him

It was the slow withdrawal of Taggart's body into the depth of his
armchair, while his eyes were holding Gall’s, that made Mr. Thomp-
son unaccountably afraid of the next moment.

“Say," Mr. 'Thompson interrupted in a brightly casual voice, “what
sort of cigarette are you smoking?"

Gait turned to him and smiled I don’t know."

“Where did you get it?"

“One of your guards brought me a package of them. He said some
man asked him to give it to me as a present. . . Don’t worry," he

added, “your boys have put it through every kind of lest. There were
no hidden messages. It was just a present from an anonymous
admirer."

The cigarette between Gait s fingers bore the sign of the dollar.

James Taggart was no good at the job of persuasion, Mr. Thomp-
son concluded. But Chick Morrison, whom he brought the next day,
did no better.

“1 . . . I’ll just throw myself on your mercy. Mr. Gall." said Chick
Morrison with a frantic smile. “You’re right. I ll concede that you're
right — and all 1 can appeal to is your pity. Deep down in my heart,
I can’t believe that you’re a total egoist who feels no pity for the
people." He pointed to a pile of papers he had spread on a table.
“Here’s a plea signed by ten thousand schoolchildren, begging you
to join us and save them. Here’s a plea from a home for the crippled.
Here’s a petition sent by the ministers of two hundred different
faiths. Here’s an appeal from the mothers of the country. Read
them."

“Is this an order?"

“No!" cried Mr. Thompson. “It’s not an order!"

Galt remained motionless, not extending his hand for the papers.

“These are just plain, ordinary people, Mr Galt," said Chick Mor-
rison in a tone intended to project their abject humility. “They can’t
tell you what to do. They wouldn’t know. They're merely begging
you. They may be weak, helpless, blind, ignorant. But you, who are

1019

so intelligent and strong, can’t you take pity on them? Can’t you
help them?”

“By dropping my intelligence and following their blindness?”

“They may be wrong, but they don’t know any better!”

“But I, who do, should obey them?”

“I can’t argue, Mr. Oalt. I’m just begging for your pity. They’re
suffering. Pm begging you to pity those who suffer, i’m . . . Mr.
Gait,” he asked, noticing that Galt was looking off at the distance
beyond the window and that his eyes were suddenly implacable,
“what’s the matter? What are you thinking of?”

“Hank Rearden.”

“Uh . . . why?”

“Did they feel any pity for Hank Rearden?”

“Oh, but that’s different! He — ”

“Shut up," said Galt evenly.

“1 only — ”

“Shut up!” snapped Mr. Thompson. “Don’t mind him, Mr. Galt.
He hasn’t slept for two nights. He’s scared out of his wits.”

Dr. Floyd Ferris, next day, did not seem to be scared — but it was
worse, thought Mr. Thompson. He observed that Galt remained si-
lent and would not answer Ferris at all.

“It's the question of moral responsibility that you might not have
studied sufficiently, Mr. Galt,” Dr. Ferris was drawling in too airy,
too forced a tone of casual informality. “You seem to have talked
on the radio about nothing but sins of commission. But there are
also the sins of omission to consider. To fail to save a life is as
immoral as to murder. The consequences are the same — and since
we just judge actions by their consequences, the moral responsibility
is the same. . . . For instance, in view of the desperate shortage of
food, it has been suggested that it might become necessary to issue
a directive ordering that every third one of all children under the
age of ten and of all adults over the age of sixty be put to death, to
secure the survival of the rest. You wouldn’t want this to happen,
would you? You can prevent it. One word from you would prevent
it. If you refuse and all those people are executed— it will be your
fault and your moral responsibility!”

“You’re crazy!” screamed Mr. Thompson, recovering from shock
and leaping to his feet. “Nobody’s ever suggested any such thing!
Nobody’s ever considered it! Please, Mr. Galt! Don’t believe him!
He doesn’t mean it!”

“Oh yes, he does,” said Galt. “Tell the bastard to look at me,
then look in the mirror, then ask himself whether I would ever think
that my moral stature is at the mercy of hti actions.”

“Get out of here!” cried Mr. Thompson, ranking Ferris to his feet.
“Get out! Don’t let me hear another squeajt out of you!” He flung
the door open and pushed Ferris at the partied face of a guard
outside. |

Turning to Galt, he spread his arms and Jet them drop with a
gesture of drained helplessness. Galt’s face Was expressionless.

“Look,” said Mr. Thompson pleadingly, “Isn’t there anybody who
can talk to you?”

1020

"There’s nothing to talk about.”

‘We ve got to. We’ve got to convince you. Is there anyone you’d
want to talk to?”

“No.”

“1 thought maybe . . . it’s because she talks— used to talk— like
you, at times . . . maybe if I sent Miss Dagny Taggart to tell you—”

“That one? Sure, she used to talk like me. She’s my only failure.
I thought she was the kind who belonged on my side. But she dou-
ble-crossed me, to keep her railroad. She’d sell her soul for her
railroad. Send her in, if you want me to slap her face.”

“No, no, no! You don’t have to see her, if that’s how you feel. I
don't want to waste more time on people who rub you the wrong
way. . . . Only . . . only if it’s not Miss Taggart, I don’t know whom
to pick. ... If ... if 1 could find somebody you’d be willing to
consider or . . .”

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Galt. “There ts somebody I’d like
to speak to.”

“Who?” cried Mr. Thompson eagerly.

“Dr. Robert Stadler ”

Mr. Thompson emitted a long whistle and shook his head appre-
hensively. “That one is no friend of yours,” he said in a tone of
honest warning.

“He’s the one 1 want to see.”

“Okay, if you wish. If you say so. Anything you wish. I’ll have
him here tomorrow morning.”

That evening, dining with Wesley Mouch in his own suite, Mr.
Thompson glared angrily at a glass of tomato juice placed before
him. “What? No grapefruit juice?” he snapped: his doctor had pre-
scribed grapefruit juice as protection against an epidemic of colds.

“No grapefruit juice,” said the waiter, with an odd kind of
emphasis.

“Fact is,” said Mouch bleakly, “that a gang of raiders attacked a
tiain at the Taggart Bridge on the Mississippi. They blew up the
track and damaged the bridge. Nothing serious. It’s being repaired —
but ail traffic is held up and the trains from Arizona can't get
through.”

“[hat's ridiculous! Aren’t there any other—?” Mr. Thompson
stopped; he knew that there were no other railroad bridges across
the Mississippi. After a moment, he spoke up in a staccato voice.
“Order army detachments to guard the bridge. Day aDd night. Tell
them to pick their best men for it. If anything happened to that
bridge — ”

He did not finish; he sal hunched, staring down at the costly china
plates and the delicate hors d oeuvres before him. The absence of
so prosaic a commodity as grapefruit juice had suddenly made real
to him, for the first time, what it was that would happen to the city
of New York if anything happened to the Taggart Bridge.

“Dagny,” said Eddie Willers, that evening, “the bridge is not the
only problem.” He snapped on her desk lamp which, m forced con-
centration of her work, she had neglected to turn on at the approach
of dusk. “No transcontinental trains can leave San Francisco. One

1021

of the fighting factions out there — I don’t know which one— has
seized oUr terminal and imposed a ‘departure tax* on trains. Meaning
that they’re holding trains for ransom. Our terminal manager has
quit. Nobody knows what to do there now.”

”1 can’t leave New York,” she answered stonily.

“I know,” he said softly. “Tbat*s why it’s I who'll go there to
straighten things out. At least, to find a man to put in charge.”

“No! 1 don’t want you to. It’s too dangerous. And what for? It
doesn’t matter now. There’s nothing to save.”

“It's still Taggart Transcontinental. I’ll stand by it. Dagny, wher-
ever you go, you’ll always be able to build a railroad. I couldn’t. I
don’t even want to make a new start. Not any more. Not after what
I’ve seen. You should. I can’t. Let me do what I can.”

“Eddie! Don’t you want — ” She stopped, knowing that it was use-
less. “All right, Eddie. If you wish.”

“I'm flying to California tonight. I’ve arranged for space on an
army plane. ... I know that you will quit as soon as ... as soon as
you can leave New York. You might be gone by the time I return.
When you’re ready, just go. Don’t worry about me. Don’t wait to
tell me. Go as fast as you can. . . . I’ll say good-bye to you, now.”

She rose to her feet. They stood facing each other: in the dim
halflight of the office, the picture of Nathaniel Taggart hung on the
wall between them. They were both seeing the years since that dis-
tant day when they had first learned to walk down the track of a
railroad. He inclined his head and held it lowered for a long moment.

She extended her hand. “Good-bye, Eddie.”

He clasped her hand firmly, not looking down at his fingers; he
was looking at her face.

He started to go, but stopped, turned to her and asked, his voice
low, but steady, neither as plea nor as despair, but as a last gesture
of conscientious clarity to close a long ledger, “Dagny ... did you
know . . , how I felt about you 7 ”

“Yes,” she said softly, realizing in this moment that she had known
it wordlessly for years, “I knew it ”

“Good-bye, Dagny.”

The faint rumble of an underground train went through the walls
of the building and swallowed the sound of the door closing alter
him.

It was snowing, next morning, and melting drops were like an icy,
cutting touch on the temples of Dr. Robert Stadler, as he walked
down the long corridor of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel, toward the
door of the royal suite. Two husky men walked by his sides: they
were from the department of Morale Conditioning, but did not trou-
ble to hide what method of conditioning t|ey would welcome a
chance to employ.

“Just remember Mr. Thompson’s orders,” jjone of them told him*
contemptuously. “One wrong squawk out of you — and you’ll regret
it, brother.” *

It was not the snow on his temples — thought Dr. Stadler — it was
a burning pressure, it had been there since that scene, last night,
when he had screamed to Mr. ITiompson that he could not see John

1022

Gait. He had screamed in blind terror, begging a circle of impassive
faces not to make him do it, sobbing that he would do anything but
that. The faces bad not condescended to argue or even to threaten
him; they had merely given him orders. He had spent a sleepless
night, telling himself that he would not obey; but he was walking
toward that door, the burning pressure on his temples and the faint,
dizzying nausea of unreality came from the fact that he could not
recapture the sense of being Dr. Robert Stadler.

He noticed the metallic gleam of the bayonets held by the guards at
the door, and the sound of a key being turned in a lock. He found
himself walking forward and heard the door being locked behind him.

Across the long room, he saw John Galt sitting on the window
sill, a tall, slender figure in slacks and shirt, one leg slanting down
to the floor, the other bent, his hands clasping his knee, his head of
sun-streaked hair raised against a spread of gray sky -and suddenly
Dr, Stadler saw the figure of a young boy sitting on the porch-railing
of his home, near the campus of the Patrick Henry University, with
the sun on the chestnut hair of a head lifted against a spread of
summer blue, and he heard the passionate intensity of his own voice
saying twenty-two years ago: “The only sacred value in the world,
John, is the human mind, the inviolate human mind . . — and he

cried to that boy’s figure, across the loom and across the years:

“1 couldn’t help it, John! 1 couldn’t help it!”

He gripped the edge of a table between them, for support and as
a protective barrier, even though the figure on the window sill had
not moved.

“I didn’t bring you to this!’’ he cried. “1 didn’t mean to! 1 couldn’t
help it! It’s not what I intended! . . . John! I’m not to blame for it!
Fm not! I never had a chance against them! They own the world!
They left me no place in it! . . . What's reason to them? What's
science? You don’t know' how deadly they are! You don’t understand
them! They don't think! They’re mindless animals moved by irratio-
nal feelings — by their greedy, grasping, blind, unaccountable feelings!
They seize whatever they want, that’s all they know: that they want
it, regardless of cause, effect or logic — they want it, the bloody, grub-
bing pigs! . . . The mind? Don’t you know how futile it is, the
mind, against those mindless hordes? Our weapons are so helplessly,
laughably childish: truth, knowledge, reason, values, rights! Force is
all they know, force, fraud and plunder! . . . John! Don’t look at me
like that! What could i do against their fists 7 1 had to live, didn’t 1?
It wasn’t for myself— it was for the future of science! I had to be
left alone, I had to be protected, I had to make terms with them—
there’s no way to live except on their terms — there isn’t! — do you
hear me? — there isn’t! . . . What did you want me to do? Spend my
life begging for jobs? Begging my inferiors for funds and endow-
ments? Did you want my work to depend on the mercy of the ruffi-
ans who have a knack for making money? I had no time to compete
with them for money or markets or any of their miserable material
pursuits! Was that your idea of justice— that they should spend their
money on liquor, yachts and women, while the priceless hours of my
life were wasted for lack of scientific equipment? Persuasion? How

1023

could I persuade them? What language could l speak to men who
don't think? . . . You don’t know how lonely I was, how starved for
some spark of intelligence! How lonely and tired and helpless! Why
should a mind like mine have to bargain with ignorant fools? They’d
never contribute a penny to science! Why shouldn’t they be forced?
It wasn’t you that I wanted to force! That gun was not aimed at the
intellect! It wasn’t aimed at men like you and me, only at mindless
materialists! . . . Why do you look at me that way? 1 had no choice!
There isn’t any choice except to beat them at their own game! Oh
yes, it is their game, they set the rules! What do we count, the few
who can think? We can only hope to get by, unnoticed — and to trick
them into serving our aims! . . . Don’t you know how noble a purpose
it was — my vision of the future of science? Human knowledge set
free of material bonds! An unlimited end unrestricted by means! I
am not a traitor, John! I’m not! I was serving the cause of the mind!
What I saw ahead, what 1 wanted, what I felt, was not to be measured
in their miserable dollars! I wanted a laboratory! 1 needed it! What
do I care where it came from or how? 1 could do so much! I could
reach such heights! Don’t you have any pity? 1 wanted it! . . . What
if they had to be forced? Who are they to think, anyway? Why did
you teach them to rebel? It would have worked, if you hadn’t with-
drawn them! It would have worked, l tell you! It wouldn’t be — like
this! . . . Don’t accuse me! We can't be guilty ... all of us . . . for
centuries. . . . We can’t be so totally wrong! . . . We’re not to be
damned! We had no choice! There is no other way to live on
earth! . . . Why don’t you answer me? What are you seeing? Are
you thinking of that speech you made? I don't want to think of it!
k was only logic! One can’t live by logic! Do you hear me 7 . . .
Don’t look at me! You’re asking the impossible! Men can’t exist
your way! You permit no moments of weakness, you don’t allow for
human frailties or human feelings! What do you want of us? Ratio-
nality twenty-four hours a day, with no loophole, no rest, no
escape? . . . Don’t look at me, God damn you! I’m not afraid of you
any longer! Do you hear me? f am not afraid! Who are you to blame
me, you miserable failure? Here’s where your road has brought you!
Here you are, caught, helpless, under guard, to be killed by those
brutes at any moment — and you dare to accuse me of being impracti-
cal! Oh yes, you’re going to be killed! You won’t win! You can’t be
allowed to win! You are the man who has to be destroyed!”

Dr. Stadler’s gasp was a muffled scream, as if the immobility of
the figute on the window sill had served as a silent reflector and had
suddenly made him see the full meaning of his own words.

“No!” moaned Dr. Stadler, moving his he&d from side to side, to
escape the unmoving green eyes. “No! . . . - * • No!”

Galt’s voice had the same unbending austerity as his eyes: “You
have said everything l wanted to say to you|”

Dr. Stadler banged his fists against the dopr; when it was opened,
he ran out of the room.

* *

For three days, no one entered Galt’s suite except the guards who
brought his meals. Early on the evening of the fourth day, the door

1024

opened to admit Chick Morrison with two companions. Chick Mor-
rison was dressed in dinner clothes, and his smile was nervous but
a shade more confident than usual. One of his companions was a
valet The other was a muscular man whose face seemed to clash
with his tuxedo: it was a stony face with sleepy eyelids, pale, darting
eyes and a prizefighter’s broken nose; his skull was shaved except
for a patch of faded blond curls on top; he kept his right hand m
the pocket of his trousers.

“You will please dress. Mr. Galt,” said Chick Morrison persua-
sively, pointing to the door of the bedroom, where a closet had been
filled with expensive garments which Galt had not chosen to wear.
“You will please put on your dinner clothes.” He added, “This is
an order, Mr. Galt.”

Galt walked silently into the bedroom. The three men followed.
Chick Morrison sat on the edge of a chair, starting and discarding
one cigarette after another. The valet went through too many too
courteous motions, helping Galt to dress, handing him his shin studs,
holding his coat. The muscular man stood m a corner, his hand in
his pocket. No one said a word.

“You will please co-operate, Mr. Galt,” said Chick Morrison, when
Galt was ready, and indicated the door with a courtly gesture of
invitation to proceed.

So swiftly that no one could catch the motion of his hand, the
muscular man was holding Galt’s arm and pressing an invisible gun
against his ribs. "‘Don’t make any false moves,” he said in an expres-
sionless voice.

”1 never do,” said Galt.

Chick Morrison opened the door. The valet stayed behind. The
three figures in dinner clothes walked silently down the hall to the
elevator.

They remained silent in the elevator, the clicks of the flashing
numbers above the door marking their downward progress.

The elevator stopped on the mezzanine floor. Two armed soldiers
preceded them and two others followed, as they walked through the
long, dim corridors. The corridors were deserted except for armed
sentinels posted at the turns The muscular man’s right arm was
linked to Galt’s left; the gun remained invisible to any possible ob-
server. Galt felt the small pressure of the muzzle against his side;
the pressure was expertly maintained: not to be felt as an impedi-
ment and not to be forgotten for a moment.

The corridor led to a wide, closed doorway. The soldiers seemed
to melt away into the shadows, when Chick Morrison’s hand touched
the doorknob* It was his hand that opened the door, but the sudden
contrast of light and sound made it seem as if the door were flung
open by an explosion: the light came from three hundred bulbs in
the blazing chandeliers of the grand ballroom of the Wayne-Falkland
Hotel; the sound was the applause of five hundred people.

Chick Morrison led the way to the speakers’ table raised on a
platform above the tables filling the room. The people seemed to
know, without announcement, that of the two figures following him,
it was the tall, slender man with the gold-copper hair that they were

1025

applauding. His face had the same quality as the voice they had
heard on the radio: calm, confident — and out of reach.

The seat reserved for Galt was the place of honor in the center
of the long table, with Mr. Thompson waiting for him at his right
and the muscular man slipping skillfully into the seat at his left, not
relinquishing his arm or the pressure of the muzzle. The jewels on
the naked shoulders of women carried the glitter of the chandeliers
to the shadows of the tables crowded against the distant walls; the
severe black-and-white of the men’s figures rescued the room’s style
of solemnly regal luxury from the discordant slashes made by news
cameras, microphones and a dormant array of television equipment.
The crowd was on its feet, applauding. Mr. Thompson was smiling
and watching Galt’s face, with the eager, anxious look of an adult
waiting for a child's reaction to a spectacularly generous gift. Galt
sat facing the ovation, neither ignoring it nor responding,

“The applause you are hearing,” a radio announcer was yelling
into a microphone in a comer of the room, “is in greeting to John
Galt, who has just taken his place at the speakers' table! Yes, my
friends, John Galt in person— as those of you who can find a televi-
sion set will have a chance to see for yourself in a short while!'’

1 must remember where 1 am — thought Dagny, clenching her fists
under the tablecloth, in the obscurity of a side table. It was hard to
maintain a sense of double reality in the presence of Galt, thirty feet
away from her. She felt that no danger or pain could exist in the
world so long as she could see his face — and, simultaneously, an icy
terror, when she looked at those who held him in their power, when
she remembered the blind irrationality of the event they were stag-
ing. She fought to keep her facial muscles rigid, not to betray herself
by a smile of happiness or by a scream of panic.

She wondered how his eyes had been able to find her in that
, crowd. She had seen the brief pause of his glance, which no one else
could notice; the glance had been more than a kiss, it had been a
handshake of approval and support.

He did not glance again in her direction. She could not force
herself to look away. It was startling to see him in evening clothes
and more startling still that he wore them so naturally; he made
them look like a work uniform of honor; his figure suggested the
kind of banquet, in the days of a distant past, where he would have
been receiving an industrial award. Celebrations— -she remembered
her own words, with a stab of longing — should be only for those
who have something to celebrate.

She turned away. She struggled not to loojk at him too often, not
to attract the attention of her companions. $he had been placed at
a table prominent enough to display her to tNe assembly, but obscure
enough to keep her out of the line of Galt’sl sight, along with those
who had incurred Galt’s disfavor; with dr. Ferris and Eugene
Lawson.

Her brother, Jim, she noted, had been placed closer to the plat-
form; she could see his sullen face among the nervous figures of
Tinky Holloway, Fred Kinnan, Dr. Simon Pritchett. The tortured
faces strung out above the speakers’ table were not succeeding in

1026

thcif efforts to hide that they looked like men enduring an ordeal;
the calm of Galt’s face seemed radiant among them; she wondered
who was prisoner here and who was master. Her glance moved
slowly down the line-up of his table: Mr. Thompson, Wesley Mouch,
Chick Morrison, some generals, some members of the Legislature
and, preposterously, Mr. Mowen, chosen as a bribe to Gall, as a
symbol of big business. She glanced about the room, looking for the
face of Dr. Stadler; he was not present.

The voices filling the room were like a fever chart, she thought;
they kept darting too high and collapsing into patches of silence; the
occasional spurts of someone's laughter broke off, incomplcted, and
attracted the shuddering turn of the heads at the neighboring tables.
Ibe faces were drawn and twisted by the most obvious and least
dignified form of tension: by forced smiles. These people— she
thought — knew, not by means of their reason, but by means of their
panic, that this banquet was the ultimate climax and the naked es-
sence of their world. ITiey knew that neither their God nor their
guns could make this celebration mean what they were struggling to
pretend it meant.

She could not swallow the food that was placed before her; her
throat seemed closed by a rigid convulsion. She noticed that the
others at her tabic were also merely pretending to cat. Dr. Ferris
was the only one whose appetite seemed unaffected

When she saw a slush of ice cream in a crystal bowl before her,
she noticed the sudden silence of the room and heard the screeching
of the television machinery being dragged forward for action. Now —
she thought, with a sinking sense of expectation, and knew that the
same question mark was on every mind in the room. They were all
staring at Galt. His face did not move or change.

No one had to call for silence, when Mr, Thompson waved to an
announcer, the room did not seem to breathe.

"‘Fellow citizens,” the announcer cried into a microphone, “of this
country and of any other that's able lo listen — from the grand ball
room of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel in New York City, wc are bring-
ing you the inauguration of the John Gall Plan!"

A rectangle of tensely bluish light appeared on the wall behind
the speakers’ table — a television screen to project for the guests the
images which the country was now to see.

“The John Gall Plan for Peace, Prosperity and Profit!” cried the
announcer, while a shivering picture of the ballroom sprang into view
on the screen. “The dawn of a new age! The product of a harmoni-
ous collaboration between the humanitarian spirit of our leaders and
the scientific genius of John Galt! If your faith in the future has been
undermined by vicious rumors, you may now see for yourself our
happily united family of leadership! . . . Ladies and gentlemen” as
the television camera swooped down to the speakers’ table, and the
stupefied face of Mr. Mowen filled the screen — “Mr. Horace Bussby
Mowen, the American Industrialist!” The camera moved to an aged
collection of facial muscles shaped in imitation of a smile. “General
of the Army Whittington S. Iborpe!” The camera, like an eye at a
police line-up, moved from face to scarred face — scarred by the rav-

1027

ages of fear, of evasion, of despair, of uncertainty, of self-loathing,
of guilt, “Majority Leader of the National Legislature, Mr. Lucian
Phelps! . . , Mr. Wesley Mouch! . . . Mr. Thompson!” The camera
paused on Mr. Thompson: he gave a big grin to the nation, then
turned and looked off-screen, to his left, with an air of triumphant
expectancy. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said solemnly,
“John Gait!”

Good God! — thought Dagny — what are they doing? From the
screen, the face of John Galt was looking at the nation, the face
without pain or fear or guilt, implacable by virtue of serenity, invul-
nerable by virtue of self-esteem. This face — she thought — among
those others? Whatever it is that they’re planning, she thought, it’s
undone — nothing more can or has to be said — there’s the product of
one code and of the other, there’s the choice, and whoever is human
will know it.

“Mr. Galt’s personal secretary.” said the announcer, while the
camera blurred hastily past the next face and went on. “Mr. Clarence
‘Chick’ Morrison . . . Admiral Homer Dawley . . . Mr. — ”

She looked at the faces around her, wondering: Did they see the
contrast? Did they know it? Did they see him? Did they want him
to be real?

“This banquet,” said Chick Morrison, who had taken over as mas-
ter of ceremonies, “is in honor of the greatest figure of our time,
the ablest producer, the man of the ‘know-how,’ the new leader ot
our economy — John Galt! If you have heard his extraordinary radio
speech, you can have no doubt that he can make things work. Now
he is here to tell you that he will make them work for you. If you
have been misled by those old-fashioned extremists who claimed that
he would never join us, that no merger is possible between his way
of life and ours, that it’s cither one or the other— tonight’s event
will prove to you that anything can be reconciled and united!”

Once they have seen him — thought Dagny— can they wish to look
at anybody else? Once they know that he is possible, that this is
what man can be, what else can they want to seek? Can they now
feel any desire except to achieve in their souls what he has achieved
in his? Or arc they going to be stopped by the fact that the Mouches,
the Morrisons, the Thompsons of the world had not chosen to
achieve it? Are they going to regard the Mouches as the human and
him as the impossible?

The camera was roving over the ballroom, Hashing to the screen
and to the country the faces of the prominent guests, the faces of
the tensely watchful leaders and — once in & while — the face of John
Galt. He looked as if his perceptive eye^ were studying the men
outside this room, the men who were seeir|g him across the country;
one could not tell whether he was listening no reaction altered the
composure of his face. *

“I am proud to pay tribute tonight,” saidHhe leader of the Legisla-
ture, the next speaker, “to the greatest economic organizer the world
has ever discovered, the most gifted administrator, the most brilliant
planner — John Galt, the man who will save us! I am here to thank
him in the name of the people!”

1028

This— “thought Dagny, with a sickened amusement — was
facie of the sincerity of the dishonest. The most fraudulent part of
the fraud was that they meant it. They were offering Galt the best
that their view of existence could offer, they were trying to tempt
him with that which was their dream of life’s highest fulfillment: this
spread of mindless adulation, the unreality of this enormous pre-
tense-approval without standards, tribute without content, honor
without causes, admiration without reasons, love without a code of
values.

“We have discarded all our petty differences,” Wesley Mouch was
now saying into the microphone, “all partisan opinions, all personal
interests and selfish views— in order to serve under the selfless lead-
ership of John Galt!”

Why are they listening?— thought Dagny. Don’t they see the hall-
mark of death in those faces, and the hallmark of life in his? Which state
do they wish to choose? Which stale do they seek for mankind? . . .
She looked at the faces in the ballroom. They were nervously blank;
they showed nothing but the sagging weight of lethargy and the
staleness ot a chronic fear. They were looking at Galt and at Mouch,
as il unahle to perceive any difference between them or to feel con-
cern if a difference existed, their empty, uncritical, unvaluing stare
declaring: "Who am 1 to know?” She shuddered, remembering his
sentence: “The man who declares, ‘Who am I to know?' is declaring,
‘Who am 1 to live?’ ” Did they care to live?— she thought. They did
not seem to care even for the effort of raising that question. . . . She
saw a few faces who seemed to care. They were looking at Galt with
a desperate plea, with a wistfully tragic admiration — and with hands
lying limply on the tables before them. These were the men who
saw what he was, who lived in frustrated longing for his world— but
tomorrow, if they saw him being muidered before them, their hands
would hang as limply and their eyes would look away, saying, “Who
am I to act?”

“Unity of action and purpose,” said Mouch, “will bring us to a
happier world. ..."

Mr, 'Thompson leaned toward Gall and whispered with an amiable
smite, “You’ll have to say a lew words to the country, later on, after
me. No, no, not a long speech, just a sentence or two, no more. Just
‘hello, folks’ or something like that, so they’ll recognize your voice,”
The faintly stressed pressure of the “secretary's” muzzle against
Galt’s side added a silent paragraph. Galt did not answer.

“The John Galt Plan.” Wesley Mouch was saying, “will reconcile
all conflicts. It will protect the property of the rich and give a greater
share to the poor. It will cut down the burden of your taxes and provide
you with more government benefits. It will lower prices and raise
wages. It will give more freedom to the individual and strengthen
the bonds of collective obligations. It will combine the efficiency ot
free enterprise with the generosity of a planned economy.

Dagny observed some faces — it took her an effort fully to believe
il— who were looking at Galt with hatred. Jim was one of them, she
noted. When the image of Mouch held the screen, these faces were

1029

relaxed in bored contentment, which was not pleasure, but the comfort
of license, of knowing that nothing was demanded of them and nothing
was lum or certain. When the camera flashed the image of Galt, their
lips grew tight and their features were sharpened by a took of peculiar
caution. She felt with sudden certainty that they feared the precision
of his face, the unyielding clarity of his features, the look of being an
entity, a look of asserting existence. They hate him for being himself —
she thought, feeling a touch of cold horror, as the nature of their souls
became real to her— they hate him for his capacity to live. Do they
want to live? — she thought in self-mockery, lb rough the stunned numb-
ness of her mind, she remembered the sound of his sentence: “The
desire not to be anything, is the desire not to be.”

It was now Mr. Thompson who was yelling into the microphone
in his briskest and folksiest manner: “And 1 say to you: kick them
in the teeth, all those doubters who’re spreading disunity and fear!
They told you that John Galt would never join us, didn’t they? Well,
here he is. in person, of his own free choice, at this table and at the
head of our State! Ready, willing and able to serve the people’s
cause! Don’t you ever again, any of you, start doubting or running
or giving up! Tomorrow is here today — and what a tomorrow! With
three meals a day for everyone on earth, with a car in every garage,
and with electric power given free , produced by some sort of a motor
the like of which we’ve never seen! And all you have to do is just
be patient a little while longer! Patience, faith and unity — that's the
recipe for progress! We must stand united among ourselves and
united with the rest of the world, as a great big happy family, all
working for the good of all! We have found a leader who will beat
the record of our richest and busiest past! It’s his love for mankind
that has made him come here — to serve you, protect you and take
care of you! He has heard your picas and has answered the call of
our common human duly! Every man is his brother’s keeper! No
Tnan is an island unto himself! And now you will hear his voice —
now you will hear his own message! . . . Ladies and gentlemen,” he
said solemnly, “John Galt — to the collective family of mankind!”

The camera moved to Galt. He remained still for a moment. Then,
with so swift and expert a movement that his secretary’s hand was
unable to match it, he rose to his feet, leaning sidewise, leaving the
pointed gun momentarily exposed to the sight of the world — then,
standing straight, facing the cameras, looking at all his invisible view-
ers, he said:

“Get the hell out of my way!”

Chapter IX THE GENERATOR

“Get the hell out of my way!”

Dr. Robert Stadler heard it on the radio fn his car. He did not
know whether the next sound, part-gasp, part-scream, part-laughter,
started rising from him or from the radio — but he heard the dick
that cut them both off. The radio went dead. No further sounds
came from the Wayne-Falkland Hotel.

1030

He jerked his hand from knob to knob under the lighted dial.
Nothing came through, no explanations, no pleas of technical trou-
ble, no silence-hiding music. All stations were off the air.

He shuddered, he gripped the wheel, leaning forward across it,
like a jockey at the close of a race, and his foot pressed down on
the accelerator. The small stretch of highway before him bounced
with the leaping of his headlights. There was nothing beyond the
lighted strip but the emptiness of the prairies of Iowa.

He did not know why he had been listening to the broadcast: he
did not know what made him tremble now. He chuckled abruptly—
it sounded like a malevolent growl — either at the radio, or at those
in the city, or at the sky.

He was watching the rare posts of highway numbers. He did not
need to consult a map: for four days, that map had been printed on
his brain, like a net of lines traced in acid. They could not take it
away from him, he thought, they could not stop him. He felt as if
he were being pursued; but there was nothing for miles behind him,
except the two red lights on the rear of his car — like two small signals
of danger, fleeing through the darkness of the Iowa plains.

The motive directing his hands and feet was four days behind him.
It was the lace of the man on the window sill, and the faces he had
confronted when he had escaped from that loom. He had cried to
them that he could not deal with Galt and neither could they, that
Gall would destroy them all, unless they destroyed him tirst. “Don’t
get smart. Professor.” Mr. Thompson had answered coldly ‘You've
done an awful lot of yelling about hating his guts, but when it comes
to action, you haven’t helped us at all. I don’t know which side
you're on. If he doesn't give in to us peaceably, we might have to
resort to pressure— -such as hostages whom he wouldn’t want to see
hurt — and you're first on the list, Professor.” l 7?” he had screamed,
shaking with terror and with bitterly desperate laughter. “I? But he
damns me more than anyone on earth!” “How do 1 know?” Mr.
Thompson had answered. “I heard that you used to be his teacher.
And, don’t forget, you’re the only one he asked for.”

His mind liquid with terror, he had felt as if he were about to be
crushed between two walls advancing upon him: he had no chance,
if Galt refused to surrender -and less chance, if Galt joined these
men. It was then that a distant shape had come swimming forward
in his mind: the image of a mushroom-domed structure in the middle
of an Iowa plain.

All images had begun to fuse in his mind thereafter. Project X—
he had thought, not knowing whether it was the vision of that struc-
ture or of a feudal castle commanding the countryside, that gave him
the sense of an age and a world to which he belonged . . . Pm
Robert Stadler — he had thought — it's my property, it came from my
discoveries, they said it was 1 who invented it. . . . Pll show them! —
he had thought, not knowing whether he meant the man on the
window sill or the others or the whole of mankind. . . . His thoughts
had become like chips floating in a liquid, without connections: To
seize control . . . VII show them! ... To seize control, to rule . . ,
There is no other way to live on earth. . . .

1031

These had been the only words that named the plan in his mind.
He had felt that the rest was clear to him — clear in the form of a
savage emotion crying defiantly that he did not have to make it clear.
He would seize control of Project X and he would rule a part of the
country as his private feudal domain. The means? His emotion had
answered: Somehow. The motive? His mind had repeated insistently
that his motive was terror of Mr. Thompson’s gang, that he was not
safe among them any longer, that his plan was a practical necessity.
In the depth of his liquid brain, his emotion had held another kind
of terror, drowned along with the connections between his broken
chips of words.

These chips had been the only compass directing his course
through four days and nights — while he drove down deserted high-
ways, across a country collapsing into chaos, while he developed a
monomaniac’s cunning for obtaining illegal purebrses of gas, while
he snatched random hours of restless sleep, in obscure motels, under
assumed names. . . . I’m Robert Stadler — he had thought, his mind
repeating it as a formula of omnipotence. . . . To seize control — he
had thought, speeding against the futile traffic lights of half-aban-
doned towns — speeding on the vibrating steel of the Taggart Bridge
across the Mississippi — speeding past the occasional ruins of farms
in the empty stretches of Iowa. . . . I’ll show them —he had thought —
let them pursue, they won’t stop me this time. ... He had thought
it, even though no one had pursued him — as no one was pursuing
him now, but the taillights of his own car and the motive drowned
in his mind.

He looked at his silent radio and chuckled: the chuckle had the
emotional quality of a fist being shaken at space. It’s I who am
practical — lie thought — 1 have no choice ... I have no other way . . .
HI show all those insolent gangsters, who forget that I am Robert
Stadler . . . They will all collapse, but 1 won't! . . . I’ll survive . . .
HI win! . . . I’ll show them!

The words were like chunks of solid ground in his mind, in the
midst of a fiercely silent swamp; the connections lay submerged at
the bottom. If connected, hts words would have formed the sentence:
I’ll show him that there is no other way to live on earth! . . .

The scattered lights in the distance ahead were the barracks
erected on the site of Project X, now known as Harmony City. He
observed, as he came closer, that something out of the ordinary was
going on at Project X. The barbed-wire fence was broken, and no
sentinels met him at the gate. But some sort of abnormal activity
was churning in the patches of darkness and in the glare of some
wavering spotlights: there were armored triicks and running figures
and shouted orders and the gleam of bayonets. No one stopped his
car. At the comer of a shanty, he saw the motionless body of a
soldier sprawled on the ground. Drunk — |c thought, preferring to
think it, wondering why he felt unsure of k .

The mushroom structure crouched on at knoll before him; there
were lights in the narrow slits of its windows— ^and the shapeless
funnels protruded from under its dome, aimed at the darkness of
the country. A soldier barred his way, when he alighted from his car

1032

it the entrance. The soldier was properly armed, but hatless and his
miform seemed too sloppy. “Where are you going, bud?” he asked.

“Let me in!” Dr. Stadler ordered contemptuously.

“What’s your business here?”

k Tm Or. Robert Stadler.”

I m Joe Blow. I said, What s your business? Arc you one of the
lew or one of the old?”

“Let me in, you idiot! l‘m Or. Robert Stadler!”

It was not the name, but the tone of the voice and the form of
address that seemed to convince the soldier “One of the new,” he
said and, opening the door, shouted to somebody inside, “Hey, Mac,
L ake care of Cirandpaw here, see what he wants!”

In the bare, dim hall of reinforced concrete, he was met by a man
who might have been an officer, except that his tunic was open at
the throat and a cigarette hung insolently in the corner of his mouth.

“Who are vow?” he snapped, his hands jerking too swiftly to the
holster on his hip,

‘Tm Dr. Robert Stadler.”

The name had no effect. “Who gave you permission to come
here?”

“I need no permission.”

1 his seemed to have an effect; the man removed the cigarette
from his mouth. “Who sent for you 0 ” he asked, a shade uncertainly.

“Will you please let me speak to the commandant?” Dr. Stadler
demanded impatiently.

“The commandant? You’re too late, brother.”

“The chiel engineer, then!”

“The chief-who? Oh, Willie? Willie's. okay, he’s one ot us, but
he’s out on an cnand just now.”

There were other figures in the hall listening with an apprehensive
curiosity. The officer’s hand summoned one of them to approach —
an unshaved civilian with a shabby overcoat thrown over his shouL
ders. “What do you want?” he snapped at Stadler

“Would someone please tell me where are the gentlemen of the
scientific staff?” Dr. Stadler asked in the courteously peremptory
lone ot an order.

The two men glanced at each other, as if such a question were
irrelevant in this place. “Do you come from Washington?” the civil-
ian asked suspiciously.

“I do not. 1 will have you understand that I’m through with that
Washington gang.”

“Oh?” The man seemed pleased. “Are you a Friend ot the Peo-
ple, then?”

“I would say that I’m the best friend the people ever had. Tm the
man who gave them all this.” He pointed around him.

“You did?” said the man, impressed “Are you one of those who
made a deal with the Boss?”

"Tm the boss here, from now' on.”

The men looked at each other, retreating a few steps, the officer
asked, “Did you say the name was Stadler?”

1033

“ Robert Stadler \ And if you don’t know what that means, you’ll
find out!”

“Will you please follow me, sir?” said the officer, with shaky
politeness.

What happened next was not clear to Dr. Stadler, because his
mind refused to admit the reality of the things he was seeing. There
were shifting figures in half-lighted, disordered offices, there were
too many firearms on everybody’s hips, there were senseless ques-
tions asked of him by jerky voices that alternated between imperti-
nence and fear. He did not know whether any of them tried to give
him an explanation; he would not listen; he could not permit this to
be true. He kept stating in the tone of a feudal sovereign, ‘Vm the
boss here, from now on ... I give the orders ... 1 came to take
over ... I own this place. ... I am Dr. Robert Stadler —and it you
don’t know that name in this place, you have no business being here,
you infernal idiots! You'll blow yourselves to pieces, it that's the
state of your knowledge! Have you had a high -school course in phys-
ics? You don’t look to me as if you’ve ever been allowed inside a
high school, any of you! What are you doing here? Who arc you?”

It took him a long time to grasp — when his mind could not block
it any longer — that somebody had beaten him to his plan- somebody-
had held the same view' of existence as his own anti had set out to
achieve the same future. He grasped that these men, who called
themselves the Friends of the People, had seized possession of Proj-
ect X, tonight, a few hours ago, intending to establish a reign of then
own. He laughed in their faces, with bitterly incredulous contempt

‘’You don’t now what you’re doing, you miserable juvenile delin-
quents! Do you think that you — you! — can handle a high-precision
instrument of science? Who is your leader? I demand to see your
leader!”

It was his tone of overbearing authority, his contempt and their
own panic — the blind panic of men of unbridled violence, who have
no standards of safety or danger — that made them waver and wondei
whether he was, perhaps, some secret top-level member of their lead-
ership; they were equally ready to defy or obey any authority. After
being shunted from one jittery commander to another, he found
himself at last being led down iron stairways and down long, echoing,
underground corridors of reinforced concrete to an audience with
“The Boss” in person.

The Boss had taken refuge in the underground control room.
Among the complex spirals of the delicate scientific machinery that
produced the sound ray, against the wall panel of glittering levers,
dials and gauges, known as the Xylophone* Robert Stadler faced the
new ruler of Project X. It was Cuffy Meig^,

He wore a tight, semi-military tunic andjleather leggings; the flesh
of his neck bulged over the edge of his cellar; his black curls were
matted with sweat. He was pacing restlesfcly, unsteadily in front ot
the Xylophone, shouting orders to men wtyo kept rushing in and out*
of the room:

“Send couriers to every county seat within our reach! Tell ’em
that the Friends of the People have won! Tell ’em they’re not to

1034

take orders from Washington any longer! The new capital of the
People’s Commonwealth is Harmony City, henceforth to be known
as Meigsvillc! Tell ’em that I’ll expect live hundred thousand dollars
per every five thousand heads of population, by tomorrow morning—
or else!” &

It took some time before Cufly Meigs’ attention and bleary brown
eyes could be drawn to locus on the person of Dr. Stadler. “Well,
what is it? What is it?” he snapped.

“1 am Dr. Robert Stadler.”

“Huh?— Oh, yeah! Yeah! You’re the big guy from outer spaces,
aren’t you? You’re the fellow who catches atoms or something. Well’
what on earth are you doing here?”

“U is I who should ask you that question.''

“Huh? Look, Professor, I’m in no mood for jokes.”

“I have come here to lake control.”

“Control? Of what?”

“Of this equipment. Of this place. Of the countryside within its
ladius of operation.”

Meigs stared at him blankly for a moment, then asked softly,
“How did you get here?”

“By car ”

“I mean, whom did you brine with you?”

“Nobody.”

“What weapons did you bring?”

“None. My name is sufficient ”

“You came here alone, with your name and your car?”

“I did.”

Cuffy Meigs burst out laughing in his face.

“Do you think,” asked Dr. Stadler. “that you can operate an in-
stallation ol this kind?”

“Run along. Professor, run along! Beat it. before 1 have you shot!
We've got no use for intellectuals around here!”

“How much do you know about this'*" Dr. Stadler pointed at
the Xylophone.

“Who caies? Technicians are a dime a dozen these days! Beat it!
T his ain’t Washington! I'm through with those impractical dreamers
in Washington! They won't get anywhere, bargaining with that radio
ghost and making speeches! Action— that’s what’s needed! Direct
action! Beat it. Doc! Your day is over!” He was weaving unsteadily
back and forth, catching at a lever of the Xylophone once in a while.
Di. Stadler realized that Meigs was drunk.

“Don’t touch those levers, you fool!”

Meigs jerked his hand back involuntarily, then waved it defiantly
at the panel *TU touch anything 1 please! Don’t vou tell me what
to do!”

“Get away from that panel! Get out of here! This is mine! Do
you understand? It’s my property!”

“Property? Huh!” Meigs gave a brief bark that was a chuckle.

”1 invented it! 1 created it! I made it possible!”

“You did? Well, many thanks. Doc. Many thanks, but we don’t
need you any longer. We've got our own mechanics.”

1035

‘‘Have you any idea what I had to know in order to make it
possible? You couldn’t think of a single tube of it! Not a single bolt!”

Meigs shrugged. “Maybe not.”

“Then how dare you think that you can own it? How dare you
come here? What claim do you have to it?”

Meigs patted his holster. “ This

“Listen, you drunken lout!” cried Dr. Stadler. “Do you know what
you’re playing with?”

“Don’t you talk to me like that, you old fool! Who are you to
talk to me like that? I can break your neck with my bate hands!
Don’t you know who I am?”

“You’re a scared thug way out of his depth!”

“Oh, I am, am 1? I’m the Boss! I’m the Boss and I’m not going
to be stopped by an old scarecrow like you! Get out of here!”

They stood staring at each other for a moment, by the panel of
the Xylophone, both cornered by terror. The unadmitted root of Dr.
Stadler’s terror was his frantic struggle not to acknowledge that he
was looking at his final product, that this was his spiritual son. Cutty
Meigs’ terror had wider roots, it embraced all of existence; he had
lived in chronic terror all his life, but now he was struggling not to
acknowledge what it was that he had dreaded: in the moment of his
triumph, when he expected to be safe, that mysterious, occult
breed — the intellectual— was refusing to fear him and defying his
power.

“Get out of here'” snarled Cutty Meigs. “I'll call my men! I'll
have you shot!”

“Get out of here, you lousy, brainless, swaggering moron!” snarled
Dr. Stadler. “Do you think I'll let you cash in on my life? Do you
think it’s for you that I . . . that I sold—” He did not finish. “Stop
touching those levels. God damn you!”

“Don’t you give me orders! 1 don't need you to tell me what to
do! You're not going to scare me with your classy mumbo-jumbo!
HI do as I please! What did I fight for, if I can’t do as I please?”
He chuckled and reached for a lever.

“Hey. Cut'fy, take it easy!” yelled some figuic in the back of the
room, darting forward.

“Stand back!” roared Cully Meigs “Stand back, all of you!
Scared, am I? I’ll show you who’s boss!”

Dr, Stadler leaped to stop him — but Meigs shoved him aside with
one arm, gave a gulp of laughter at the sight of Stadler falling to
the floor, and, with the other arm, yanked a lever of the Xylophone.

The crash of sound —the screeching crash of ripped metal and of
pressures colliding on conflicting circuits, th£ sound of a monster
turning upon itself — was heard only inside thje structure. No sound
was heard outside. Outside, the structure merely rose into the air,
suddenly and silently, cracked open into a jfew large pieces, shot
some hissing streaks of blue light to the sky and came down as a
pile of rubble. Within the circle of a radios of a hundred miles,
enclosing parts of four states, telegraph potes fell like matchsticks,
farmhouses collapsed into chips, city buildings went down as if
slashed and minced by a single second’s blow, with no time for a

1036

sound Co be heard by the twisted bodies of the victims— and, on the
circle s periphery, halfway across the Mississippi, the engine and the first
six cars of a passenger train flew as a shower of metal into the water
of the river, along with the western spans of the Taggart Bridge cut
in half. & ’

On the site of what had once been Project X. nothing remained
alive among the ruins — except, for some endless minutes longer, a
huddle of torn flesh and screaming pain that had once been a
great mind.

+ *

There was a sense of weightless freedom- thought Dagny -in the
feeling that a telephone boolh was her only immediate, absolute
goal, with no concern lor any ot the goals of the passers-by in the
streets around her. It did not make her ted estranged from the city:
it made her feel, for the first time, that she owned the city and that
she loved it, that she had never loved it before as she did in this
moment, with so personal, solemn and confident a sense of posses-
sion, The night was still and clear; she looked at the sky; as her
feeling was more solemn than joyous, but held the sense of a future
joy — so the air was more windless than warm, but held the hint of
a distant spring

Get the hell out of my way — she thought, not with resentment, but
almost with amusement, with a sense of detachment and deliverance,
addressing it to the passers-by, to the traffic when it impeded her
hurried progress, and to any fear she had known in the past. It was
less than an hour ago that she had heard him utter that sentence,
and his voice still seemed to ring in the air of the streets, merging
into a distant hint of laughter

She had laughed exultantly, in the ballroom of the Waync-Falkland,
when she had heard him say it; she had laughed, her hand pressed
to her mouth, so that the laughter was only in her eyes — and in his,
when he had looked straight at her and she had known that he heard
it. They had looked at each other for the span of a second, above
the heads of the gasping, screaming crowd — above the crash of the
microphones being shattered, though all stations had been instantly
cut off — above the bursts of breaking glass on falling tables, as some
people were stampeding to the doors.

Then she had heard Mr. Thompson cry, waving his arm at Galt,
“Take him back to his room, but guard him with your lives!”-- and
the crowd had parted as three men led him out. Mr. Thompson
seemed Co collapse for a moment, dropping his forehead on his arm,
but he rallied, jumped to his feet, waved vaguely at hts henchmen
to follow and rushed out, through a private side exit. No one ad-
dressed or instructed the guests: some were running blindly to es-
cape, others sat still, not daring to move. The ballroom was like a
ship without a captain. She cut through the crowd and followed the
clique. No one tried to stop her.

She found them huddled in a small private study; Mr. Thompson
was slumped in an armchair, clutching his head with both hands,
Wesley Mouch was moaning, Eugene Lawson was sobbing with the
sound of a nasty child’s rage, Jim was watching the others with an

1037

oddly expectant intensity. “I told you so!” Dr. Ferris was shouting.
“I told you so, didn’t l? That’s where you get with your ‘peaceful
persuasion’!”

She remained standing by the door. They seemed to notice her
presence, but they did not seem to care.

“I resign!” yelled ( hick Morrison, “I resign! I’m through! 1 don't
know what to say to the country! I can’t think! I won’t try! It’s no
use! I couldn’t help it! You’re not going to blame me! I’ve resigned!”
He waved his arms in some shapeless gesture of futility or farewell,
and ran out of the room.

“He has a hide-out all stocked for himself in Tennessee,” said
Tinky Holloway reflectively, as if he, too, had taken a similar precau-
tion and were now wondering whether the time had come.

“He won't keep it for long, if he gets there at all,” said Mouch.
“With the gangs of raiders and the state of transportation — ” He
spread his hands and did not finish.

She knew what thoughts were filling the pause: she knew that
no matter what private escapes these men had once provided for
themselves, they were now grasping the fact that all of them were
trapped.

She observed that there was no terror in their faces; she saw hints
of it, but it looked like a perfunctory terror Their expressions ranged
from blank apathy to the relieved look of cheats who had believed
that the game could end no other way and were making no effort
to contest it or regret it — to the petulant blindness of Lawson, who
refused to be conscious of anything — to the peculiar intensity of Jim,
whose face suggested a secret MTiile.

“Well? Well?” Dr. Ferris was asking impatiently, with the crack-
ling energy of a man who feels at home in a world of hysteria. “What
. are you now going to do with him? Argue? Debate? Make speeches?"

No one answered.

“He . . . has , . . to . . . save . . . us,” said Mouch slowly, as it
straining the last of his mind into blankness and delivering an ultima-
tum to reality. “He has to . . . take over . . . and save the system."

“Why don’t you write him a love letter about it?” said F’crris.

“We’ve got to . . . make him . . . take over . . . We’ve got to force
him to rule,” said Mouch in the lone of a sleepwalker.

“;Vok\” said Ferris, suddenly dropping his voice, “do you see what
a valuable establishment the State Science Institute really is?”

Mouch did not answer him, but she observed lhat they all seemed
to know what he meant. *

“You objected to that private research prelect of mine as ‘imprac-
tical? ” said Ferris softly. “But what did 1 t0ll you?”

Mouch did not answer; he was cracking his knuckles.

“This is no time for squeamishness,” James Taggart spoke up with
unexpected vigor, but his voice, too, was od<Jly low. “We don’t have
to be sissies about it.”

“It seems to me . . said Mouch dully, "that . . . that the end
justifies the means . .

1038

-It'S too late for any scruples or any principles,’' said Ferris. <l Only
direct action can work now.”

No one answered; they were acting as if they wished that their
pauses, not their words, would state what they were discussing.

“It won’t work,” said Tinky Holloway “He won't give in.”

“That’s what you think!” said Ferris, and chuckled. “You haven’t
seen our experimental model in action. Last month, we got three
confessions in three unsolved murder cases.”

“If ...” started Mr. Thompson, and his voice cracked suddenly
into a moan, “if he dies, we all perish!”

“Don’t worry.” said Ferris. “He won't. The Ferris Persuader is
safely calculated against that possibility.”

Mr. Thompson did not answer.

“It .seems to me . . . that we have no other choice . . .” said
Mouch; it was almost a whisper

They remained silent, Mr. Thompson was struggling not to see
that they were all looking at him. Then he cried suddenly, “Oh, do
anything you want! I couldn't help it! Do anything you want!”

Dr. Ferris turned to Lawson. “Gene.” he said tensely, still whisper-
ing. “run to the radio-control office. Order all stations to stand by.
Tell them that I’ll have Mi. Galt on the air within three hours.”

Lawson leaped to his feet, with a sudden, mirthful grin, and ran

out of the room. . .

She knew. She knew what they intended doing and what it was
within them that made it possible. Ihev did not think that this would
succeed They did not think that Galt would give in; they did not
want him to give in. They did not think that anything could save
them now; they did not want to be saved. Moved by the panic of
their nameless emotions, they had fought agamst reality all their
lives— and now they had reached a moment when at last they felt
at home. They did not have to know why they felt it, they who had
chosen never to know what they felt— they merely experienced a
sense of recognition, since this was what they had been seeking, to
was the kind of reality that had been implied m all of
their actions, their desires, their choices, their dreams. 1 his was the
nature and the method of the rebellion agamst eme and of th,
undefined quest for an unnamed Nirvana, lhey did not want to live,

,St K oniv . W ..*■ «* .!>» ««*

switching perspective, she grasped that the objects she had ^though
to be human were not. She was left with a sense o danty ofa tirnd
answer and of the need to act. He was m danger; there was no Me
and no room in her consciousness to waste emotion on the actions

01 -We'mustmTke sure,” Wesley Mouch was whispering, “that no-

S Virik'' their voices had the cautious drone of
conspirators. 4 s a secret, separate unit on the Inst. -

Sound-proofed and safely distant from the rest . - • Only a very tew
of our staff have ever entered it. . • •

1039

“If we were to fly — ” said Mouch, and stopped abruptly, as if he
had caught some warning in Ferris' face.

She saw Ferris' eyes move to her, as if he had suddenly remem -
hered her presence. She held his glance, letting him see the untrou-
bled indifference of hers, as if she had neither cared nor understood.
Then, as if merely grasping the signal of a private discussion, she
turned slowly, with the suggestion of a shrug, and left the room. She
knew that they were now past the stage of worrying about her.

She walked with the same unhurried indifference through the halls
and through the exit of the hotel. But a block away, when she had
turned a corner, her head flew up and the folds of her evening gown
slammed like a sail against her legs with the sudden violence of the
speed of her steps.

And now, as she rushed through the darkness, thinking only of
finding a telephone booth, she felt a new sensation rising irresistibly
within her, past the immediate tension of danger and concern: it was
the sense of freedom of a world that had never had to he obstructed.

She saw the wedge of light on the sidewalk, that came from the
window of a bar. No one gave her a second glance, as she crossed
the half-deserted room: the few customers were still waiting and
whispering tensely in front of the crackling blue void of an empty
television screen.

Standing in the tight space of the telephone booth, as in the cabin
of a ship about to take off for a different planet, she dialed the
number OR 6-5693.

The voice that answered at once was Francisco’s. “Hello? 5 ’

“Francisco?”

“Hello, Dagny. I was expecting you to call.”

‘Did you hear the broadcast?”

“I did.”

“They are now planning to force him to give in.” She kept her
voice to the tone of a factual report. “They intend to torture him.
They have some machine called the Ferris Persuader, in an isolated
unit on the grounds of the State Science Institute. It’s in New Hamp-
shire. They mentioned flying. They mentioned that they would have
him on the radio within three hours.”

“1 see. Are you calling from a public phone booth?”

“Yes.”

“You’re still in evening clothes, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Now listen carefully. Go home, change your clothes, pack a few
things you’ll need, take your jewelry and any valuables that you can
carry, take some warm clothing. Wc won't lave time to do it later.
Meet me in forty minutes, on the northwest! corner, two blocks east
of the main entrance of the Taggart Termir^ 1 ”

“Right”

“So long. Slug.”

“So long, Frisco.”

She was in the bedroom of her apartment, in less than five minutes,
tearing off her evening gown. She left it lying in the middle of the
floor, Tike the discarded uniform of an army she was not serving any

1040

longer. She put on a dark blue suit and— remembering Galt's words—
a white, high-collared sweater. She packed a suitcase and a bag with
a strap that she could carry swung over her shoulder. She put her
jewelry in a corner of the bag, including the bracelet of Rearden
Metal she had earned in the outside world, and the five-dollar gold
piece she had earned in the valley.

It was easy to leave the apartment and to lock the door, even
though she knew she would probably never open it again. It seemed
harder, for a moment, when she came to her office. No one had seen
her come in; the anteroom of her office was empty; the great Taggart
Building seemed unusually quiet. She stood looking for a moment at
this room and at all the years it had contained. Then she smiled— no,
it was not too hard, she thought; she opened her safe and took the
documents she had come here to get. I here was nothing else that
she wanted to take from her office — except the picture of Nathaniel
Taggart and the map of Taggart Transcontinental. She broke the
two frames, folded the picture and the map, and slipped them into
her suitcase.

She was locking the suitcase, when she heard the sound of hurrying
steps. The door (lew open and the chief engineer lushed in; he was
shaking; his face was distorted.

“Miss Taggart!” he cried, “Oh, thank God, Miss laggart. you're
here! We’ve been calling lot you all over!”

.She did not answer; she looked at him inquiringly.

“Miss Taggart, have you heard *”

“What?”

“Then you haven’t! Oh God. Miss laggait, it’s . I can’t believe
it, 1 still can't believe it, but . . . Oh God, what are wc going to do?
The ... the Taggart Bridge is gone*”

She stated at him, unable to move.

“It’s gone! Blown up! Blown up, apparently, in one second! No-
body knows for ceitain what happened— but it looks like . , they

think that something went wrong at Project X and ... it looks like
those sound rays. Miss Taggart! Wc can’t get through to any point
within a radius of a hundred miles’ It’s not possible, it can’t be
possible, but it looks as if everything in that circle has been wiped
out! . . . We can’t get any answers! Nobody can get an answer- -the
newspapers, the radio stations, the police! We’re still checking, but
the stories that are coming from the rim of that circle arc—” He
shuddered. “Only one thing is certain: the bridge is gone! Miss Tag-
gart! We don’t know what to do!”

She leaped to her desk and seized the telephone receiver. Her
hand stopped in mid-air. Then, slowly, twistedly, with the greatest
effort ever demanded of her. she began to move her arm down to
place the receiver back. It seemed to her that it took a long time,
as if her arm had to move against some atmospheric pressure that
no human body could combat— and in the span of these few brief
moments, in the stillness of a blinding pain, she knew what Francisco
had felt, that night, twelve years ago — and what a boy of twenty-six
had felt when he had looked at his motor for the last time.

1041

“Miss Taggart!” cried the chief engineer, “We don’t know what
to do!’

The receiver clicked softly back into its cradle. “I don't, either,”
she answered.

In a moment, she knew it was over: She heard her voice telling
the man to check further and report to her later — and she waited
for the sound of his steps to vanish in the echoing silence of the hall.

Crossing the concourse of the Terminal for the last time, she
glanced at the statue of Nathaniel Taggart — and remembered a
promise she had made. It would be only a symbol now, she thought,
but it would be the kind of farewell that Nathaniel Taggart deserved.
She had no other writing instrument, so she took the lipstick from
her bag and, smiling up at the marble face of the man who would
have understood, she drew a large sign of the dollar on the pedestal
under his feel.

She was first to reach the corner, two blocks east of the Terminal
entrance. As she waited, she observed the first trickles of the panic
that was soon to engult the city: there were automobiles driving too
fast, some of them loaded with household effects, there were too
many police cars speeding by, and too many sirens bursting in the
distance. The news of the destruction of the Bridge was apparently
spreading through the city; they would know that the city was
doomed and they would start a stampede to escape— but they had
no place to go, and it was not her concern any longer.

She saw Francisco's figure approaching from some distance away;
she recognized the swiftness of his walk, before she could distinguish
the face under the cap pulled low over his eyes. She caught the
•moment when he saw her, as he came closer. He waved his arm,
with a smile of greeting. Some conscious stress in the sweep of his
arm made it the gesture of a d’Anconia, welcoming the arrival of a
long-awaited traveler at the gates of his own domain.

When he approached, she stood solemnly straight and. looking at
his face and at the buildings of the greatest city in the world, as at
the kind of witnesses she wanted, she said slowly, her voice confident
and steady:

“1 swear — by my life and my lovt of it — that 1 will never live for
the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

He inclined his head, as if in sign of admittance. His smile was
now a salute.

Then he took her suitcase with one hand, her arm with the other,
and said, “Come on.”

* *

The unit known as “Project F” — in honor of its originator. Dr.
Ferris — was a small structure of reinforced concrete, low on the slope
of the hill that supported the State Science Institute on a higher,
more public level Only the small gray patc£ of the unit’s roof could
be seen from the Institute’s windows, hidden in a jungle of ancient
trees; it looked no bigger than the cover of a manhole.

The unit consisted of two stories in th<$ shape of a small cube
placed asymmetrically on top of a larger one. The first story had no
windows, only a door studded with iron spikes; the second story had

1042

but one window, as if in reluctant concession to daylight like a face
with a single eye. The men on the staff of the Institute felt no curios-
ity about that structure and avoided the paths that led down to its
door; nobody had ever suggested it, but they had the impression that
the structure housed a project devoted to experiments with the germs
of deadly diseases. &

The two floors were occupied by laboratories that contained a
great many cages with guinea pigs, dogs and rats. But the heart and
meaning of the structure was a room in its cellar, deep under the
ground; the room had been incompetently lined with the porous
sheets of sound-proofing material; the sheets had begun to crack and
the naked rock of a cave showed through.

The unit was always protected by a squad of four special guards.
Tonight, the squad had been augmented to sixteen, summoned for
emergency duty by a long-distance telephone call from New York.
Hie guards, as well as all other employees of “Project F.” had been
carefully chosen on the basis ot a single qualification: an unlimited
capacity tor obedience.

The sixteen were stationed tor the night outside the structure and
in the deserted laboratories above the ground, where they remained
uncritically on duty, with no cunosily about anything that might be
taking place below.

In the cellar room, undei the giound. Dr. Ferris, Wesley Mouch
and James Taggart sat in armchairs lined up against one wall. A
machine that looked like a small cabinet ot irregular shape st<xid m
a corner across from them. Its face bore rows ol glass dials, each
dial marked by a segment of red, a squaie screen that looked like
an amplifier, rows of numbers, rows of wooden knobs and plastic
buttons, a single lever controlling a switch at one side and a single
icd glass button at the other. The lace of the machine seemed to
have more expression than the face ot the mechanic in charge of it;
he was a husky young man in a sweat- stained shirt with sleeves rolled
above the elbows; his pale blue eyes were gla/ed by an enormously
conscientious concentration on his task; he moved his lips once in a
while, as if reciting a memorised lesson.

A short wire led from the machine to an electric storage battery
behind it. Long coils of wire, like the twisted arms of an octopus,
stretched forward across the stone flooi, from the machine to a
leather mattress spread under a cone of violent light. John Galt lay
strapped to the mattress. He was naked; the small metal disks of
electrodes at the ends of the wires were attached to his wrists, his
shoulders, his hips and his ankles; a device resembling a stethoscope
was attached to his chest and connected to the amplifier.

“Get this straight,” said Dr. Ferris, addressing him for the first
time. **We want you to take full power over the economy of the
country. We want you to become a dictator. We want you to rule,
f 'nderstand? Wo want you to give orders and to figure out the right
orders to give. What we want, we mean to get. Speeches, logic, argu-
ments or passive obedience won’t save you now. We want ideas
<>r else. We won’t let you out of here until you tell us the exact
measures you'll take to save our system. Then well have you tell it

1043

to the country over the radio.’' He raised his wrist, displaying a stop-
watch ‘TH give you thirty seconds to decide whether you want to
start talking right now If not, then well start Do you understand?”

Galt was looking straight at them, his face expressionless, as if he
understood too much He did not answer
They heard the sound of the stop-watch in the silence, counting off
the seconds, and the sound of Mouch's choked, irregular breathing as
he gripped the arms ot his chair

Ferris waved a signal to the mechanic al the machine The me-
chanic threw the switch, it lighted the red glass button and set off two
sounds one was the low, humming drone of an electric generator, the
other was a peculiar beat as regular as the ticking of a clock, but
with an oddly muffled resonance It took them a moment to realize
that it came from the amplifier and that they were hearing the beat
of Galt's heart

“Number three ” said Ferns, raising a finger in signal
Hie mechanic pressed a button under one of the dials A long
shudder ran through Galt’s body, his left arm shook m jerking
spasms, convulsed by the electnc current that circled between lus
wrist and shoulder His head fell back, his eyes closed, his lips drawn
tight He made no sound

When the mechanic lilted his finger oft the button, Galt’s arm
stopped shaking He did not move

Hie three men glanced about them with an instant’s look of grop
mg Ferns eyes were blank Mouch\ terrified faggarts disap
pointed The sound ot the thumping beat went on through the
silence

“Number two,’ said Ferris

It was Galt’s light leg that twisted in convulsions with the current
now circling between his hips and ankle His hands gnpped the edges
of the mattiess His head jeikcd once, fiom side to side then lay
still The beating of the heart grew faintly faster

Mouth was drawing away pressing against the back of his arm
chair Taggail was sitting on the edge of his leaning forward
“Number one gradual, ’ said Ferns

Galt’s torso jerked upward and fell back and twisted in long shud
ders, straining against his strapped wrists — as the cuircnt was now
running from his one wrist to the other across his lungs The me
chanic was slowlv turning a knob, increasing the voltage of the cur
rent, the needle on the dial was moving toward the red segment that
marked danger Galt’s breath was coming m broken, panting sounds
out of convulsed lungs

‘Had enough snarled Ferns, when the cunent went off
Galt did not answer His lips moved faintly, opening for air The
beat from the stethoscope was racing But |n\ breath was falling to
an even rhythm, by a controlled effort at relaxation
“You’re too easy on him*” yelled Taggart, staring at the naked
body on the mattress

Gall opened his eyes and glanced at them tor a moment They
could tell nothing except that his glance was steady and fully con-

1044

stious. Then he dropped his head again and lay still, as if he had
forgotten them.

His naked body looked strangely out of place in this cellar. They
knew it, though none of them would identify that knowledge. The
long lines of his body, running from his ankles to the flat hips to
the angle of the waist, to the straight shoulders, looked like a statue
of ancient Greece, sharing that statue’s meaning, but stylized to a
longer, lighter, more active form and a gaunter strength, suggesting
more restless an energy— the body, not of a chariot driver, but of a
builder of airplanes. And as the meaning of a statue of ancient
Greece — the statue of man as a god— clashed with the spirit of this
century’s halls, so his body clashed with a cellar devoted to prehistorical
activities, 'lbe dash was the gi eater, because he seemed to belong with
electric wires, with stainless steel, with precision instruments, with the
levers of a control board Perhaps- this was the thought most fiercely
resisted and most deeply buried at the bottom of his watchers’ sensa-
tions. the thought they knew only as a diffused hatred and an unfo-
cused terror— perhaps it was the absence ol such statues from the
modern world that had transformed a generator into an octopus and
brought a body such as his into its tentacles

“1 understand you’re some sort oi electrical expert,” said Ferris,
and chuckled. “So are we- don’t you think so?”

Two sounds answered him in the silence: the drone of the genera-
tor and the beating of Galt’s heart

“The mixed scries!” ordered Ferris, waving one linger at the
mechanic.

The shocks now came at irregular, unpredictable inteivals. one
after another or minutes apart. Only the shuddering convulsions of
Galt’s legs, arms, torso or entire body showed whether the current
was racing between two particular electrodes or through all of them
at once. The needles on the dials kept coming dose to the red marks,
then receding: the machine was calculated to inflict the maximum
intensity of pain without damaging the body ol the victim.

It was the watchers who found it unbearable to wait through the
minutes of the pauses filled with the sound ol the heartbeat: the heart
was now racing in an irregular rhythm. The pauses were calculated to
let that beat slow down, but allow no relief to the victim, who had
to wait for a shock at any moment.

Galt lay relaxed, as if not attempting to light the pain, but surren-
dering to it, not attempting to negate it, but to bear it. When bis
lips parted for breath and a sudden jolt slammed them tight again,
he did not resist the shaking rigidity of his body, but he let it vanish
the instant the current left him. Only the skin ol his face was pulled
tight, and the sealed line of his lips twisted sidewise once in a while.
When a shock raced through his chest, the gold-copper strands of
his hair flew with the jerking of his head, as if waving in a gust of
wind, beating against his face, across his eyes. The watchers won-
dered why his hair seemed to be growing darker, until they realized
that it was drenched in sweat.

The terror of hearing one’s own heart struggling as if about to
burst at any moment, had been intended to be felt by the victim. It

1045

was (he torturers who were trembling with terror, as they listened
to the jagged, broken rhythm and missed a breath with every missing
beat. It sounded now as if the heart were leaping, beating frantically
against its cage of ribs, in agony and in a desperate anger. The heart
was protesting; the man would not. He lay still, his eyes closed, his
hands relaxed, hearing his heart as it fought for his life.

Wesley Mouch was first to break. “Oh God, Floyd!'’ he screamed.
‘’Don't kill him! Don’t dare kill him! If he dies, we die!'’

“He won’t,” snarled Ferris. “He’ll wish he did, but he won’t! The
machine won’t let him! It's mathematically computed! It’s sale!”

“Oh, isn’t it enough? He’ll obey us now! Fm sure he'll obey!”

“No! It’s not enough! I don’t want him to obey! I want him to
believe*. To accept! To want to accept! We’ve got to have him work
for us voluntarily !”

“Go ahead!” cried Taggart “What are you waiting for? Can't you
make the current stronger? He hasn’t even screamed yet!”

“What’s the matter with you?" gasped Mouch, catching a glimpse
of Taggart’s face while a cui rent was twisting Galt's body: Taggart
was staring at it intently, yet his eyes seemed glazed and dead, but
around that inanimate stare the muscles of his face were pulled into
an obscene caricature of enjoyment.

“Had enough?” Ferns kept yelling to Galt. “Are you ready to
want what we want?”

They heard no answer. Galt raised his head once in a while and
looked at them. There were dark rings under his eyes, but the eves
were clear and conscious.

In mounting panic, the watchers lost their sense of context ami
language — and their three voices blended into a progression of indis-
criminate shrieks: “We want you to take over! . . . We want you to
/ule! . . . We order you to give orders! . . . We demand that you
dictate! , . . We order you to save us! . . We order you to think! . .

They heard no answer but the beating of the heart on which their
own lives depended.

The current was shooting through Galt’s chest and the beating was
coming in irregular spurts, as if it were racing and stumbling- -when
suddenly his body fell still, relaxing: the beating had stopped.

The silence was like a stunning blow, and before they had time to
scream, their horror was topped by another: by the fact that Galt
opened his eyes and raised his head.

Then they realized that the drone ot the motor had ceased, too,
and that the red light had gone out on the control panel: the current
had slopped: the generator was dead.

The mechanic was jabbing his finger at the button to no avail. He
yanked the lever of the switch again and again! He kicked the side of
the machine. The red light would not go on; thfe sound did not return

“Well?” snapped Ferris. “Well? What’s th$ matter?”

“The generator's on the blink,” said the mechanic helplessly.

“What’s the matter with it?”

“1 don’t know.”

”WcH, find out and fix it!”

The man was not a trained electrician; he had been chosen, not

1046

for his knowledge, but for his uncritical capacity for pushing any
buttons; the effort he needed to learn his task was such that his
consciousness could be relied upon to have no room for anything
else. He opened the rear panel of the machine and stared in bewil-
derment at the intricate coils: he could find nothing visibly out ol
order. He put on his rubber gloves, picked up a pair of pliers, tight-
ened a few bolts at random, and scratched his head.

I don t know', he said; his voice had a sound of helpless docility.
“Who am 1 to know?”

The three men were on their feet, crowding behind the machine
to stare at its recalcitrant oigans. They were acting merely by reflex:
they knew that they did not know.

“Bui you’ve got to tix il»” yelled Perris. ‘It's got to work! We’ve
got to have electricity 1 ”

“We must continue!” cried Taggart, he was shaking. “It’s ridicu-
lous! 1 won’t have it! I won’t be interrupted! I won’t" let him off”
He pointed in the direction of the mattress.

“Do something!” Penis was crying to the mechanic “Don't just
stand there! Do something! Fix it! 1 order you to fix it!”

“But l don’t know what’s wrong with it.” said the man, blinking.

“Then tind out!"

“How am l to find out ”

“1 order you to fix it! Do you heat me ? Make it work -or i’ll tire
you and throw you in jail!”

“But 1 don't know what’s wrong with it.” The man sighed, bewil-
dered, T don’t know what to do.”

It’s the vibratoi that’s out of order,” said a voice behind them;
they whirled around; Galt was struggling tor breath, but he was
speaking in the brusque, competent tone ot an engineer, ‘lake it
out and pry ofl the aluminum cover. You'll find a pair ot contacts
fused together. Force them apart, take a small file and dean up the
pitted surfaces Then replace the cover, plug it back into the ma-
chine- -and your generatoi will work ”

There was a long moment of total silence.

The mechanic was staring at Galt, he was holding Galt’s glance —
and even he was able to recognize the nature of the sparkle in the
dark green eyes: it was a sparkle of contemptuous mockery.

He made a step back. In the incoherent dimness of his conscious-
ness, in some wordless, shapeless, unintelligible manner, even he sud-
denly grasped the meaning ot what was occurring in that cellar.

He looked at Galt -ho looked at the three men— he looked at
the machine. He shuddered, he dropped his pliers and ran out of
the room.

Galt burst out laughing.

The three men were backing slowly away from the machine. They
were struggling not to allow themselves to understand what the me-
chanic had understood.

“No!” cried Taggart suddenly, glancing at Galt and leaping for-
ward, “No! I won't let him get away with it!” He fell down on his
knees, groping frantically to find the aluminum cylinder of the vibra-

1047

tor. ‘77/ fix it! I’ll work it myself! We’ve got to go on! We’ve got
to break him!”

“Take it easy, Jim,” said Ferris uneasily, jerking him up to his feet.

“Hadn’t we . , . hadn’t we better lay off for the night?” said
Mouch pleadingly; he was looking at the door through which the
mechanic had escaped, his glance part-envy, part-terror.

“No!” cried Taggart.

“Jim, hasn’t he had enough? Don’t forget, we have to be careful,”

“No! He hasn't had enough! He hasn’t even screamed yet!”

“Jim!” cried Mouch suddenly, terrified by something in Taggart’s
face. “We can’t afford to kill him! You know it!”

“I don’t care! I want to break him! I want to hear him scream! 1
want — ”

And then it was Taggart who screamed. It was a long, sudden,
piercing scream, as if at some sudden sight, though his eyes were
staring at space and seemed blankly sightless. The sight he was con-
fronting was within him. The protective walls of emotion, of evasion,
of pretense, of semi-thinking and pseudo-words, built up by him
through all of his years, had crashed in the span of one moment —
the moment when he knew that he wanted Galt to die, knowing
fully that his own death would follow'.

He was suddenly seeing the motive that had directed all the actions
of his life. It was not his incommunicable soul or his love for others
or his social duty or any of the fraudulent sounds by which he had
maintained his self-esteem: it was the lust to destroy whatever was
living, for the sake of whatever was not. It was the urge to defy
reality by the destruction of every living value, for the sake of prov-
ing to himself that he could exist in defiance of reality and would
never have to be bound by any solid, immutable facts. A moment
.ago, he had been able to feel that he hated Galt above all men, that
the hatred was proof of Galt’s evil, which he need define no further,
that he wanted Galt to be destroyed for the sake of his own survival.
Now he knew that he had wanted Galt’s destruction at the price of
his own destruction to follow, he knew that he had never wanted to
survive, he knew that it was Galt’s greatness he had wanted to torture
and destroy — he was seeing it as greatness by his own admission,
greatness by the only standard that existed, whether anyone chose
to admit it or not: the greatness of a man who was master of reality
in a manner no other had equaled. In the moment when he, James
Taggart, had found himself facing the ultimatum: to accept reality
or die, it was death his emotions had chosen, death, rather than
surrender to that realm of which Galt was so radiant a son. In the
person of Galt — he knew — he had sought fhe destruction of all
existence.

It was not by means of words that his knowledge confronted his
consciousness: as all his knowledge had consisted of emotions, so
now he was held by an emotion and a vision That he had no power
to dispel. He was no longer able to summon the fog to conceal the
sight of all those blind alleys he had struggled never to be forced to
See: now, at the end of every alley, he was seeing his hatred of
existence — he was seeing the face of Cherry 1 Taggart with her joyous

1048

eagerness to live and that it was this particular eagerness he bad
always wanted to defeat-he was seeing his face af the face of a
killer whom ail men should rightfully loathe, who destroyed values

deemable Wh ° td m ortlcr not to discover his own irre-

esca^e it ‘•No'', S ‘? nng a ‘ thal vision ' shakin 8 hi ® head to

“Yes,” said Galt.

. He . saw p al, ’ s e y° s lo «kin S straight at his, as if Galt were seeing
the things he was seeing, e

“I told you that on the Tadio, didn't 1?” said Galt.

This was the stamp Janies Taggart had dreaded, from which there
was no escape: the stamp and proof of objectivity "No ” he said
feebly once more, but it was no longer the voice of a living con-
sciousness.

He stood for a moment, staring blindlv at space, then his legs gave
way, folding limply, and he sat on the floor, still staring, unaware of
his action or surroundings.

“Jim . . . !” called Mouch. There was no answer.

Mouch and Ferris did not ask themselves or wonder what it was
that had happened to Taggart: they knew that they must never at-
tempt to discover it, under peril of sharing his fate. They knew who
it was thal had been broken tonight. T hey knew' thal this was the
end of James Taggart, whether his physical body survived or not.

“Let's . let's get Jim out of here." said Fe r ris shakily. “Let's
get him to a doctor ... or somewhere

They pulled Taggart to his feet: he did not resist, he obeyed lethar-
gically, and he moved his feet when pushed. It was he who had
reached the state to which he had wanted Galt to be reduced. Hold-
ing his arms at both sides, his two friends led him out of the room.

He saved them from the necessity of admitting to themselves that
they wanted to escape Galt's eyes. Galt was watching them; his
glance was too austerely perceptive.

“We ll be back," snapped Ferris to the chief of the guards. “Stay
here and don’t let anyone in. Understand? No one."

They pushed Taggart into their car, parked by the trees at the
entrance. “We 11 be back," said Ferris to no one in particular, to the
trees and the darkness of the sky.

For the moment, their only certainty was that they had to escape
from that cellar— the cellar where the living generator was left tied
by the side of the dead one.

Chapter X IN THE NAME OF THE BEST WITHIN US

Oagny walked straight toward the guard who stood at the door of
“Project F." Her steps sounded purposeful, even and open, ringing
in the silence of the path among the trees. She raised her head to a
ray of moonlight, to let him recognize her face.

“Let me in?’ she said.

1049

“No admittance.” he answered in the voice of a robot. ‘*By order
of Dr. Ferris.”

i am here by order of Mr. Thompson.”

“Huh? ... I ... I don’t know about that.”

“I do.”

“I mean. Dr. Ferris hasn't told me . . . ma’am.”

‘7 am telling you.”

“But Fm not supposed to take any orders from anyone excepting
Dr. Ferns.”

“Do you wish to disobey Mr, Thompson?”

“Oh, no. ma’am! But . . . but if Dr. Ferris said to let nobody in,
that means nobody — ” He added uncertainly and pleadingly, “ — doesn’t
it?”

“Do you know that 1 am Dagny Taggart and that you’ve seen my
pictures in the papers with Mr. Thompson and all the top leaders of
the country?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then decide whether you wish to disobey their orders.”

“Oh, no, ma’am! I don't’”

“Then let me in ”

“Bui i can’t disobey Dr. Ferris, either!”

“Then choose.”

“But 1 can’t ch<x>se, ma’am! Who am I to choose

“You’ll have to ”

“Look.” he said hastily, pulling a ke> from his pocket and turning
to the door, “I’ll ask the chief He — ”

“No.” she said.

Some quality in the tone of her voice made him whirl back to her:
she was holding a gun pointed levclly at his heart.

* “Listen carefully,” she said. “Either you let me in or I shoot you.
You may try to shoot me first, if you can. You have that choice- ~
and no other Now decide.”

His mouth fell open and the key dropped from his hand.

“Get out of my way,” she said

He shook his head frantically, pressing his back against the door.
“Oh Christ, ma’am!” he gulped in the whine of a desperate plea, “1
can’t shoot at you, seeing as you come from Mr Thompson! And 1
can’t let you in against the word of Dr. Ferris! What am I to do?
Fm only a little fellow! I'm only obeying orders! It's not up to me!”

“It’s your life,” she said.

“If you let me ask the chief, he’ll lei! me, he’ll - ”

“J won't let you ask anyone.”

“But how do I know that you really haye an order from Mr
Thompson?”

“You don’t. Maybe I haven't. Maybe I’m dating on my own— and
you’ll be punished for obeying me. Maybe :I have— and you’ll be
thrown in jail for disobeying. Maybe Dr, Ferris and Mr. Thompson
agree about this. Maybe they don't— and you have to defy one or
the other, 'These are the things you have to decide. There is no one
to ask, no one to call, no one to tell you. You will have to decide
them yourself.”

1050

"But 1 can't decide! Why me?"

“Because it’s your body that’s barring my way."

“But I can’t decide! Pm not supposed to decide!"

‘Til count to three," she said. ‘ Then Pll shoot.”

“Wait! Wait! I haven't said yes or no!” he cried, cringing tighter
against the door, as if immobility of mind and body were his best
protection.

“One — ” she counted; she could see his eyes staling at her in
terror — “Two--" she could see that the gun held less terror for him
than the alternative she offered— “three."

Calmly and impersonally, she, who would have hesitated to fire at
an animal, pulled the trigger and fired straight at the heart of a man
who had wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness.

Her gun was equipped with a silencer: there was no sound to
attract anyone’s attention, only ihe thud of a body falling at her feet.

She picked up the key Irotn the ground— then waited for a few
brief moments, as had been agreed upon.

Francisco was first to join her, coming from behind a corner of
the building, then Hank Rcaidcn. then Ragnar Danneskiold. There
had been four guards posted at intervals among the trees, around
the building. They were now disposed of* one was dead, three were
left in the brush, bound and gagged

She handed the key to Francisco without a word. He unlocked the
door and went in. alone, leaving the door open to the width of an
inch. The thiee others waited outside, by that opening.

The hall was lighted by a single naked bulb stuck in the middle
ot the ceiling. A guard sto«>d at the foot of the stairs leading to the

second floor. v 4 f

“Who are you?” he cried at the sight ot Francisco entering as it
he owned the place “Nobody's supposed to come in here tonight! ’
“I did.” said Francisco.

“Why did Rusty let you in?”

“He "must have had his reasons."

“He wasn’t supposed to!'’ .

“Somebody has changed your suppositions ’ Francisco s eyes were
taking a lightning inventory of the place. A second ^«>od on

the landing at the turn of the stairs, looking down at them and

listening.

“What’s your business?”

“Copper-mining."

“Huh? I mean, who are you*" wu™

"The name's tew long to tell you. I’ll tell « to voui duel.

S "/'m asking the questions!" But he backed a step away. "Don t . . .

don’t you act like a big shot or I’ll- - ’ . . h prancis-

"Hey. Pete, he is!" cried the second guard, paralysed by tranus

^ThctoTone was struggling to ignore it: his voioegrew louder
with the growth of his fear, as he snapped at Hanctsco. What are

you sifter?*' . , „

"I said I’ll tell it to your chief. Where ts he !

1051

‘Tm asking the questions!”

‘Tm not answering them/’

“Oh, you’re not, are you?” snarled Pete, who had but one recourse
when in doubt: his hand jerked to the gun on his hip.

Francisco’s hand was too fast for the two men to see its motion,
and his gun was too silent. What they saw and heard next was the
gun flying out of Pete’s hand, along with a splatter of blood from
his shattered fingers, and his muffled howl of pain. He collapsed,
groaning. In the instant when the second guard grasped it. he saw
that Francisco's gun was aimed at him

“Don't shoot, mister!" he cried.

“Come down here with your hands up.” ordered Francisco, hold-
ing his gun aimed with one hand and waving a signal to the crack
of the door with the other.

By the time the guard descended the stairs, Rcarden was there to
disarm him, and DanneskjtMd to tie his hands and feet. The sight of
Dagny seemed to frighten him more than the rest; he could not
understand it: the three men wore caps and windbreakers, and, but
for their manner, could be taken for a gang of highwaymen; the
presence of a lady was inexplicable.

“Now.” said Francisco, “where is your chief?”

The guard jerked his head in the direction of the stairs. “Up
there.”

“How many guards are there in the budding'"

“Nine.”

, “Where are they?”

“One's on the cellar stairs. The others are all up there.”

“Where?”

“In the big laboratory. The one with the window.”

“AH of them?”

“Yes.”

“What are these rooms?” He pointed at the doors leading off
the hall.

“They’re labs, too. They're locked for the night.”

“Who’s got the key?”

“Him.” He jerked his head at Pete.

Rearden and Danneskjold took the key from Pete's pocket and
hurried soundlessly to check the rooms, while Francisco continued.
“Are there any other men in the building?”

“No.”

“Isn’t there a prisoner here 7 ” ,

“Oh . . . yeah, l guess so. There must be, or they woukln’t’ve kept
us all on duty.”

“Is he still here?”

“That, l don’t know. They’d never tell usi’

“Is Dr. Ferris here?”

“No. He left ten-fifteen minutes ago.”

“Now, that laboratory upstairs- does it <j^>en right on the stair

landing?”

“Yes.”

“How many doors are there?”

1052

“Three. It’s the one in the middle/’

“What are the other rooms?”

“There’s the small laboratory on one side and Dr. Ferris' office
on the other.”

“Are there connecting doors between them?”

“Yes.”

Francisco was turning to his companions, when the guard said
pleadingly, “Mister, can 1 ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“Who are you?”

He answered in the solemn tone of a drawing-room introduction
“Francisco Domingo C arlos Andres Sebastidn d’Anconia .”

He left the guard gaping at him and turned to a brief, whispered
consultation with his companions.

in a moment, it w'as Kcarden who went up the stairs — swiftly,
soundlessly and alone.

Cages containing rats and guinea pigs were stacked against the
walls of the laboratory; they had been put there by the guards who
were playing poker on the long laboratory table in the center. Six
of them were playing, two were standing m opposite corners, watch-
ing the entrance door, guns in hand It was Reardon’s face that saved
him from being shot on sight when he entered: his face was too well
known to them and too unexpected. He saw eight heads staring at
him with recognition and with inability to believe what they were
recognizing.

He stood at the dooi, his hands in the pockets of his trousers,
with the casual, confident manner ot a business executive.

“Who is in charge here? ’ he asked m the politely abrupt voice of
a man who does not waste lime.

“You . . you’re not . . stammeied a lanky, surly individual at

the card table.

“I'm Hank Reardon, Are you the chief?”

“Yeah* but where in bla/es do you some from””

“From New- York.”

“What are you doing heie?”

“Then I take it. you have not been notified.”

“Should l have . , . ! mean, about what '" lhe swift, touchy, resent-
ful suspicion that his superiors had slighted* his authority, was obvious
in the chiefs voice. He was a tall, emaciated man. with jerky move-
ments, a s«il low face and the restless, unfocused eyes of a drug addict.

“About my business here ”

“You . . . vou can't have any business here” he snapped, torn
between the fear of a bluff and the fear ot having been left out ot
some inifHirtant, top-level decision Aren't you a traitor and a de-
serter and a -

“1 see that you’re behind the limes, my good man.”

The seven others in the room were staring at Reardon with an
awed, superstitious uncertainty. Hie two who held guns still held
them aimed at him in the impassive manner ot automatons. He did
not seem to take notice of them.

“What is it you say is your business here?” snapped the chief.

1053

*i am here to take charge of the prisoner whom you are to deliver
to me.”

“If you came from headquarters, you’d know that I’m not sup-
posed to know anything about any prisoner — and that nobody t$ to
touch him!”

“Except me.”

The chief leaped to his feet, darted to a telephone and seiyed the
receiver. He had not raised it halfway to his ear when he dropped
it abruptly with a gesture that sent a vibration of panic through the
room: he had had time to hear that the telephone was dead and to
know that the wires were cut.

His look of accusation, as he whirled to Reardon, broke against the
faintly contemptuous reproof of Reardon’s voice: “That's no way to
guard a building — if this is what you allowed to happen. Better let me
have the prisoner, before anything happens to him — if you don’t want
me to report you for negligence, as well as insubordination.”

The chief dropped heavily back on his chair, slumped lorward
across the table and looked up at Rcarden with a glance that made
his emaciated face resemble the animals that were beginning to stir
in the cages.

“ Who is the prisoner 7 ” he asked.

“My good man,” said Rcarden, “If your immediate superiors did
not see fit to tell you, I certainly will not.”

“They didn’t see fit to tell me about your coming here, either!”
yelled the chief, his voice confessing the helplessness of anger and
broadcasting the vibrations of impotence to his men. “How do 1
know you’re on the level? With the phone out of order, who's going
to tell me? How am I to know what to do?”

“That’s your problem, not mine.”

* “I don’t believe you!” His cry was too shrill to project conviction.
“I don't believe that the government would send you on a mission,
when you’re one of those vanishing traitors and friends of John Galt
who—”

“But haven’t you heard?”

“What?”

“John Galt has made a deal with the government and has brought
us all back.”

“Oh, thank God!” cried one of the guards, the youngest.

“Shut your mouth! You’re not to have any political opinions!”
snapped the chief, and jerked back to Rcarden.' “Why hasn’t it been
announced on the radio?”

“Do you presume to hold opinions on when and how the govern-
ment should choose to announce its policies?”?

In the long moment of silence, they could l|ear the rustle of the
animats clawing at the bars of their cages. {

“1 think I should remind you,” said Reardfen, “that your job is
not to question orders, but to obey them, that you are not to know
or understand the politics of your superiors, that you are not to
judge, to choose or to doubt.”

“But I don’t know whether I’m supposed to obey vouV'

“If you refuse, you’ll take the consequences,”

1054

Crouching against the table, the chief moved his glance slowly,
appraisingly, from Reardon’s face to the two gunmen in the comers.
The gunmen steadied their aim by an almost imperceptible move-
ment, A nervous rustle went through the room. An animal squeaked
shrilly in one of the cages.

“I think 1 should also tell you," said Rearden, his voice faintly
harder, “that 1 am not alone. My friends are waiting outside."

"Where?"

"All around this room."

"How many?"

"You’ll find out— -one way or the other."

"Say, Chief," moaned a shaky voice from among the guards, "we
don’t want to tangle with those people, they’re

"Shut up!" roared the chief, leaping to his feet and brandishing
his gun in the direction of the speaker. "You’re not going to turn
yellow on me, any of you bastards!" He was screaming to ward off
the knowledge that they had. He was swaying on the edge of panic,
fighting against the realization that something somehow' had dis-
armed his men. "There’s nothing to be scared of!" He was screaming
it to himself, struggling to recapture the safety ot his only sphere;
the sphere of violence. "Nothing and nobody! I’ll show- >ou!" He
whirled around, his hand shaking at the end of hiN sweeping arm,

and fired at Rearden .

Some of them saw Rearden sway, his right hand gripping his left
shoulder. Others, in the same instant, saw the gun drop out of the
chiefs hand and hit the floor in time with his scream and with the
spurt of blood from his wrist. Then nil of them saw Francisco d An-
conia standing at the door on the left, his soundless gun still aimed

All of them weie on their feet and had drawn their guns, but they
lost that first moment, not daring to fire
"l wouldn’t, if I were you, said Francisco.

“Jesus 1 " gasped one ot the guards, struggling toi the memory; ot
a name he niuld not capture. “That's . . that's the guy who blew
Up all the copper mines in the world!

“It is," said Rearden, ,

They had been backing involuntarily away from Franusco -,nd
turned to see that Rearden still stood at the entrance door, with a
pointed gun in his right hand and a dark stain spreading 01 h

' e “Shoot^you bastards!" screamed the chief to the wavering men.

“Whit are you waiting for? Shoot them 1 report

one arm against the tabic, blood running out of the other. I .\\ npon
any mTn who doesn't light! i'll have him sentenced to death for it!

‘ti me out of here!” screamed the youngest, dashmg for the
d He 0 thr?w Sifdoor open and sprang back: Dagny Taggart stood

1055

an invisible battle in the fog of their minds, disarmed by a sense of
unreality in the presence of the legendary figures they had never
expected to see, feeling almost as if they were ordered to fire at
ghosts.

“Drop your guns,” said Rearden. “You don't know why you're
here. We do. You don’t know who your prisoner is. We do. You
don't know why your bosses want you to guard him. We know why
we want to get him out. You don't know the purpose of your fight.
We know the purpose of ours. If you die, you won't know what
you're dying for. If we do, we will,”

“Don’t . . . don't listen to him!” snarled the chief. “Shoot! 1 order
you to shoot!”

One of the guards looked at the chief, dropped his gun and, raising
his arms, backed away from the group toward Rearden.

“God damn you!” yelled the chief, seized a gun with his left hand
and fired at the deserter.

In time with the fall of the man's body, the window burst into a
shower of glass-— and from the limb of a tree, as from a catapult,
the tall, slender figure of a man flew into the room, landed on its
feet and fired at the first guard in reach.

“Who are youV' screamed some terror-blinded voice,

“Ragnar Danncskjold.”

Three sounds answered him: a long, swelling moan of panic — the
clatter of four guns dropped to the floor — and the bark ot the fifth,
fired by a guard at the forehead of the chief.

By the time the four survivors of the garrison began to reassemble
the pieces of their consciousness, their figures were stretched on the
floor, bound and gagged; the fifth one was left standing, his hands
tied behind his back.

“Where is the prisoner?” Francisco asked him.

“In the cellar ... I guess.”

“Who has the key?”

“Dr. Ferris.”

“Where are the stairs to the cellar 7 ”

“Behind a door in Dr. Ferris’ office.”

“Lead the way.”

As they started, Francisco turned to Rearden. “Are you all
right. Hank?”

“Sure.”

“Need to rest?”

“Hell, no!”

From the threshold of a door in Ferris' office. they looked down
a steep flight of stone stairs and saw a guard! on the landing below.

“Come here with your hands up!” ordered Francisco.

The guard saw the silhouette ot a resol utef stranger and the glint
of a gun; it was enough. He obeyed immediately; he seemed relieved
to escape from the damp stone crypt. He wds left tied on the floor
of the office, along with the guard who had led them.

Then the four rescuers were free to fly down the stairs to the
locked steel door at the bottom. They had acted and moved with

1056

the precision of a controlled discipline. Now, it was as if their inner
reins had broken.

Danneskjold had the tools to smash the lock. Francisco was first
to enter the cellar, and his arm barred Dagny s way for the fraction
of a second — for the length of a look to make certain that the sight
was bearable — then he let her rush past him: beyond the tangle of
electric wires, he had seen Galt’s lifted head and glance of greeting.

She fell down on her knees by the side of the mattress. Galt looked
up at her, as he had looked on their first morning in the valley, his
smile was like the sound of a laughter that had never been touched
by pain, his voice was soft and low

“We never had to take any of it seriously, did we?”

Tears running down her face, but her smile declaring a full, confi-
dent, radiant certainty, she answered, “No, we never had to.”

Rearden and Danneskjold were cutting his bonds. Francisco held
a flask of brandy to Galt’s lips. Gait drank, and raised himself to
lean on an elbow when his arms were free. “Give me a cigarette,”
he said.

Francisco produced a package of dollar-sign cigarettes. Gait’s hand
shook a little, as he held a cigarette to the flame of a lighter, but
Francisco's hand shook much more.

Glancing at his eyes over the flame. Galt smiled and said in the
tone of an answer to the questions Francisco was not asking, “Yes.
it was pretty bad. but bearable — and the kind of voltage they used
leaves no damage.”

“HI find them some day, whoever they were . . . ' said rrancisco;
the tone of his voice, flat, dead and barely audible, said the rest.

“If you do, you'll find that there’s nothing left of them to kill.

Galt glanced at the faces around him: he saw the intensity of the
relief in their eyes and the violence of the anger in the grimness
of their features: he knew in what manner they were now reliving

he said. “Don't make it worse for yourself than it was

T he

his torture.

“U’s over,

Francisco turned his face away, ‘it s only that it was you .
whispered, “von ... if it were anyone but you ...

•‘But it had to be me. if they were to try their last, and they _vc
tried, and" — he moved his hand, sweeping the twm-and the mean-
ing of those who had made it— into the wastelands of the past

^Franctsco 'nodded, his face still turned away, the violent grip of
his finficrs clutching Galt’s wrist for a moment was his answer.

Calf lifted himself to a silting post ure, slowly regaining^
his muscles He danced up at Dagny s face, as her arm shot forward
to hdo hinvhc saw the struggle of her smile against the tension of

could matter beside the sight of hls na ^. had endured Holding
was living— against her knowledge of what it had endured, ncuamg
h® ',‘n® h* raised his hand and touched the collar of her white
sweater with his fingertips, in acknowledgment and »n reminder of

1057

the only things that were to matter from now on. The faint tremor
of her tips, relaxing into a smile, told him that she understood. J

DanneskjOld found Gall's shirt, slacks and the rest of his clothing,
which had been thrown on the floor in a corner of the room. “Do
you think you can walk, John?” he asked.

“Sure,”

While Francisco and Rearden were helping Galt to dress, Dan-
neskjOld proceeded calmly, systematically, with no visible emotion,
to demolish the torture machine into splinters.

Galt was not fully steady on his feet, but he could stand, leaning
on Francisco’s shoulder. The first few steps were hard, but by the
time they reached the door, he was able to resume the motions of
walking. His one arm encircled Francisco’s shoulders for support;
his other arm held Dagny’s shoulders, both to gain support and to
give it.

They did not speak as they walked down the hill, with the darkness
of the trees dosing in about them for protection, cutting off the dead
glow of the moon and the deader glow in the distance behind them,
in the windows of the State Science Institute.

Francisco's airplane was hidden in the brush, on the edge of a
meadow beyond the next hill. There were no human habitations for
miles around them. There were no eyes to notice or to question
the sudden streaks of the airplane’s headlights shooting across the
desolation of dead weeds, and the violent burst of the motor brought
to life by Danneskjflld, who took the wheel

With the sound of the door slamming shut behind them and the
forward thrust of the wheels under their feet. Francisco smiled tor
the first time.

“This Is my one and only chance to give you orders.” he said,
helping Galt to stretch out in a reclining chair. “Now lie still, relax
*hnd take it easy . . . You, too,” he added, turning to Dagny and
pointing at the seat by Galt's side.

The wheels were running faster, as if gaming speed and purpose
and lightness, ignoring the impotent obstacles of small jolts from the
ruts of the ground. When the motion turned to a long, smooth streak,
when they saw the dark shapes of the trees sweeping down and
dropping past their windows, Galt leaned silently over and pressed
his lips to Dagny’s hand; he was leaving the outer world with the
one value he had wanted to win from it.

Francisco had produced a firsi-aid kit and was removing Rearden’s
shirt to bandage his wound. Galt saw the tbjn red trickle running
from Rearden’s shoulder down his chest.

“Thank you, Hank,” he said.

Rearden smiled. “I will repeat what you said when l thanked you,
on our first meeting: ‘If you understand that I acted for my own
sake, you know that no gratitude is required.!”

*‘I will repeat,” said Galt, “the answer you gave me: "That is why
I thank you.’ ”

Dagny noticed that they looked at each other as if their glance
were the handshake of a bond too firm to inquire any statement
Rearden saw her watching them — and the faintest contraction of his

1058

eyes was like a smile of sanction, as if his glance were repeating to
her the message he had sent her from the valley.

They heard the sudden sound of Danneskjtild’s voice raised cheer-
fully in conversation with empty space, and they realized that he was

speaking over the plane’s radio: “Yes, safe and sound, all of us

Yes, he s unhurt, just shaken a little, and resting, . . . No, no perma-
nent injury. . . . Yes, we're all here. Hank Reardon got a flesh wound,
but —he glanced over his shoulder — “but he's grinning at me right
now. . . . Losses? I think we lost our temper for a few minutes back
there, but we’re recovering. . . Don't try to beat me to Galt’s Gulch,
I’ll land first- -and I’ll help Kay in the restaurant to fix your
breakfast."

“Can any outsiders hear hinV ? " asked Dagny.

“No, said Francisco. “It s a frequency they're not equipped to
get."

“Whom is he talking to?" asked Galt.

"To about half the male population of the valley," said Francisco,
“or as many as we had space for on every plane available. They are
flying behind us right now. Did you thmk any of them would stay
home and leave you in the hands ot the looters? Wo were prepared
to get you by open, armed assault on that Institute or on the Wayne-
Falkland. if necessary. But we knew that in such case we would run
the risk of their killing you when they saw that they were beaten.
That’s why we decided that the four of us would first try it alone.
Had we failed, the others would have proceeded with an open attack.
They were waiting, half a mile away. We had m n posted among
the trees on the hill, who saw us get out and relayed the word to
the others. Ellis Wyatt was m charge. Incidentally, he's flying your
plane. The reason we couldn't get to New Hampshire as fast as Dr.
Ferris, is that we had to get our planes from distant, hidden landing
places, while he had the advantage of open airports. Which, inciden-
tally, he won't have much longer."

“No," said Galt, “not much longer."

“That was our only obstacle. The rest was easy. I'll tell you the
whole story 1 later. Anyway, the four ot us were all that was necessary
to beat their garrison."

“One of these centuries." said Danneskjold, turning to them for
a moment, “the brutes, private or public, who believe that they can
rule their betters bv force, will learn the lesson of what happens
when brute force encounters mind and force."

“They've learned it." said Galt. "Isn't that the particular lesson
you have been teaching them for twelve years?"

“I? Yes. But the semester is over. Tonight was the last act of
violence that PH ever have to perform. It was my reward for the
twelve years. My men have now' started to build their homes in the
valley. My ship is hidden where no one will find her, until I’m able
to sell her for a much more civilized use. She'll be converted into a
transatlantic passenger liner — an excellent one, even if of modest
size. As for me, l will start getting ready to give a different course
of lessons. I think PH have to brush up on the works of our teacher s
tot teacher."

1059

Rearden chuckled. ‘Td like to be present at your first lecture on
philosophy in a university classroom,’' he said. ‘Td like to see how
your students will be able to keep their mind on the subject and
how you’ll answer the sort of irrelevant questions I won't blame
them for wanting to ask you.”

‘T will tell them that they’ll find the answers in the subject”

There were not many lights on the earth below. The countryside
was an empty black sheet, with a few occasional flickers in the win-
dows of some government structuies. and the trembling glow of can-
dles in the windows of thriftless homes. Most of the rural population
had long since been reduced to the life of those ages when artificial
light was an exorbitant luxury, and a sunset put an end to human
activity. The towns were like scattered puddles, left behind by a
receding tide, still holding some precious drops ot electricity, but
drying out in a desert of rations, quotas, controls and power-conser-
vation rules.

But when the place that had once been the source of the tide —
New York City — rose in the distance before them, it was still ex-
tending its tights to the sky, still defying the primordial darkness,
almost as if, in an ultimate effort, in a final appeal for help, it were
now stretching its arms to the plane that was crossing its sky. Invol-
untarily, they sat up, as if at respectful attention at the death bed of
what had been greatness.

Looking down, they could see the last convulsions: the lights of
the cars were darting through the streets, like animals trapped in a
maze, frantically seeking an exit, the bridges were jammed with cars,
the approaches to the bridges were veins of massed headlights, glit-
tering bottlenecks stopping all motion, and the desperate screaming
of sirens reached faintly to the height of the plane. The news of
the continent’s severed artery had now engulfed the city, men were
deserting their posts, trying, in panic, to abandon New York, seeking
escape where all roads were cut off and escape was no longer
possible.

The plane was above the peaks of the skyscrapers when suddenly,
with the abruptness ot a shudder, as if the ground had parted to
engulf it, the city disappeared from the face of the earth. It took
them a moment to realize that the panic had reached the power
stations — and that the lights of New York had gone out.

Oagny gasped. “Don’t look down!" Galt ordered sharply.

She raised her eyes to his face. His face had that look of austerity
with which she had always seen him meet tycts.

She remembered the story Francisco had! told her: ‘*He had quit
the Twentieth Century. He was living in a garret in a slum neighbor-
hood. He stepped to the window and pointed at the skyscrapers of
the city. He said that we bad to extinguish! the lights of the world,
and when we would see the lights of New ?York go out, we would
know that our job was done/’

She thought of it when she saw the thrte of them — John Galt,
Francisco d’Anconia. Ragnar Danneskjitfd— look silently at one an-
other for a moment.

She glanced at Rearden; he was not looking down, he was looking

1060

ahead, as she had seen him look, at an untouched countryside* with
a glance appraising the possibilities of action.

When she looked at the darkness ahead, another memory rose in
her mind— the moment when, circling above the Afton airport, she
had seen the silver body of a plane rise like a phoenix from the
darkness of the earth. She knew that now, at this hour, their plane
was carrying all that was left of New York City.

She looked ahead. I he earth would be as empty as the space
where their propeller was cutting an unobstructed path — as empty
and as free. She knew what Nat Taggart had felt at his start and
why now, for the first time, she was following him in full loyalty: the
confident sense of facing a void and of knowing that one has a
continent to build.

She felt the whole struggle of hei past rising before her and drop-
ping away, leaving her here, on the height of this moment. She
smiled -and the words in her mind, appraising and sealing the past,
were the words of courage, pride and dedication, which most men
had never understood, the words of a businessman's language: “Price
no object.”

She did not gasp and she felt no tremor when, in the darkness
below, she saw a small string of lighted dots struggling slowly west-
ward through the void, wilh the long, bright dash of a headlight
groping to protect the safety ot its wav; she felt nothing, even though
it was a train and she knew that it had no destination but the void.

She turned to Galt He was watching her face, as it he had been
following her thoughts. She saw the reflection of her smile in his.
‘It's the end,” she said “It’s the beginning.* he answered

Then they lay still* leaning back in their chairs, silently looking at
each other. Then their persons filled each other's awareness, as the
sum and meaning of the future— but the sum included the knowledge
of all that had had to be earned, before the person of another being
could come to embody the value of one's existence

New York was f ai behind them, when the) heard Danneskjold
answer a call from the radio: “Yes. he's awake 1 don't think he’ll
sleep tonight. . . Yes. 1 think he can.” He turned to glance over
his shoulder. “John. Dr. Akston would like to speak to you.”

“What? Is he on one of those planes behind us?”

“Certainly ”

Galt leaped forward to sei/e the microphone. “Hello, Dr. Akston,”
he said; the quiet, low tone of his voice was the audible image of a
smile transmitted through space.

“Hello, John.” The too-conscious vtcadiness ot Hugh Akston s
voice confessed at what cost he had waited to learn whether he
would ever pronounce these two words again, i just wanted to hear
your voice . . , just to know that You’re all right

Galt chuckled and -in the tone of a student proudly presenting a
completed task of homework as proof ot a lesson well learned he
answered* “Of course I am all right, Professor. I had to h*. A is A.

♦ ♦

The locomotive of the ensthound Comet broke down in the middle
of a desert in Arizona. It stopped abruptly, for no visible reason,

1061

like a man who had not permitted himself to know that he Was
bearing too much: some overstrained connection snapped for good.

When Eddie Willers called for the conductor, he waited a long
time before the man came in* and he sensed the answer to his ques-
tion by the look of resignation on the man's face.

“The engineer is trying to find out what's wrong. Mr. Willers," he
answered softly, in a tone implying that it was his duty to hope, but
that he had held no hope for years.

“He doesn't know?”

“He's working on it." The conductor waited for a polite half-
minute and turned to go, but stopped to volunteer an explanation,
as if some dim, rational habit told him that any attempt to explain
made any unadmitted terror easier to bear. “Those Diesels of ours
aren't fit to be sent out on the road, Mr. Willers. They weren't worth
repairing long ago."

‘T know," said Eddie Willers quietly.

The conductor sensed that his explanation was worse than none:
it led to questions that men did not ask these days. He shook his
head and went out.

Eddie Willers sat looking at the empty darkness beyond the win-
dow. This was the first eastbound Comet out ot San Francisco in
many days: she was the child ol his tortured effort to re-establish
transcontinental seivice. He could not tell what the past few days
had cost him or what he had done to save the San Francisco terminal
from the blind chaos ot a civil war that men were fighting with no
concept of their goals: there was no way to icmembei the deals he
had made on the basis ot the range of every shifting moment. He
knew only that he had obtained immunity for the terminal from the
leaders of three different waning (actions, that he had found a man
for the post ot terminal manager who did not seem to have given
up altogether; that he had started one more Taggart Cornel on her
eastward run. with the best Diesel engine and the best crew available;
and that he had boarded her tor his return journey to New York,
with no knowledge of how long his achievement would last.

He had never worked so hard; he had done his job as conscien-
tiously well as he had always done any assignment, but it was as if
he had worked in a vacuum, as if his energy had found no transmit-
ters and had run into the sands ot . . . of some such desert as the
one beyond the window of the Comet He shuddered: he felt a mo-
ment's kinship with the stalled engine of the train.

After a while, he summoned the conductor once more. “How is
it going?'’ he asked.

The conductor shrugged and shm»k his head.

“Send Ihe fireman to a track phone Have* him tell the Division
Headquarters to send us the best mechanic available."

“Yes, sir,"

There was nothing to see beyond the windows; turning off the
light* Eddie Willers could distinguish a gray spread dotted by (he
black spots of cacti, with no start to it and no end. He wondered
how men had ever ventured to cross it, and at what price, in the days

1062

when there were no trains. He jerked his head away and snapped on
the light.

It was only the fact that the Comet was in exile, he thought, that
gave him this sense of pressing anxiety. She was stalled on an alien
rail— on the borrowed track of the Atlantic Southern that ran
through Arizona, the track they were using without payment. He
had to get her out of here, he thought, he would not feel like this
once they returned to then own rail But the junction suddenly
seemed an insurmountable distance away: on the shore of the Missis-
sippi, at the Taggart Bridge.

No, he thought, that was not all. He had to admit to himself what
images were nagging him with a sense of uneasiness he could neither
grasp nor dispel; they were too meaningless to define and too inexpli-
cable to dismiss. One was the image of a way station they had passed
without stopping, more than two hours ago: he had noticed the
empty platform and the brightly lighted windows of the small station
building; the lights came from empty rooms, he had seen no single
human figure, neither in the building nor on the tracks outside. The
other image was of the next way station they had passed: its platform
was jammed with an agitated mob. Now they were far beyond the
reach of the light or sound of any station.

He had to get the Comet out of heu\ he thought. He wondered
why he felt it with such urgency and why it had seemed so ciucialiy
important to re-establish the Comet's run. A mere handful of passen-
gers was rattling in her empty cars, men had no place to go and no
goals to reach. It was not tot their sake that he had struggled; he
could not say for whose. Two phrases stood as the answer in his
mind, driving him with the vagueness ot a piayer and the scalding
force of an absolute One was: From Ocean to Ocean, forever — the
other was; Don't let it go! . . .

The conductor returned an hour later, with the fireman, whose
face looked oddly grim.

“Mr. Willers," said the fireman slow!). “Division Headquarters
dt*es not answer."

Eddie Willers sat up, his mind refusing to believe it, yet knowing
suddenly that for some inexplicable reason this was what he had
expected. “It’s impossible!" he said, his voice low, the fireman was
looking at him, not moving. “The track phone must have been out
of order,"

“No, Mr. Willers. It was not out of order. The line was alive all
right. The Division Headquarters w'asn't I mean, there was no one
there to answer, or else no one who caicd to."

“But you know that that's impossible’"

The fireman shrugged; men did not consider any disaster impossi-
ble these days. , , .

Eddie Willers leaped to his teet. “Go down the length ot the
train," he ordered the conductor. “Knock on all the doors the occu-
pied ones, that is — -and see whether there s an electrical engineer
aboard.'*

“Yes, sir." , . , e ,

Eddie knew that they felt, as he felt it, that they would find no

1063

such man, not among the lethargic, extinguished faces of the passen-
gers they had seen “Come on,” he ordered, turning to the fireman
They climbed together aboard the locomotive The gray-haired
engineer was sitting in his chair, staring out at the cacti Ihc engine’s
headlight had sta>ed on and it stretched out into the night, mo-
tionless and straight, reaching nothing but the dissolving blur of
crossties

Let’s trv to find what s wrong” said f ddic, removing his coat,
his voice half order half plea Let s try some more

Yes sir said the engineer without icsentment or hope
The engineer had exhausted his mtagei store of knowledge, he
had checked every source of trouble ht could think of He went
crawling over and under the machinery unsucwmg its parts and
screwing them back again taking out pieces and replacing them,
dismembering the motors at random like a child taking a clock apart
but without the child s conviction that knowledge is possible

lhe fireman kept leaning out ot the cab’s window, glancing at
the black stillness and shivering as if from the night air that was
growing colder

Don t worry said l ddie Willcrs assuming 1 tone ot confidence
We vc got to do our best but it wt fail they II send us help sooner
or latei ITiey don t abandon trims in the middle ot nowhere ’
They didn t used to said the fireman
Once in a while the engineer rnsed his grease smeared face to
look at the grease smeared late and shut of 1 ddi< Willcrs What s
the use Ml Willcrs } he asked

* We can t let it go' frddie answered fie Rely lie knew dimlv that
what he meant was moie than the ( omet and more than the
railroad

Moving trom the cab through the thr^c motor units and back to
the cab again his hands bleeding his shirt sticking to his back bddic
Willcrs was snuggling to remember everything he had ever known
about engines anything ht had Rained in college and earlier any
thing ht had picked up in those di\s when the station agents a!
Rockdale St ition used to chase him off the rungs ot their lumbering
switch engines lh< pieces connected to nothing his brain seemed
jammed and tight he knew that motors were not his profession he
knew that he did not know and that it was now a matter of life oi
death for hirn to discovtr the knowledge H< was looking at the
cylinders the blades the wires the control panels still winking with
lights He was struggling not to allow into his mind the thought that
was pressing against its periphery What wefe the chances and how
long would it take — according to the rnutht mam d theory ot proba
bifity -tor primitive men working by rule of thumb to hit the right
combination ot parts and re create the* moKjr of this engine 7

* What’s the use, Mr Willcrs moaned tt|e engineer
4 We can’t let it go*” he cried

He did not know how many houi s had passed when he heard the
fireman shout suddenly 4 Mr Willcrs 1 Look 1 *

The fireman was leaning out the window, pointing into the dark
ness behind them

1064

. BAfie Witters looked. An odd little light was swinging jerkilv far
in the distance; it seemed to be advancing at an imperceptible rate;
it did not look like any sort of light he could identify.

After a while, it seemed to him that he distinguished some large
Mack shapes advancing slowly, they were moving in a line parallel
with the track, the spot of light hung low over the ground swin gin g;
he strained his ears, but heard nothing.

Then he caught a feeble, muffled beat that sounded like the hoofs
of horses. The two men beside him were watching the black shapes
with a look of growing terror, as if some supernatural apparition
were advancing upon them out of the desert night. In the moment
when they chuckled suddenly, joyously, recognizing the shapes it
was Eddie’s face that froze into a look of terror at the sight of a
ghost more frightening than any they could have expected: it was a
train of covered wagons.

The swinging lantern jerked to a stop by the side the engine, ‘Hey,
bud, can 1 give you a lilt?" called a man who seemed to be the
leader; he was chuckling, ‘ Stuck, aren’t you?"

The passengers of the Comet were peering out the windows; some
were descending the steps and approaching. Women's faces peeked
from the wagons, Irom among the piles of household goods; a baby
wailed somewhere at the rear of the caravan.

"Are you entry?" asked Eddie Willers.

"No. I mean it, brother. We got plenty of room. We ll give you
folks a lift -for a price— if you want to get out ot here." He was a
lanky, nervous man. with loose gestures and an indolent voice, who
looked like a side-show barker,

'This is the Taggait C omet," said Eddie Willeis, choking.

"The Comet, eh? Looks more like a dead caterpillar to me. What’s
the matter, brother? You’re not going anywhere— and you can’t get
there any more, even if you tried."

"What do you mean?"

"You don’t think you’re going to New York, do you?"

"We are going to New York "

"Then , . * then you haven't heard?"

" What?' '

"Say, when was the tast time you spoke to any of your stations?"

"I don’t know! . . . Heard whaiV'

"That your Taggart Bridge is gone. Gone. Blasted to bits. Sound-
ray explosion or something. Nobody knows exactly. Only there ain’t
any bridge any more to cross the Mississippi. There ain’t any New
York any more - leastways, not tor folks like you and me to reach."

Eddie Willers did not know what happened next; he had fallen
hack against the side of the engineer’s chair, staring at the open door
of the motor unit; he did not know how long he stayed there, but
when, at last, he turned his head, he saw that he was alone. 'The
engineer and the fireman had left the cab. There was a scramble of
voices outside, screams, sobs, shouted questions and the sound of
the side-show barker’s laughter.

Eddie pulled himself to the window of the cab: the Comet s pas-
sengers and crew were crowding around the leader of the caravan

1065

and his semi-ragged companions; he was waving his loose arms in
gestures of command. Some of the better-dressed ladies from the
Comet — whose husbands had apparently been first to make a deal—
were climbing aboard the covered wagons, sobbing and clutching
their delicate make-up cases.

“Step right up, folks, step right up!” the barker was yelling cheer-
fully. “We’ll make room for everybody! A bit crowded, but moving—
better than being left here for coyote fodder! The day of the iron
horse is past! Alt we got is plain, old-fashioned horse! Slow, but
sure!”

Eddie Willers climbed halfway down the ladder on the side of the
engine, to see the crowd and to be heard. He waved one arm, hang-
ing on to the rungs with the other. “You’re not going, are you?” he
cried to his passengers. “You’re not abandoning the Comet?”

They drew' a little away from him, as if they did not want to look
at him or answer. They did not want to hear questions their minds
were incapable of weighing. He saw the blind faces oi panic.

“What's the matter with the grease-monkey?” asked the barker,
pointing at Eddie

“Mr. Willers,” said the conductor softly, “it's no use . .

“Don’t abandon the Comet!” cried Eddie Wipers. “Don’t let it
go! Oh God. don't let it go!”

“Are you crazy ?” cried the barker "You’ve no idea what's going
on at your railroad stations and headquarters* They're running
around like a pack of chickens with their heads cut off! 1 don’t think
there’s going to be a railroad left m business this side of the Missis-
sippi, by tomorrow morning!”

"Belter come along. Mr. Willers,” said the conductor

“No!” cried Eddie, clutching the metal rung as il he wanted his
hand to grow fast to it.

The barker shrugged. “Well, it’s your funeral!”

“Which way are you going?” asked the engineer, not looking at
Eddie.

“Just going, brother! Just looking for some place to stop . . .
somewhere. We’re from Imperial Valley. California, The ‘People’s
Party’ crowd grabbed the crops and any food we had in the cellars.
Hoarding, they called it So we just picked up and went. Got to
travel by night, on account of the Washington crowd. . . . We’re just
looking for some place to live. . . . You’re welcome to come along,
buddy, if you’ve got no home — or else we can drop you off closer
to some town or another.”

The men of that caravan — thought Eddie indifferently — looked too
mean-minded to become the founders of 4 secret, free settlement,
and not mean-minded enough to become a |ang of raiders; they had
no more destination to find than the motionless beam of the head-
light; and, like that beam, they would dissolve somewhere in the
empty stretches of the country.

He stayed on the ladder, looking up a$ the beam. He did not
watch while the last men ever to ride the Taggart Comet were trans-
ferred to the covered wagons.

1066

The conductor went last. "Mr. Willers!” he called desperately.
44 Co«iW5 along!” * 7

“No” said Eddie.

The side-show barker waved his arm in an upward sweep at Ed-
die s figure on the side of the engine above their heads, “t hope you
know what you're doing!” he cried, his voice half-threat half-plea
“Maybe somebody will come this way to pick you up-next week
or next month! Maybe! Who’s going to, these days?”

“Get away from here,” said Eddie Willers.

He climbed back into the cab— -when the wagons jerked forward
and went swaying and creaking off into the night. He sat in the
engineer's chair of a motionless engine, his forehead pressed to the
useless throttle. He felt like the captain of an ocean liner in distress,
who preferred to go down with his ship rather than be saved by the
canoe of savages taunting him with the superiority of their craft.

Then, suddenly, he felt the blinding surge of a desperate, righteous
anger. He leaped to his feet, seizing the throttle. He had to start this
train; in the name of some victory that he could not name, he had
to start the engine moving.

Past the stage of thinking, calculation or (ear, moved by some
righteous defiance, he was pulling levers at random, he was jerking
the throttle back and forth, he was stepping on the dead man’s pedal,
which was dead, he was groping to distinguish the form of some
vision that seemed both distant and dose, knowing only that his
desperate battle was fed by that vision and was fought for its sake.

Don’t let it go! his mind was crying- while he was seeing the
streets of New York — Don’t let it go! — while he was seeing the lights-
of railroad signals— Don’t let it go — while he was seeing the smoke
rising proudly from factory chimneys, while he was struggling to cut
through the smoke and reach the vision at the root of these visions.

He was pulling at coils of wire, he was linking them and tearing
them apart — while the sudden sense of sunrays and pine trees kept
pulling at the aimers of his mind. Dagny! -he heard himself crying
soundlessly —Dagny, tn the name of the best within us! . . He was
jerking at futile level's and at a throttle that had nothing to move. . .
Dagny! — he was crying to a twelve-yeai old girl in a sunlit clearing
of the woods- in the name ol the best within us, l must now start
this train! . . . Dagny, that is what it was . . . and you knew it, then,
but l didn't . . . you knew it when you turned to look at the rails. . . .

1 said, “not business or earning a living” . . . but. Dagny, business
and earning a living and that in man which makes it possible — tlun
is the best within us, that was the thing to defend . . in the name
of saving it, Dagny, 1 must now start this train . . .

When he found that he had collapsed on the floor of the cab and
knew that there was nothing he could do here any longer, he rose
and he climbed down the ladder, thinking dimly of the engine’s
wheels, even though he knew that the engineer had checked them.
He felt the crunch of the desert dust under his feet when he let
himself drop to the ground. He stood still and, in the enormous
silence* he heard the rustle of tumbleweeds stirring in the darkness,
hke the chuckle of an invisible army made free to move when the

1067

Comet was not. He heard a sharper rustle close by — and he saw the
small gray shape of a rabbit rise on its haunches to sniff at the steps
of a car of the Taggart Comet. With a jolt of murderous fury, he
lunged in the direction of the rabbit, as if he could defeat the ad*
vance of the enemy in the person of that tiny gray form. The rabbit
darted off into the darkness — but he knew that the advance was not
to be defeated.

He stepped to the front of the engine and looked up at the letters
TT. Then he collapsed across the rail and lay sobbing at the foot of
the engine, with the beam of a motionless headlight above him going
off into a limitless night.

* *

The music of Richard Halley s Fifth Concerto streamed from his
keyboard, past the glass of the window, and spread through the air,
over the lights of the valley. It was a symphony of triumph. The
notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself,
they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed
to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its mo-
tive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading
open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It
swept space clean and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed
effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which
the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the
discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had
had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance.

The lights ot the valley tell in glowing patches on the snow still
covering the ground. There were shelves of snow on the granite
ledges and on the heavy limbs of the pines. But the naked branches
of the birch trees had a faintly upward thrust, as if in confident
promise of the coming leaves of spring.

The rectangle oi light on the side ol a mountain was the window
of Mulligan’s study. Midas Mulligan sat at his desk, with a map and
a column of figures before him. He was listing the assets of his bank
and working on a plan of projected investments. He was noting down
the locations he was chousing: “New York — Cleveland — C hicago . . .
New York — Philadelphia . . . New York . . New York . . , New
York . .

The icclangle of light at the bottom ot the valley was the window
of Danneskjdld’s home, Kay Ludlow sat before a mirror, thoughtfully
studying the shades of film make-up, spread open in a battered case.
Ragnar Danneskjold lay stretched on a couch, reading a volume of
the works of Aristotle: “ . . . for these truths hold good for everything
that is, and not for some special genus apari from others. And all
men use them, because they are true of being qua being. , , . For a
principle which every one must have who unperstands anything that
is, is not a hypothesis, . . . Evidently then isuch a principle is the
most certain of all; which principle this is, l#t us proceed to say. It
is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not
belong to the same subject in the same respect. . .

The rectangle of light in the acres of a farm was the window of
the library of Judge Narragansett. He sat at a table, and the light of

1068

his lamp fell on the copy of an ancient document. He had marked
and crossed out the contradictions in its statements that bad once
been the cause of its destruction. He was now adding a new clause
to its pages. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of
production and trade .

The rectangle of light in the midst of a forest was the window of
the cabin of Francisco d’Anconia. Francisco lay stretched on the
floor, by the dancing tongues of a tire, bent over sheets of paper,
completing the drawing ot his smelter. Hank Rearden and Elhs
Wyatt sat by the fireplace. “John will design the new locomotives,”
Rearden was saying, “and Oagny will run the first railroad between
New York and Philadelphia. She--” And. suddenly, on hearing the
next sentence, Francisco threw his head up and burst out laughing,
a laughter of greeting, triumph and release. They could not hear the
music of Halley's Fifth Concerto now flowing somewhere high above
the roof, but Francisco's laughter matched its sounds. Contained m
the sentence he had heard. Francisco was seeing the sunlight of
spring on the open lawns of homes across the country', he was seeing
the sparkle of motors, he was seeing the glow of the steel in the
rising frames of new skyscrapers, he was seeing the eyes ot youth
looking at the future with no uncertainty or fear.

The sentence Rearden had uttered was: 'She will probably try' to
take the shirt off my back with the freight rates she's going to charge,
but — I’ll be able to meet them.”

The taint glitter of light weaving slowly through space, on the
highest accessible ledge of a mountain, was the starlight on the
strands of Gait’s hair. He stood looking, not at the valley below, but
at the darkness of the world beyond its walls. Dagny’s hand rested
on his shoulder, and the wind blew her hair to blend with his. She
knew why he had wanted to walk through the mountains tonight
and what he had stopped to consider. She knew what words were
his to speak and that she would be first to hear them.

They could not see the world beyond the mountains, there was
only a void of darkness and rock, but the darkness was hiding the ruins
of a continent: the roofless homes, the rusting tractors, the iightless
streets, the abandoned rail. But far m the distance, on the edge of the
earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn
flame of Wyatt’s Torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold,
not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and
waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce.

“The road is cleared.” said Galt. “We are going back to the
world.”

He raised his hand and over the desolate earth he traced in space
the sign of the dollar.

1069

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“My personal life,” says Ayn Rand, “is a postscript to my novels; it
consists of the sentence; And [ mean it/ I have always lived by the
philosophy I present in my books — and it has worked for me, as it
works for my characters. The concretes differ, the abstractions are
the same.

“I decided to be a writer at the age of nine, and everything l have
done was integrated to that purpose. I am an American by choice
and conviction. I was born in Europe, but l came to America because
this was the country based on my moral premises and the only coun-
try where one could be fully free to write. I came here alone, after
graduating from a European college. I had a difficult struggle, earn-
ing my living at odd jobs, until l could make a financial success of
my writing. No one helped me, nor did I think at any time that it
was anyone's duty to help me,

“In college, l had taken history as my major subject, and philoso-
phy as my special interest; the first — in order to have a factual knowl-
edge of men's past, for my future writing; the second - -in order to
achieve an objective definition of my values. I found that the first
could be learned, but the second had to be done by me.

“I have held the same philosophy I now hold, for as far back as
1 can remember. I have learned a great deal through the yeais and
expanded my knowledge of details, of specific issues, of definitions,
of applications — and f intend to continue expanding it— but I have
never had to change any of my fundamentals. My philosophy, in
essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happi-
ness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement
*as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

“The only philosophical debt 1 can acknowledge is to Aristotle. I
most emphatically disagree with a great many parts of his philoso-
phy — but his definition of the laws of logic and of the means of
human knowledge is so great an achievement that his errors are
irrelevant by comparison. You will find my tribute to him in the
titles of the three parts of ATLAS SHRUGGED.

“My other acknowledgment is on the dedication page of this novel.
I knew what values of character I wanted to find in a man. I met
such a man —and we have been married for twenty-eight years. His
name is Frank O'Connor.

“To all the readers who discovered The Fountainhead and asked
me many questions about the wider application of its ideas, l want
to say that I am answering these questions injthe present novel and
that The Fountainhead was only an Overture to ATLAS
SHRUGGED.

“I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about
don't exist. That this book has been written-«-and published — is my
proof that they do.”

1070